Ask HN: Developer Workload and Company/Team Disorder – How Do You Manage It?

Context: Just joined a handful of developers newly minted as a dev team, but has existed and grown over time.

Situation:

  > Staff from different buisness units wandering in and asking for scripts
  > Occasional multi-month long projects crop up
  > No defined lead dev or seniority
  > Management and ordering of projects is completely informal and only exists in peoples heads.
  > Mutliple languages, bunch of VMs on and off site
  > Attempted a JIRA board to document and manage workload across the team once before but was abandoned after a while
  > Misunderstanding exists in the buisness of what the dev team is capable of, and that you cannot sell something before asking if it is even possible

Questions:

  >> How can some structure be brought to the team?
  >> Is there simple software or workflow for managing incoming projects and scripts in a way we can see the whole picture and order things?
  >> How can structure and order be brought to a team when the mentality is 'just get it done fast'
  >> How can other parts of the buisness be brought to understand us / communicate with us better when everything seems to be done informally