Adam Kupcewicz, Director of Engineering at Hostaway, leads the software organization responsible for supporting thousands of vacation rental property managers. Today, the globally distributed organization consists of more than 40 engineers.
Before Swarmia, Adam only tracked a few engineering metrics. As their team grew, it became increasingly hard to understand what tasks developers were working on and whether there were productivity bottlenecks on a personal, team, or organizational level. This led him to look for a software engineering intelligence platform.
Swarmia allows us to focus on what’s important. We don’t want to be flooded with thousands of metrics and spend our resources on data analytics at this stage.
Director of Engineering
After evaluating Swarmia and LinearB, Hostaway decided to onboard all their engineers to Swarmia, because of its ability to direct engineers’ attention to the metrics that matter.
We chose to work with Swarmia because it helps us concentrate on what's important at every level. We were able to identify the right metrics on the spot. It has worked very well for us.
Director of Engineering
Translating engineering work into understandable metrics and implementing healthy processes
The insights overview is the main view Adam uses to get the pulse of the organization. After implementing Swarmia, Adam could immediately see that the time to first review, review rate, and cycle time had all been trending in the wrong direction.
With visibility into the right metrics in Swarmia, we were able to set the right ways of working, which significantly improved our lead time.
Director of Engineering
Measuring key engineering metrics
Adam then started digging deeper into the metrics, talking with the team, and implementing new processes.
Time to first review and low review rate were the first bottlenecks we spotted with Swarmia. Back then, only a few developers would review PRs, and everything got stuck. Finding and solving this was a major, major upgrade for us.
Director of Engineering
Reducing time to deploy by 75% with working agreements
At Swarmia, each team can set their own working agreements that support teamwork and productivity.
After reviewing the data from Swarmia and talking with the team, we understood that instead of relying on solo contributors, we needed to start relying on teams. We then set the right working agreements, and our time to deploy reduced from four days to less than 24 hours.
Director of Engineering
Hostaway’s team agreed to avoid pushing directly to the default branch, review pull requests in less than 3 days, and link PRs to issues, which boosted cycle times across the organization.
By looking at the cycle time and comparing it to what our team has in their calendar, it was easy to understand what things have an influence on our team’s productivity.
Director of Engineering
Gaining clarity about engineering investments
The investment balance view in Swarmia helps Adam quickly see how the engineering organization splits time between building new tools, improving existing features, keeping the lights on (KTLO), productivity, and other work.
I use the investment balance view on a daily basis. With the breakdowns, I’m able to see all the necessary information at glance.
Director of Engineering
The view also shows Adam the split between planned and unplanned work, helping him see how many interruptions teams have.
After implementing Swarmia, the time spent on building new features has steadily gone up, while technical debt has decreased significantly.
Director of Engineering
It also helps Adam understand the team’s workload, leading to better structuring and planning of work, and well-justified recruitment decisions.
We’re able to ship the same features as our competitor but with a quarter of the people they have, and Swarmia plays a part in this. With the investment data from Swarmia, we can see if the process changes we’ve implemented affect our investment balance.
Director of Engineering
Bridging engineering metrics with the business
Translating engineering effectiveness metrics to colleagues without a technical background can be tough. Before, Adam wrote longer, number-heavy recaps about his organization. Some members at Hostaway had a hard time interpreting the analysis, so Adam started using Swarmia to communicate the product roadmap.
Now, screenshots from Swarmia help Adam communicate the product roadmap, developer productivity metrics, and possible bottlenecks to the leadership team faster.
Swarmia has changed how I communicate with the leadership team. Instead of showing them numbers, I can use the visualizations from Swarmia in a few slides with my comments.
Director of Engineering
Improved PR cycle time, better-balanced investments, and a well-communicated product roadmap
With the help of Swarmia, Hostaway has:
- Decreased their time to first review from days to less than 24 hours
- Sustainably scaled their total throughput and PRs in progress
- Reduced their cycle times by 50%
- Increased their review rate by over 30%, and
- Reduced their technical debt from 24% to 5%
all while almost tripling their engineering headcount.
Next, we’re hiring more engineering managers to ensure I’m not blocking our progress. We’ll definitely train them to use Swarmia when they start.
Director of Engineering
Not long ago, Adam oversaw 30 developers directly. Now, Hostaway is expanding its team of engineering managers to bridge between Adam and the developers, ensuring Adam isn’t a bottleneck and that key engineering metrics keep trending in the right direction.
I can absolutely recommend Swarmia to other teams who are having the same issues we had.
Director of Engineering
For Adam and Hostaway, this is just the beginning. He’s positive Swarmia will play a key role in their growth in the upcoming years.
