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Case Studies / Kanban Chaos
Case Study: Resolving Delivery Bottlenecks and Backlog Overload in a Digital Agency Environment
A digital agency servicing medium to enterprise-sized clients was facing a significant operational issue: hundreds of hours of overdue work had built up in the delivery backlog. The development team consisted of 2 junior developers, 2 intermediate developers, 2 senior developers, and a senior DevOps engineer, working under a kanban methodology, with an outdated project management tool lacking time-tracking and delivery output reporting capabilities.
What is Technical Debt?
Technical debt refers to the accumulated shortcuts, suboptimal solutions, or quick fixes in software development that save time in the short term but create additional work and complexity in the long term. It's like borrowing from the future: by choosing to implement a faster, less ideal solution now, you create "debt" that must be "paid back" later through refactoring, rewriting code, or fixing bugs. Over time, this debt builds up, making the system harder to maintain, scale, and improve.
Technical debt is damaging because it slows down development velocity, increases the cost of future changes, and often leads to bugs or performance issues. As the codebase becomes more complex and fragmented, teams spend more time understanding, fixing, and working around earlier shortcuts rather than adding new features. This can hinder innovation, frustrate developers, and, if left unchecked, result in system instability or even project failure. Managing technical debt through disciplined practices and regular refactoring is crucial to maintaining long-term software health.
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Read more: Common Causes of Technical Debt
Areas of Focus
Departments We Support
Leadership & Management
Challenges Identified
Two core issues were uncovered:
- Sales Overpromising Capacity: Sales account managers were making delivery commitments to clients without visibility into existing workloads or backlog status, continually adding work to a team that was already over capacity.
- Conflicted Delivery Management and Stagnation: The delivery manager, acting as scrum master, was both managing workflow and promising outcomes directly to clients, creating a conflict of interest. Meanwhile, the team’s heavy workload left no time for reflection, continuous improvement, or practice development.
Approach & Solutions
- Introduced Agile Delivery Practices in Jira: Replaced the legacy project management tool with Jira and introduced Agile workflows using structured 10-day sprints. Reasonable resource capacity values were defined for each team member, giving the team a measurable and transparent delivery framework.
- Established Team Velocity and Delivery Discipline : After several sprints, team velocity was identified based on actual completed work. This enabled more accurate forecasting and sprint planning.
- Introduced Sprint Restrictions and Change Controls: Restrictions and change controls were enforced to protect sprint commitments, preventing unmanaged scope creep and last-minute additions from derailing the team’s planned work.
- Empowered the Team to Set Boundaries: With clear delivery data and predictable sprints, the team was supported and coached to say “no” responsibly — enabling them to manage expectations with sales and clients in a professional, transparent manner.
Outcomes
- Sprint-based Agile delivery created a predictable, measurable workflow and improved operational visibility.
- Backlog management improved as work was progressively structured into sprints with realistic capacity constraints.
- Team morale lifted as workloads became manageable and expectations stabilised.
- Clear sprint commitments and change control processes led to more honest client and stakeholder conversations, reducing last-minute scope pressures.
Key Learnings
Operational challenges often stem from blurred role boundaries and lack of delivery visibility. By establishing clear processes, realistic capacity planning, and empowering teams with data-driven boundaries, sustainable delivery practices can be restored even in high-pressure, backlogged environments.
What is Technical Debt?
Technical debt refers to the accumulated shortcuts, suboptimal solutions, or quick fixes in software development that save time in the short term but create additional work and complexity in the long term. It's like borrowing from the future: by choosing to implement a faster, less ideal solution now, you create "debt" that must be "paid back" later through refactoring, rewriting code, or fixing bugs. Over time, this debt builds up, making the system harder to maintain, scale, and improve.
Technical debt is damaging because it slows down development velocity, increases the cost of future changes, and often leads to bugs or performance issues. As the codebase becomes more complex and fragmented, teams spend more time understanding, fixing, and working around earlier shortcuts rather than adding new features. This can hinder innovation, frustrate developers, and, if left unchecked, result in system instability or even project failure. Managing technical debt through disciplined practices and regular refactoring is crucial to maintaining long-term software health.
.
Read more: Common Causes of Technical Debt
Areas of Focus
Departments We Support
Leadership & Management
Areas of Focus
Departments We Support
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We thoroughly assess your current platform, team practices, and workflows to identify opportunities for optimisation. We ensure your system’s architecture, code quality, and infrastructure are aligned with best practices to support future growth and scalability.
Development Process Improvement
Is your team performing at its peak? We evaluate your current development processes and maturity, offering insights and actionable steps to streamline workflows, reduce inefficiencies, and implement industry-standard best practices that improve delivery timelines and quality.
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Unmatched Expertise:
Over 25 years of experience in web development, architecture, and delivery leadership.
Reduced Risk:
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Enhanced Performance:
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Tailored Solutions:
Customized strategies to fit your unique needs and business objectives.
Long-term Assurance:
Confidence that your platform is built to scale and sustain future growth.
The Objective
The Outcome
- Sprint-based Agile delivery created a predictable, measurable workflow and improved operational visibility.
- Backlog management improved as work was progressively structured into sprints with realistic capacity constraints.
- Team morale lifted as workloads became manageable and expectations stabilised.
- Clear sprint commitments and change control processes led to more honest client and stakeholder conversations, reducing last-minute scope pressures.
Outcomes
Platform: Freshdesk Omni-Channel
- Decommissioned the legacy FileMaker-based ticketing system
- Successfully replaced a failed 18-month Salesforce project within 12 weeks
- Reduced average ticket resolution times by 30% within the first quarter
- Centralized customer support across all brands and global regions
- Enhanced visibility and operational oversight with real-time, multi-brand reporting
- Created a scalable Freshdesk platform capable of onboarding future brands with minimal configuration
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