The symptoms of coordination debt
Before you had 4 teams, coordination was easy. The PM knew what everyone was doing. Standups covered everything. Slack was enough.
Then something shifted:
- Meetings multiplied. You now have team standups, cross-team syncs, leadership updates, planning sessions, and "quick alignment calls" that aren't quick.
- Dependencies became invisible. Team A shipped late because Team B didn't know they were blocking. The dependency was in someone's head, not on any board.
- The roadmap slide became fiction. It looked good in the all-hands. But ask any engineer what's actually shipping this quarter, and you'll get a different answer.
- "Who's working on X?" became a research project. Five Slack searches, three Jira queries, and a DM later, you found out it was deprioritized two weeks ago.
The turning point
When coordination overhead starts eating into delivery time, you've crossed from "communication challenge" to "infrastructure gap." That's when you need more than better meetings.
Who When is built for
When is purpose-built for organizations with these characteristics:
- 4+ squads shipping in parallel. Below this threshold, Jira + good communication works fine. Above it, you need a coordination layer.
- Growing 30-50% yearly. Fast growth means processes break faster. When is designed to scale with you.
- Already using Jira (or similar). You've solved the execution problem. Now you need to solve the coordination problem above it.
- Cross-functional initiatives. Work that spans teams, requires handoffs, and has real dependencies.
Who When is NOT for
Being clear about fit matters more than closing deals. When probably isn't right if:
- You're a single team. Keep using Jira or Linear. When adds unnecessary overhead at this stage.
- You're looking to replace Jira. When sits above Jira, not instead of it. Teams keep their existing workflows.
- You want project management. When is for roadmap alignment, not task tracking. They're different problems.
- You need detailed resource planning. When shows commitments, not capacity calculations. It's about alignment, not scheduling.
"The problem isn't that we don't plan. It's that our plans don't talk to each other." Engineering Director at a 200-person startup
What changes when you have alignment infrastructure
- Status meetings shrink or disappear. When everyone can see the same timeline, you stop meeting to share information.
- Dependencies surface before they bite. When Team B moves something, Team A sees it immediately and can adjust.
- Leadership gets confident answers. "When does X ship?" has one answer, not five interpretations.
- Planning becomes collaborative. Instead of presenting slides, you drag things around together and see what works.