How a fast-moving B2B team eliminated the friction between engineering and everyone else
Gordian's engineers used to spend 30% of their time fielding small asks from commercial, partners, and internal teams. Pebble handles them in real time — so engineering stays focused and async loops close on their own.
Gordian Software builds infrastructure for the travel industry, operating at the intersection of complex B2B systems and a relentlessly moving market. Kevin, who leads engineering, runs a lean team where developer attention is the most valuable resource they have — and the thing most likely to get pulled in five directions at once.
The constant drain wasn't the big projects. It was everything else: the small asks from commercial, the questions from partners, the issues that are important but clearly don't need an engineer to own them — which took up 30% of his time. That's where Pebble came in.
The async team finally has an async tool
Gordian's commercial team operates in Europe. Their engineers are in the US. Time zone gaps used to mean questions sat unanswered for hours, blocking customers and creating a bottleneck that only engineering could clear. Now the Slack integration handles those questions in real time. Customers get answers faster, and engineers don't come in to a queue.
Using Slack as the interface, which is how we run as an async company, being able to plug into the loop there — it's a pretty frictionless interaction.
Non-technical teammates became self-sufficient
A finance team member, not plugged into the engineering world, started asking questions in a Slack channel. Pebble answered them. No ticket created, no engineer interrupted. For Kevin, the signal is in the time saved — especially for non-technical teammates.
That used to be 30% of my time. These small things — commercial person needs this, partner needs this — it's gated by engineering. Now that friction point is removed for most of those.
Five tasks handed off, five tasks done
The most consistent value Kevin describes is simple: he writes ten tasks, picks the five that need engineers, and hands the rest to Pebble. What used to sit in the backlog now moves in parallel. The two-minute-to-write ticket becomes a PR ready to review, without anyone watching it happen.
Code reviews are faster, async loops are tighter, and the team has taken on work they previously would have deferred. Kevin describes Pebble as "baseline" — something the team would feel immediately if it disappeared.
What Pebble is doing today, that's our baseline. We'd be feeling it if that went away.
