← All case studies Case Study № 01 · Financial services 39% → 86%+
Case Study № 01

From 39% to 86%+ in one sprint.

A Large Financial Services SaaS Provider · 6-Person Dev Team
Avg Before
39%
Avg After
85%+
Sprint to Impact
1
Output Delivered
2×
T1 2025
Goal met
First trimester delivery goal met in 2 years
§ 01 — The Situation

The team had the talent. The system they were working in did not.

A 6-person development team at a large financial services SaaS provider was struggling. Sprint completion rates averaged 39% across 25 sprints, and the trend was getting worse — declining to the 17–23% range by year end.

The team had the talent. The problem was the system they were working in:

✕
Developers were on islands. Each person worked in their own corner with limited shared context, siloed knowledge, and no collective ownership of delivery. Stand-ups were status reports, not collaboration. When one developer hit a blocker or fell behind, no one could absorb the slack.
✕
No clear sprint planning process or capacity awareness.
✕
Stories were epic-sized but under-pointed — committed to as small work items when they were weeks, or even months, of effort.
✕
No visibility into team velocity, injection rate, or delivery trends.
§ 02 — What Changed

The changes focused on the system, not the people.

Both the technical practices and the team dynamics:

One.
Built a real team
Structured daily collaboration replaced individual silos. Developers built shared context across the codebase, could cover for each other, and collectively owned delivery. This gave the team the flexibility to absorb unplanned work without derailing the sprint.
Two.
Capacity-based planning
Sprints scoped to actual team availability, accounting for PTO, meetings, and support load.
Three.
Right-sized stories with honest estimation
Story points were re-calibrated to reflect actual effort. Stories were completable within a sprint, with clear acceptance criteria and vertical slices through the stack. Carry-over dropped to near zero.
Four.
Velocity and injection tracking
3-sprint rolling averages informed planning; unplanned work was measured and managed rather than silently swamping the sprint.
§ 03 — The Results

The impact was immediate.

In the very first sprint under the new practices, completion jumped to 86%. Over 11 sprints, the team averaged 85% completion — more than double the 39% baseline — while delivering nearly twice the actual work per sprint (14.8 → 28.5 story points completed).

Throughput per developer per day grew 138% over the engagement. Seven of the eleven sprints finished above 85% completion. Five finished at exactly 100% — nothing carried over.

Sprint Completion Rate Over Time
% of total sprint work completed (committed + injected)
0% 25% 50% 75% 100% NEW PRACTICES BEGIN LEADERSHIP CHANGE 2024 S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8* S9 S10 S11 S12 S13 S14 S15 S16 S17
2024 Baseline New Practices (Sprints 1–11) After Departure (Sprints 12–17) *Sprint 8 impacted by an exceptional injection volume.
Team Happiness
5.5 → 10 out of 10

At the start of the engagement, the team was polled across multiple topics. Overall team happiness scored 5.5 out of 10. By Sprint 3 — just six weeks in — that score had reached 10 out of 10. The same people doing the same work, in a system that finally made sense.

Trimester Goal Met
For the first time in two years.

The sprint-level improvements compounded into something bigger. Under the new practices, the team met their trimester delivery goal for the first time in two years. Predictable sprints make predictable delivery possible.

§ 04 — The Validation

Most case studies end at the win. This one has a natural control group.

When new leadership took over mid-year, the practices shifted. Developers gradually returned to working in isolation — without the shared context and collective flexibility the team had built. Story estimation regressed: more tickets with smaller point values, but chronic carry-over returned. Unplanned injection spiked 70% — from 10 to 17 story points per sprint on average — and the team no longer had the cohesion to absorb it.

Completion rate dropped to 76% and continued declining. Only 2 of the next 6 sprints exceeded 85% completion, compared to 7 of 11 under the previous practices.

The practices caused the improvement. Their removal confirmed it.
§ 05 — Key Takeaway

The team didn't change. The people didn't change. The system changed.

And the team dynamics changed with it. When developers work as a true team rather than as individuals in parallel, they build shared context, shared standards, and the flexibility to absorb the unexpected. Combine that with honest estimation and capacity-based planning, and the same people who were delivering 39% of their commitments start delivering 85%+.

The regression data makes this unusually clear: when you revert the system, you revert the results.

Want results like these?

Let's talk about what's holding your team back.

Book a Free Consultation →