Calming the Delivery Chaos (A JetThoughts Field Note)

“We have four teams, three backlogs, two release channels, and one flaming emergency chat.” — a recent Series‑A founder, Friday 2 am.

I hear some version of that quote every couple of weeks. Same melody, different lyrics. Busy startup, product‑market fit on the horizon, engineers sprinting in four directions. Jira boards look like Jackson Pollock got hold of sticky notes.

Case in point: last week a founder posted this question on r/startups , baffled by the exact same mess—siloed dev, no PO, four sprints colliding. Scroll the thread and you’ll recognise the pattern: early‑stage teams drowning in coordination debt.

Releases feel like a wedding reception conga line: noisy, everyone bumping into each other, nobody sure who’s leading. Releases feel like a wedding reception conga line: noisy, everyone bumping into each other, nobody sure who’s leading.

Below is how we help teams like that settle the rhythm without losing the groove. No silver bullets. Just a handful of nudges that compound fast.