Moving developers across tech stacks in agile teams - capacity planning challenges

Backend
1

Need advice on a tricky situation with our development team structure.

We have 10 developers total - 6 working on frontend stuff and 4 on backend. Our sprints are 2 weeks long. The product owner comes from our client company while the rest of us work for a different organization.

Here’s the problem: our PO keeps changing priorities all the time and sometimes gives us work that isn’t properly planned out right before sprint planning starts. This created a big workload imbalance where backend has way more tasks than frontend.

The client wants to move 4 frontend people to backend work for several weeks. They think it’s simple math - if frontend averages 60 story points per sprint (10 per developer), then moving 4 people should give backend an extra 40 points per sprint.

This seems unrealistic to me. Having 4 experienced backend devs plus 4 newcomers who don’t know backend tech feels like a recipe for trouble. I managed to get them to lower their expectations a bit but I’m worried about other issues.

What risks am I missing here? Any suggestions for handling this transition better? As the senior backend person I have some influence over how we approach this.

2

i get what ur saying about the PO! pushing back on those changes is crucial. totally agree, moving devs isn’t gonna solve the real issues. what kind of support do ur new backend devs get to ramp up? curious how ur onboarding works!

3

ur totally right about the wall hit! mentoring’s gonna take time and slow things down. pairing might help speed up the learning process instead of just pushing them into the deep end. keep an eye on the backlog too!

4

Your client’s velocity calculation is completely wrong - it ignores knowledge transfer overhead and how different the domains are. I’ve seen developers switching stacks run at 30-40% efficiency their first month while they’re learning new frameworks, databases, and architecture patterns. Plus your backend team won’t be productive either since they’ll be mentoring instead of working on complex stuff. I’d suggest moving one frontend dev at a time so you can do proper knowledge transfer without killing your backend capacity. Document your processes and create learning materials first. Most importantly, track actual velocity during the switch so you can show your client the real impact and reset their expectations.