If you take the road less traveled, just make sure it isn't on the critical path. Ignore customer feedback at your peril. You can automate bad tests more easily than you can automate good tests. Never confuse a specification with reality. Over-scheduling a product will not make it ship on time.
Computers are cheap, people are expensive.
Therefore it is more cost effective to buy more machines than to make people spend time changing complicated configurations on a regular basis. You can't save time on a project by removing the specification and planning phases from the schedule. Customers will not buy a widget, regardless of quality or cool features, if what they need is a doodad. If you want a project to ship on time, listen to the project team members about how long it will take them to finish and schedule accordingly. I'd love to hear your pithy thoughts on software development.