Case Study
Holded didn't need saving. Founded in 2016, they built one of Spain's most complete business management platforms — invoicing, accounting, inventory, CRM — and grew it into a company acquired by Visma for over €120 million in 2021. The founding team remained at the helm throughout, running a nearly 200-person organisation across product, engineering, data, design and infrastructure.
This is what makes the case so relevant: Holded was already a success story — and they still had a delivery problem. Not because the people were wrong, but because the system hadn't kept pace with the company's growth.
If a company that was on its way to a €120M acquisition had room to ship faster and more predictably — so does yours.
Holded's leadership wanted more from their delivery — not because the effort was lacking, but because the system had no shared way to measure, forecast or improve across 10 teams spanning product, engineering, data, design and infrastructure.
Without velocity or capacity data, teams had no objective way to set or meet their own predictions — making it hard to have productive conversations between developers and business stakeholders.
Each team had adapted processes in their own way — which made sense as they grew, but meant QA at the end of the chain absorbed the most friction. There was no common methodology to build on together.
Development and infrastructure projects were managed differently across teams — natural in a fast-growing org, but creating invisible handoff gaps. Without shared documentation or standards, alignment took more effort than it should.
Cycle Time P85 · TAHOE
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The work done has had a thousand good things. I thought we were agile, but now I realize we weren't.
I appreciate the transparency and team mentality, thanks to the fact that we now see the failures of other teams and help each other improve.
Both the language and common processes have been improved. This has facilitated both understanding and synergies between teams.
As a result of this work, the cognitive load on both the Tech Lead and the developers has been greatly reduced.
I went to a development event with other companies, where I explained how Holded currently works, and people were amazed.
It's the first time I've seen Design, Infrastructure, and the Data team integrated into the development dynamic. A twelve out of ten.
I had worked in places where Scrum is used, but I had never seen such a clear orientation towards Metrics.
A company on its way to a €120M acquisition still had a delivery system with more to give. One programme unlocked it. One call is all it takes to find out what that looks like for yours.
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