From Chaos to Structure: How I Systematized an Out-of-Control IT Project

Today I want to share my story of how I managed to bring order to complete chaos inside an IT project — a project with no proper task tracking, no documentation, no transparency. Nothing at all, except developers, random tasks, and pure chaos.

Back when I was doing a six-month internship, I never encountered anything like this. Everything there was methodical: tasks in the tracker, clear processes, and a structured workflow. But real life turned out to be very different.

When I joined this project, I was hit by the harsh reality of project management — something I never even imagined during my internship.

• Tasks would just fall from the sky, like water from a waterfall — with no clear beginning or end.

• Developers were pushing features directly to production without any warning — and, of course, with bugs.

• Support teams would blow up your phone, rightfully frustrated over the mess.

• There was absolutely no documentation (and to be fair, I wasn’t great at writing it myself back then).

Here’s what the typical situation looked like: A task would pop up in Telegram or someone would tell you about it in person → you’d study it, understand it → write some kind of documentation → send it to the developer → the developer would read it and say “Got it, give me 30 minutes.” Then... silence. A couple of hours later you’d find out the feature was already deployed to production. And, of course, everything broke. Fun times, huh? 😅

My First Steps Toward Order

I started small — writing short documents for each task, then sharing links with the developers in a group chat and tagging the person responsible.

Later, I tried organizing everything using a Google Sheet. Unfortunately, that approach didn’t work out for me. The team members were closed off and avoided communication, so the spreadsheet just didn’t help.

We worked in this chaotic rhythm for about two months — maybe even longer. The most painful part of this method was the lack of clear task statuses. It was easy to get confused, and nobody could remember what was going on.

Step Two — Introducing a Task Tracker

At first, I thought the very existence of a task tracker would solve all our problems. But the reality was — the real systematization was just beginning.

We started using Trello as our task tracker. Back then, I wasn’t very familiar with Kanban and didn’t feel comfortable with it yet. Our board had these columns: “Future Tasks”, “This Week”, “Backend”, “Frontend”, “QA”, “Done”, “In Production”

The working process looked like this:

• Backend picks up the task → completes it → moves it to the Frontend column.

• Frontend picks up the task → completes it → moves it to QA.

• QA tests the feature.

  If all is good → the task moves to Done. If bugs are found → the task goes back to Frontend or Backend, depending on the issue.

This process finally helped unite the backend, frontend, and QA teams. Up until that point, it felt like we’d all been working on different planets.

Step Three — Streamlining Interaction with the Business Side

The problem:

Support could pull a developer off their task at any moment, which completely destroyed our deadlines.

The solution:

I negotiated with the business team: all tasks had to go through me first. Without this step, the chaos would’ve been impossible to control.

One Person Managing Seven Developers

The problem:

No analyst, no product manager, no project manager — no one to help.

The solution:

I requested extra hands from management. While waiting for them to hire someone, I had to step in and:

• Break down and document business requirements.

• Negotiate and rewrite overly ambitious tasks into more realistic ones.

• Shield the team from drowning in unrealistic expectations.

• Keep the team focused on priorities.

Unifying the Team

I suggested seating the team together in the same room. Once that happened, communication improved dramatically, and problems were solved much faster.

The Product Manager Arrives

When the product manager finally joined, we split responsibilities:

Product Manager:

1. Gathering requirements from stakeholders.

2. Forming and prioritizing the backlog.

3. Clarifying and detailing features.

Me:

1. Planning and scheduling.

2. Estimating timelines.

3. Managing risks.

4. Adapting to Scrum

Later on, the product manager suggested we move toward Scrum. We adapted our board for Scrum and quickly realized Trello wasn’t enough. The processes were becoming too complex, so we decided to switch to JIRA.

Luckily, a new leader joined the company around the same time — someone who wanted to fully embrace Agile culture and frameworks like Scrum and Kanban. He helped adapt our workflow to JIRA, and the migration went smoothly.

Soft Transition to Scrum

Once we switched to JIRA, we started easing the team into the Scrum framework.

First sprints were focused on getting comfortable with the new tool. Second sprint — I gathered the team and openly explained how we’d work from now on, step by step. At the end of the sprint, we ran a retrospective in two parts:

Everyone filled out a Google Form with their thoughts. (This gave me time to prepare for difficult questions.)

We had a relaxed team discussion where we highlighted the pros and cons.

Daily Standups

At first, I was skeptical about daily standups. But I decided to experiment:

Each morning, the team filled out a short Google Form describing:

What they did yesterday

What they plan for today

What obstacles they faced

Then we met, went over their answers, and discussed priorities. After the standup, I shared a short summary in our group chat.

Sprint Reports

Since the team was already using Google Forms, I made it a habit to write a Sprint Report every week. This helped both me and the product manager focus on what we were actually building — and why.

##The Most Important Thing:

Throughout all these changes, I learned one key lesson: Always listen to your team. Introduce changes when they make sense. Simplify daily routines. Support your people.

In Summary

In just six months, we went from pure chaos to a structured and transparent process:

• We organized task management, communication, and workflows.

• United the team.

• Improved collaboration with the business side.

• Transitioned to the Scrum framework.

• It was tough, messy, and incredibly interesting.

• If you’re in a situation where everything is on fire — don’t give up. Step by step, you’ll get there. You’ve got this! 🚀

Thanks for reading.