It's not my main strategy, but I've had success with it in competition up to the black belt level.
At white and blue, it worked mostly because my opponents were not that great. I just did it the regular way you see taught.
At purple, it stopped working. I made a few changes but stopped using it in competition around then.
At brown, I saw an opening in a match and tried my new way. Instant tap. I kept using it at black and still get taps the same way.
The changes I made were:
1. Keep their arm in the middle of my chest. Don't cross it over. Just right down the middle.
2. Use my non grabbing hand to attack the posture. Think snap down on their neck. Use my legs in closed guard to assist with this.
3. Do not step on the hip. Just skip that step. When the time is right, spin straight to it as fast as possible. Do lots of side to side armbar spin drills to make this part smooth.
4. While spinning, start extending my hips before I even get my leg over the head. This makes it basically impossible to stack out of it. It also makes it come on super fast. It's halfway locked before I even get into position.
Done this way, nobody even taps to it. They just yell. But it's still pretty safe as I only extend a little bit past straight. It might tweak the elbow a bit, but it causes no serious injury.
A final rule is that I only armbar an arm that is already pretty straight. It's not worth it from the bottom to attack a bent arm. The leverage is not there, and it's too easy to counter. Plus there are many other attacks that work better to choose from.
If at any point in the process the guy bends his arm, I abort and do something else. But you'd be surprised how many guys how hang out with a straight arm to keep posture. That's the time to do it.