I joined an agency where decisions about who would work on what were made verbally. It showed: deadlines were guesses, deliveries slipped, and some clients no longer believed we would make it next time.
Together with the COO I built the processes from scratch. We moved allocation into a spreadsheet and started reviewing it regularly, prioritising projects and tracking their profitability. At the same time I was leading around six projects of different sizes and coordinating people across design, backend, frontend and testing.
The spreadsheet was never the point. The point was to get information flowing through the company, so that everyone knew what they would be working on next month and a deadline rested on something firmer than hope. Once that started working, deadlines became more realistic and we were able to meet them.
I left behind a financial forecast one to three months ahead, a clearer organisational structure and teams that had moved from a weaker ticketing system to Jira. We made the decision to switch together, and I led it on the technical side, including setup and training. Above all, client trust came back after a run of late deliveries had eroded it.