Sendy Logistics: Fulfilment Platform Scale-Up
This case study documents how Sendy, a high-growth African logistics platform, redesigned its delivery model to scale fulfilment capabilities across multiple markets — moving from fragmented, project-based delivery to a live Agile Release Train operating with a four-week average time-to-market.
Strategic Pressure
Sendy was scaling rapidly across African markets, operating in a highly competitive logistics environment where speed, reliability, and operational efficiency directly impacted revenue and customer trust.
As expansion accelerated, delivery complexity increased across fulfilment, payments, partner integration, ERP, and tracking platforms. The organisation faced a familiar scale-up challenge:
Growth in demand was outpacing the organisation’s ability to deliver change predictably.
The constraint was not technology or talent — it was how delivery was structured.
Problem
Delivery was constrained by project-centric execution and functional silos.
Teams were organised around components and functions rather than outcomes, creating:
- Fragmented ownership across fulfilment and supporting platforms
- Sequential handoffs between teams, slowing delivery
- Inconsistent ways of working and tooling across the organisation
- Limited predictability at portfolio and leadership level
As Sendy expanded into new markets, these constraints compounded — increasing delivery risk while reducing confidence in roadmap commitments.
This was not an execution issue. It was a structural delivery problem.
My Accountability
I was accountable for designing and launching a scalable delivery operating model aligned to how value flows through Sendy’s fulfilment ecosystem.
This included:
- Defining a value-stream-aligned delivery model
- Designing and launching Sendy’s first Agile Release Train (ART)
- Establishing SAFe-aligned practices, adapted for a startup context
- Supporting talent acquisition and onboarding for key Agile roles
- Implementing Jira Cloud, configured to support Programme and Team execution
- Creating a delivery system capable of scaling across eight African markets
The accountability spanned organisation, people, process, and tooling.
Intervention
The intervention focused on structural change over ceremonial agility.
Delivery Constraint: The Agile Release Train was designed, staffed, tooled, and launched within a fixed six-week window, covering talent acquisition, environment baselining, and PI readiness — achieved without pausing product delivery.
Value Stream Alignment
Fulfilment was treated as an end-to-end operational value stream, with teams aligned to outcomes rather than systems or functions.
ART Design & Launch
A single ART was established spanning fulfilment, payments, partners, ERP, platform, and SRE — replacing short-lived project teams with long-lived, outcome-owned teams.
Pragmatic SAFe Adoption
SAFe practices were introduced selectively to support cadence, prioritisation, and predictability, without introducing unnecessary overhead.
Tooling as an Enabler
Jira Cloud was implemented and configured to support Programme-level visibility, flow-based reporting, and PI execution — creating a single source of truth across teams and markets.
Capability Enablement
Coaching and onboarding focused on embedding internal capability rather than creating long-term dependency on external support.
The result was a live delivery engine, not a theoretical operating model.
Outcomes
- ART operational within six weeks, including hiring, tooling, and baseline assessment.
- Four-week average time-to-market, replacing inconsistent delivery cycles.
- Delivery aligned across eight African markets.
- Improved predictability and clarity of ownership across fulfilment systems.
- Reduced delivery friction, enabling confident roadmap commitments.
Most importantly, Sendy moved from scaling through effort to scaling through design.
Supporting Material
Supporting artefacts produced during the engagement included:
- Fulfilment Operational Value Stream maps
- Target delivery and team topology design
- ART cadence and governance model
- Jira Cloud configuration aligned to Programme execution
- A short product video demonstrating offline B2X payments is available for contextual reference.
These materials informed the live transformation and remain applicable as Sendy continues to scale.