For the engineering team at TechSolutions Inc., a medium-sized B2B software company, sprint planning had become an exercise in guesswork. Despite careful planning, nearly every sprint included stories that were blocked by dependencies from other teams—product specifications were unclear, design assets were still in progress, or waiting on API access from third-party partners.
"Our velocity metrics were all over the place," explains Alex, the engineering manager. "We'd commit to delivering 30 story points, but end up completing only 15 because three critical tasks were blocked by external dependencies. The worst part was that we often didn't discover these blockers until halfway through the sprint."
The team's retrospectives became repetitive, with the same issues surfacing sprint after sprint. Engineers were frustrated by context-switching as they abandoned blocked tasks to pick up new ones. Product managers were equally frustrated by the unpredictable delivery timelines.
"We tried everything—longer planning sessions, buffer tasks, even dedicated Slack channels for dependency tracking. Nothing seemed to solve the core issue: we lacked a systematic way to track and resolve dependencies across teams," Alex recalls.
When they implemented unwait.me, they started by cataloging all current blockers and assigning them to the appropriate teams or individuals. Each dependency was categorized by severity (blocking, important, or low) and visible to everyone in the organization.
The impact was dramatic:
Proactive identification: Teams began identifying potential blockers during planning sessions and immediately logging them in unwait.me.
Cross-team visibility: For the first time, engineers could see exactly what they were waiting on and who was responsible for unblocking them.
Accountability: The public nature of the dependency tracker created positive peer pressure. Nobody wanted to be the person with the most overdue dependencies.
Data-driven improvements: After just two months, patterns emerged showing that most blockers came from a few specific sources, allowing targeted process improvements.
"The most valuable feature was the time tracking," notes Rajiv, a senior developer. "When someone could actually see that we'd been waiting for 72 hours for their input, it created a completely different sense of urgency than an email saying 'whenever you get a chance.'"
Three months after implementing unwait.me, the engineering team's metrics told a compelling story:
Sprint completion rates improved from 50-60% to 85-95%
The average time to resolve blockers decreased from 3.5 days to less than 1 day
Context-switching decreased by 62%, as measured by the number of stories simultaneously in progress
Overall sprint delays were reduced by 78%
"What's remarkable is how this improved team morale," Alex explains. "Engineers hate feeling unproductive, and nothing kills productivity like waiting on someone else. By creating transparency around dependencies, we've eliminated a major source of frustration."
The success has inspired other departments to adopt unwait.me, creating a company-wide system for dependency management. The engineering team now holds a "blocker breakdown" session at the beginning of each sprint, proactively identifying potential dependencies and logging them in the system.
"It's one of those rare tools that actually changed our behavior," concludes Alex. "We've moved from a reactive 'why is this blocked again?' culture to a proactive 'let's make sure nothing gets blocked' mindset."
