How Rivet Software Accelerated Delivery by 37% with Wallow
The Problem They Didn't Know They Had
Rivet Software was shipping code.
On time. On budget. With all the features the customer requested.
By most industry standards, they were doing well.
But they didn't know what they didn't know.
Like most engineering teams, they were playing a daily game of whack-a-mole with obstacles. A dependency here. An integration challenge there. A misunderstanding between frontend and backend teams that wasted three days of development time.
These weren't crises. Just the normal friction of building software.
Or so they thought.
The Cost of Invisible Obstacles
Engineering VP Sarah Chen suspected there was a pattern.
We kept hitting the same walls. Different projects, different teams, but somehow the same types of delays kept appearing.
Sarah Chen, VP of Engineering
The invisible cost was adding up:
- Engineers spending 4+ hours per week hunting down information
- Integration hurdles that weren't discovered until they became emergencies
- Technical debt accumulating in the form of shortcuts taken to meet deadlines
- Knowledge getting trapped in Slack threads, never to be seen again
We weren't measuring the impact of these obstacles. Because they weren't visible, they weren't being managed.
Sarah Chen, VP of Engineering
Seeing the Invisible
In January 2024, Rivet implemented Wallow.
At first, there was skepticism.
Another tool? We already have JIRA, Slack, GitHub, Figma, Notion...
Mark, Backend Engineer
But Wallow wasn't another place to go. It was a layer of visibility that connected their existing stack.
The engineering team started reporting obstacles in real-time. Not just bugs, but anything that slowed them down:
- API documentation that was out of date
- Confusing requirements from product
- Third-party services with unexpected rate limits
- Dependencies between teams that weren't clearly communicated
These weren't tracked in a separate system. They appeared where the team already worked. In GitHub PRs. In Slack channels. In JIRA tickets.
For the first time, obstacles became visible to everyone.
Patterns Emerge When You're Looking For Them
Within two weeks, Wallow's pattern recognition identified trends that would have remained hidden:
The Thursday Deploy Problem:
Most failed deployments happened on Thursdays when the backup system was running, creating resource contention
The Forgotten Frontend:
Backend APIs were being changed without updating the documentation, slowing frontend development
The Circular Wait:
Several teams were unknowingly waiting for each other to complete tasks, creating deadlocks
These weren't one-time issues. They were systemic patterns. And once we could see them, we could fix them permanently.
Sarah Chen, VP of Engineering
Results That Compound
After six months with Wallow, Rivet's metrics tell the story:
But the numbers don't tell the whole story.
The biggest change has been cultural. Teams don't hoard information anymore. They don't hide obstacles. There's a shared understanding that making problems visible is how we solve them.
Sarah Chen, VP of Engineering
The Ripple Effect
The impact extended beyond engineering:
- Product teams gained visibility into technical debt, making more informed prioritization decisions
- Customer success could provide more accurate timelines to clients
- New team members onboarded faster with clear visibility into team workflows and common obstacles
Before Wallow, we managed obstacles by who-knew-who. Now we manage them with data and patterns.
Sarah Chen, VP of Engineering
Beyond Shipping Faster
For Rivet, the 37% acceleration in delivery was just the beginning.
The quality of what they shipped improved. Technical debt decreased. Team morale increased.
We're not just shipping faster. We're shipping better. And the team is enjoying the process more.
Sarah Chen, VP of Engineering
The simple act of making obstacles visible created a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement.
Could Your Team Be 37% Faster?
Most software teams have accepted a certain level of friction as "just the way things are."
But what if it's not?
What if the difference between good and great isn't more process or more talent, but simply more visibility?
What if your team is already capable of being 37% faster?
You just can't see what's holding them back.
Ready to make your obstacles visible?
Start your free 14-day trial and see how Wallow can transform your development process.
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