Transforming an engineering team from ad-hoc work to a steady shipping rhythm
The CEO was spending more than 30% of their time on operational work, and the codebase scored 1.83 out of 5 in my health check. Over six months the team moved to six-week build cycles and written decisions, and 18 of the 26 roadmap items we agreed on were delivered.
Content analytics platform · · 5 min read
Context
A content analytics platform that helps creators and brands manage and grow their audience. The company has 15 people, 8 of them engineers.
The CEO was spending more than 30% of their time coordinating day-to-day work instead of running the company. That was the real cost, and the reason to bring me in.
What I did
- Health check and debt audit. I scored the company's engineering health across six areas, including the codebase and security. The overall score was 2.86 out of 5, and I confirmed 89 concrete problems out of 230 possible issues I checked, each with a severity and a priority.
- Six-week build cycles. Work used to arrive as interruptions. I set up fixed six-week build cycles followed by two weeks for fixes and planning, and the team ran at least three of them during the engagement.
- Written updates instead of status meetings. Weekly status meetings became written updates anyone can reread later. That freed about 8 hours a week for the engineers.
- Incident handling. There was no written process for outages. I defined three severity levels, each with clear escalation rules and a short review after every incident.
- AI-assisted engineering. Every engineer learned to work with AI coding tools, with review rules to match. Starting a task from the backlog went from about 45 minutes to about 5, and every code change gets an automatic AI review.
- Automatic quality checks. I put automatic checks on every change to the most critical service, so problems get caught before a change ships.
- Role clarity and delegation. I wrote down who owns what and when to escalate to the founder, so decisions get made at the right level without going through the CEO.
Results
Before
After
Before
Engineering health at 2.86 out of 5 across six areas, with the codebase at 1.83.
After
89 confirmed problems, each with a severity and a priority.
Before
Work arrived as interruptions, with no build cycles.
After
Six-week build cycles, with at least three completed.
Before
Weekly status meetings to keep everyone in sync.
After
Written updates, freeing about 8 hours a week.
Before
No defined incident levels.
After
Three incident levels, each with its own escalation rules.
Before
About 45 minutes to start a task from the backlog.
After
About 5 minutes, with AI drafting the first version.
Before
Under 10% of the code covered by automated tests.
After
Every change to the most critical service checked automatically before release.
Before
The CEO spent more than 30% of their time on operational work.
After
Roles and escalation rules written down for everyone.
Before
No shared, ranked list of what to build next.
After
26 roadmap items ranked by effort and impact, 18 of them delivered.
What comes next
The engagement ended in June 2026. In August I handed over a package of 48 documents covering how the team plans its cycles and handles incidents, along with the remaining roadmap. Security hardening was still in progress, and 6 roadmap items stayed in the backlog for the team to take on.
Your developers are busy and the product is stuck?
Book a free 25-minute call to see whether working together makes sense.
Prefer writing? Email me at hello@nicolascava.com. I'll reply within one business day.