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Customer Story

How Learnship increases visibility and speeds up engineering workflows with Swarmia

Learnship saw a 20-25% reduction in cycle time, a 25% drop in time spent on maintenance work, and improved engineering satisfaction after implementing Swarmia.

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I would recommend a tool like Swarmia to virtually any development organization — small or large. It provides tremendous insights that, if leveraged properly, can transform not just output and outcomes but also engineering culture.
Gero Keller
CTPO at Learnship
Company

Learnship helps global teams communicate effectively by offering online, face-to-face language and cultural training.

learnship.com
Location

Headquartered in Germany, global operations

Headcount

300+ employees, 50+ in product and engineering

Swarmia Customer Since

2024

Gero Keller is the CTPO of Learnship, leading an organization of engineers, designers, and product managers located across the globe. When Learnship‘s product and engineering organization expanded to nine teams in 2024, maintaining a clear understanding of initiatives and aligning efforts became increasingly difficult. Teams operated with varying practices, and visibility into the development process was limited.

When we scaled up to nine teams, getting a cohesive leadership view of progress was challenging. The lack of a single source of truth also made it tough to confirm that we were working on the most important things.
Gero Keller
CTPO

Learnship‘s Jira lacked traceability; tickets often appeared as “done” even when the work was incomplete. Attempts to analyze engineering data manually from GitHub and Jira proved ineffective, as the data was outdated by the time it was reviewed.

We relied on Jira metrics, like velocity and burndown charts, and GitHub data, such as commits and pull requests, supplemented by retrospective discussions. While this worked when we were smaller, it became more fragmented as we grew.
Gero Keller
CTPO

It became clear to Gero that they needed real-time engineering metrics — views that could be relied upon for both high-level strategic planning and team-level optimization.

DIY dashboards or dedicated software: How Learnship made the decision

Gero wanted a solution that would help the organization reduce cycle times, minimize the number of stagnating tickets, and create consistency in their release cadence.

First, Learnship entertained the idea of building their own solution, but they soon realized that a dedicated software engineering intelligence platform would fit their needs better.

We looked at various engineering analytics tools and briefly considered building a homegrown solution using our data warehouse. However, we needed something that would give immediate insights without a large internal development overhead.
Gero Keller
CTPO

After abandoning the idea of building a DIY solution, Learnship settled on four key criteria:

  • Visibility into the flow from Jira to production
  • Cycle time and work-in-progress tracking to reduce context switching
  • Initiative and epic alignment to tie engineering work to business goals
  • Actionable dashboards that teams would use daily, and that wouldn‘t just exist for executive reporting
We wanted real-time, holistic visibility into our engineering workflows. We needed a better way to see exactly where tickets got stuck and whether we were overloaded with too much work in progress at any given time.
Gero Keller
CTPO

Gero and the team looked at Swarmia, LinearB, and Sleuth. In the end, the decision came down to real-time metrics, customizability, and leadership features.

Swarmia‘s seamless integrations with GitHub and Jira, plus its built-in best practices, appealed to us. It offered real-time data, an intuitive UI, and customizable workflows to align with our specific definition of 'done'. We also appreciated the initiative-tracking feature, letting us see how each epic was advancing toward strategic objectives.
Gero Keller
CTPO

How Learnship introduced engineering metrics to their team

Learnship first rolled out Swarmia to a few domain teams. They did data cleanup and configurations in Jira to ensure a smooth pilot for the rest of the teams.

We ran a pilot with a couple of domain teams that were already experimenting with new approaches. The pilot helped us refine our definitions of 'done' and how we configured our Jira boards.
Gero Keller
CTPO

Once the pilot teams noticed tangible improvements, like faster identification of stale tickets and better visibility into initiatives, Learnship gradually started introducing Swarmia to other teams. The incremental approach helped them get valuable feedback, address concerns, and fine-tune systems.

