Improving spec speed in a huge, old Rails app

More often than not, test suites are the nasty underbelly of a Rails app. Size and age just aggravate the problem. Tests are seldom a high priority in any project, and speed might not be an issue at all in smaller apps where the whole test suite might take just a few seconds to complete. As the project grows and the CI takes increasingly longer to complete, spec speed suddenly becomes more of an issue.