Fixing Slow Engineering Teams — An Extended Field Guide for Founders

TL;DR — Series A companies often stall out after product‑market fit: deadlines slip, vendor hand‑offs pile up, and technical debt snowballs. In 60 days you can reverse those trends with five proven moves: cross‑functional squads, Shape Up cycles, Kanban flow, TDD, and automated CI/CD. This guide breaks down the “why” and “how,” bolstered by real metrics, third‑party studies, and a week‑by‑week rollout map.

Quick wins: Most pilots move from monthly releases to daily automated deploys in under eight weeks, slice defect rates nearly in half, and reclaim multiple developer‑months per quarter — all without adding headcount.