Case Study: How CDQ gains visibility and autonomy as a remote-first engineering team
Key results
The challenge
CDQ runs a remote-first engineering organization spread across Switzerland, Germany, and Poland. Without an office or attendance at every standup, leaders struggled to see where work was getting stuck, and the CFO wanted reliable data on development-versus-operations investment. Manual time tracking in Jira had not provided a workable answer.
The solution
CDQ adopted Swarmia after a six-week evaluation, starting with two volunteer teams before expanding. They used Swarmia's investment balance view to quantify how time was split, and adopted working agreements reinforced by GitHub-Slack notifications.
“Transparency changed everything. It's much easier to understand what teams are doing and where they're stuck. This saves time and builds confidence that people are working on the right things.”
MOMartin OfnerHead of Software Development and Operations at CDQ
The results, in context
Swarmia's investment balance view showed CDQ was spending just 38% of its time on 'product impact' — the sum of new features and improvements. After setting a goal of 50–60%, the team reached 60%. Leaders reported the added transparency helped teams challenge priorities based on evidence rather than management directives.