Build your first embedded data product now. Talk to our product experts for a guided demo or get your hands dirty with a free 10-day trial.
Imagine working as a chef in a 5-star restaurant. Everything is going well except that you’re constantly late with your orders. The meals are delicious, but the customers are angry their steak took 40 minutes to cook. At the same time, the restaurant owner is furious that customers are going to a competitor who delivers amazing food, but more quickly.
This is what it’s like to work in a development or product team that moves slowly. You may deliver amazing features but if your customers and management are impatiently waiting for them, you need to do better.
But how much does a delayed product really cost your business? Let’s do some analysis.
There are many reasons why you could delay shipping a feature. Here are some of the main ones:
In the end, delayed product releases can happen to anyone for a variety of reasons. And whenever they do happen, it’s bad news for development, product, sales and ultimately, your customers.
Taking too long to deliver features your customers need can be detrimental to your business for a wide variety of reasons. Here are just a few:
Assuming you’ve done your feature prioritization properly, the cost of delaying a feature your product really needs goes way beyond just money.
But let’s talk numbers.
Let’s imagine a scenario where you’re running a SaaS product - a marketplace that needs to launch a new dashboard feature. This feature would allow merchants to see how much their customers are spending across product categories and individual products. Needless to say, your customers would love to have this feature and they've been probably bugging you about it on your office phone system.
You run a development team of seven people - which is the ideal size, according to a few sources. Let’s not add any product/design/project management staff, for the sake of easy calculation.
There are two major costs of delay here.
Developers are one of the most expensive employees a modern business can hire. Salaries vary according to the tech stack, location, and many other factors. However, the average national salary for a developer is around $95,000/year which translates to about $8,000 per month.
With seven developers in your team spending all of their time working on a new feature, you’ve effectively spent 7x8,000 or roughly about $56,000 per month working extra on a feature that should have already been finished. In other words, that money is down the drain.
Once you factor in product managers, QA testers, designers and everyone else involved in putting a feature app together, the figure can skyrocket very quickly.
Of course, real-world situations vary according to the team size, the time spent building, other ongoing projects, the location (whether you’re hiring in own country or outsourcing) and more. However, you can see just how much of a difference one month can make.
There are many ways to price a SaaS product, but for the sake of simplicity, let’s go with flat-based pricing of $100/month for your marketplace app. You have customers who are eager to try your app but they are waiting for the new feature to be finished before committing.
Now for some more math. The typical SaaS revenue growth falls anywhere between 15-45% year-on-year, so let’s say it’s 30%. With 1,000 paying customers, losing 30% annually translates to losing 25 customers in a month. Or in practical terms for your marketplace app, you just lost $2,500 of monthly recurring revenue because you took too long to ship a feature.
Once again, prices and numbers will vary greatly depending on how big your business is already, how important the feature is, how long it takes to finish it and many other factors.
And if $2,500 does not seem that bad, remember that this is monthly recurring revenue and if your lifetime value is just one year, that’s $30,000 in annual recurring revenue. And that’s provided you don’t lose any customers to churn because of a critical feature that is missing.
In other words, every additional month of delay with a feature is literally like throwing money down the drain.
Here’s the piece most teams overlook: delays cost money internally. Extended development cycles mean more time paying engineers, designers, and product managers to work on the same thing. Add to that increased costs for QA, support teams, and even product email marketing adjustments to align with new timelines.
There’s also the mental toll on your team. Burnout rises when projects drag on indefinitely. Morale dips, motivation wavers, and productivity drops. The cost of employee disengagement and turnover? Way higher than just salary.
Time spent perfecting a delayed release is time not spent building the next feature, product, or improvement. This is the silent killer: the opportunity cost.
What if the time spent smoothing every edge of Version 1.0 could have been used on a case study that draws new leads? Or a free consultation offer that boosts your sales funnel? Every delay locks up resources that could’ve been driving growth elsewhere.
Speed isn’t about rushing—it’s about clearing the path for what’s next.
In fast-moving markets, being late means falling behind. If you delay, your competitors can seize the moment—not just in launching similar products, but in grabbing media attention, customer loyalty, and early adopters.
Sometimes, even an excellent lead magnet or free resource with great photos can’t pull those customers back once they’ve committed elsewhere. The cost of catching up—discounts, incentives, rebranding—often exceeds the cost of shipping on time.
The best way to sidestep the hidden costs of delayed product releases is to be proactive, intentional, and transparent from day one. Delays happen, but their impact can be minimized—or even avoided altogether—with the right strategies. Let’s unpack these key approaches in more detail:
Overpromising is one of the fastest routes to missed deadlines. It often happens with the best intentions—leaders want to inspire teams, impress stakeholders, or stay ahead of competitors. But unrealistic timelines almost always backfire. When pressure mounts and corners get cut, quality suffers, and so does team morale.