Some developers were concerned that Swarmia would be used to micromanage or rate individual performance with vanity metrics. To address this, Learnship involved team leads in setting up dashboards and metrics to foster a sense of ownership and collaboration. Gero also ensured that all teams knew that Swarmia wasn‘t used for individual tracking, but understanding team- and organization-level workflows.

We let the people doing the work influence how the tool is set up and how metrics are interpreted, and use the data to refine processes, not to point fingers.
Gero Keller
CTPO

Gero believes that the best ways to reduce friction when introducing engineering metrics are by communicating their purpose clearly, providing support through training and onboarding, and highlighting the immediate benefits a platform like Swarmia brings.

First learnings

Immediately after the rollout, Learnship noticed several key productivity insights: The organization‘s average cycle time was surprisingly high due to an overload of work-in-progress tickets. Teams were juggling multiple tasks concurrently, leading to excessive context switching and long delivery times.

They also learned that code review times varied significantly between teams, although the primary factor contributing to this inconsistency was the excessive amount of WIP items. The tickets that were in limbo were either marked done without actually reaching production or were awaiting quality assurance sign-off.

Long-term changes

After fully implementing Swarmia, Learnship saw a 20-25% reduction in cycle times, 25% less time spent on maintenance work, and improved engineering satisfaction through increased transparency and ownership. The number of open pull requests in progress dropped from 80 to 15.

Faster production

Gero and the team were able to establish stricter WIP limits, streamline the QA handover process, and create a process for addressing stale PRs, resulting in a 20-25% reduction in average cycle times, more predictable code review turnaround, and consistent deployment frequency.

Swarmia definitely reinforced a culture of continuous improvement and data-driven decision-making. Teams began framing discussions around actual metrics — like cycle times and PR review durations — rather than gut feelings. This helped reduce friction and improve accountability.
Gero Keller
CTPO

Increased visibility and alignment

With the whole engineering organization having access to engineering metrics, facilitating retros and sprint planning sessions became easier, leading to better-informed decision-making.

Balancing the quantitative data with qualitative retrospectives is key to fostering a healthy, high-performing engineering culture.
Gero Keller
CTPO

Improved team well-being

The teams now experience increased ownership and responsibility as they‘ve gained a uniform and transparent way to measure productivity. The ability to see their progress and the impact of their work has boosted morale and confidence.

After a short adjustment period, Swarmia led to greater ownership and responsibility among engineers and QA. They could clearly see what needed attention and when.
Gero Keller
CTPO

Stronger connection to business outcomes

Learnship also highlighted the value of Swarmia in justifying engineering investments, such as refactoring and reducing technical debt by tying them to measurable outcomes like stability. After implementing Swarmia, they‘ve reduced the time spent on KTLO (keeping the lights on) work by over 25%. Now, more time is freed up for building new features, improving the existing ones, and investing in general productivity improvements.

By mapping epics and initiatives to company-level goals, we can quickly show stakeholders how each sprint or set of tasks ties back to strategic priorities. This alignment reduces confusion and helps non-technical folks see the direct impact of engineering work.
Gero Keller
CTPO

More accurate financial planning

Learnship uses Swarmia to plan and track the cost of engineering initiatives. This helps the organization plan, prioritize, and compare different projects more reliably, and communicate with the finance and leadership teams.

By correlating engineering outputs with strategic initiatives, we can present data-driven arguments to finance and executive teams. This makes budgeting and prioritization more transparent and grounded in measurable outcomes.
Gero Keller
CTPO

Gero strongly believes that organizations, big and small, can benefit from tracking engineering insights, if they‘re introduced in the right way. He also encourages his team to keep an open dialogue to adapt metrics as the organization evolves.

Every organization is unique, and metrics alone aren‘t a panacea; they’re a lens to guide smarter decisions. However, I firmly believe that in a few years, not using a tool like Swarmia will make an engineering organization look dated and behind the curve.
Gero Keller
CTPO

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