Instead, approach scheduling with honesty and foresight. Factor in the unexpected: last-minute changes, bugs, feedback loops. Add buffer time not as a safety net, but as a deliberate part of your planning process. If a project looks like it will take eight weeks, plan for ten. This creates breathing room and reduces the stress that leads to burnout or mistakes. Delivering on time—even ahead of schedule—helps build credibility and sets the stage for smoother future launches.
Perfection is the enemy of progress. Many teams delay shipping because they’re chasing that last polish, that final feature they believe will “make it complete.” But most lead magnets, products, and services improve after real users get their hands on them. Feedback from the field is more valuable than endless internal tweaking.
Focus on launching a solid minimum viable product—a version of your product that delivers core value, even if it’s not feature-complete. An MVP lets you enter the market faster, learn from real customers, and iterate based on what they actually want, not what you assume they need. Partnering with an MVP app development company can streamline this process, ensuring that your MVP is effectively designed and developed.
Releasing an MVP doesn’t mean compromising on quality; it means identifying the essentials that solve a pain point and leaving room for growth. This approach not only shortens time to market but also helps avoid opportunity costs—allowing your team to move on to the next big thing rather than staying locked in endless revisions.
When delays are unavoidable, how you handle them determines whether they erode trust or reinforce it. Silence is the worst option. Customers, investors, and partners left in the dark tend to assume the worst.
Instead, communicate clearly and early. Share why the delay is happening, what steps are being taken to address it, and when they can expect updates. Even a simple follow up email can go a long way in preserving relationships and managing expectations.
But don’t just communicate when things go wrong. Build regular check-ins into your process—through newsletters, product updates, or direct outreach. This habit creates transparency, positions you as reliable, and strengthens trust over time. Remember, building trust doesn’t happen during smooth sailing—it’s how you navigate choppy waters that counts.
One reason delays spiral is because teams operate in silos. Development might finish the product, only for marketing to say they need three more weeks to prep campaigns. Or sales hasn’t been trained yet. Or support teams aren’t briefed.
Alignment across departments—development, marketing, sales, and customer support—needs to happen from the start. Get everyone in the room early to discuss timelines, launch plans, and dependencies. This prevents last-minute surprises and ensures that when the product ships, the entire business is ready to support it.
Encouraging individuals to find their voice in meetings is part of this. When every stakeholder feels empowered to speak up early—about blockers, bandwidth, or gaps—teams can course-correct faster and avoid preventable bottlenecks.
Use shared tools or dashboards to keep everyone on the same page. Visibility across teams helps spot risks early, adjust schedules collaboratively, and avoid the downstream effects of misaligned timelines.
It’s easy to fall in love with features. Engineers want to build cool stuff, product managers want to tick off checklists, and marketers want shiny bullet points for campaigns. But customers don’t buy features—they buy solutions.
When deciding what goes into a release (especially an MVP), ask: What outcome does this deliver for the customer? If a feature doesn’t move the needle toward solving a pain point, consider cutting it or pushing it to a future iteration.
This mindset shift keeps projects lean and focused. It helps avoid feature creep, which is one of the major causes of delays. Staying centered on customer outcomes, not internal preferences, ensures that what you ship matters to your target audience. It also speeds up decision-making, reduces internal debates, and helps get products to market faster.
Avoiding the hidden costs of delays isn’t about working harder—it’s about working smarter. Set deadlines you can meet (with wiggle room). Launch MVPs that solve real problems. Communicate openly, align teams, and stay laser-focused on outcomes that matter.
By following these principles, you not only protect your timelines—you build trust, keep momentum, and position your business for long-term success. Because in the end, shipping on time isn’t just about hitting a date. It’s about maintaining the health of your product, your team, and your market presence.
Just pushing the release to a later date sounds like a neat solution but it’s not one that works for most businesses. With competitors closing in on you, customers demanding more from your product and threatening to leave and investors asking questions, you simply may not have a choice.
It’s a simple build vs. buy dilemma - whether to build a new feature in-house or buy it from a vendor who specializes in this type of development.
In the case of an analytics dashboard, the math is pretty simple. Luzmo prices start at $950 per month and you can set your first analytics dashboard up within days. Not weeks or months - days.
So, how does $950/month sound compared to $56,000/month? The answer is clear.
Want a dashboard inside your product but don’t have months to wait and thousands of dollars to burn? At Luzmo, we can help you add an embedded analytics dashboard to your product within days, not weeks.
Sign up for your free trial today and let us show you how quickly you can add more value to your customers and more revenue to your business.
Build your first embedded data product now. Talk to our product experts for a guided demo or get your hands dirty with a free 10-day trial.
