62% fewer flaky failures in 28 days

How we helped a European SaaS company reclaim ~220 engineer hours per quarter

Client Overview

Company

European B2B SaaS company with 45 engineers across 3 teams

CI System

GitHub Actions with 2,400+ pipelines per week across multiple repositories

The Problem

High flaky failure rate: 28% of all pipeline failures were flaky
Engineer time waste: 15-20 minutes per flaky failure for triage and reruns
Release delays: Critical features blocked by unreliable CI
Team frustration: Engineers losing confidence in CI system
Cost impact: Estimated £180k+ annual waste on flaky failures

Baseline Metrics (Pre-Intervention)

28%

Flaky Failure Rate

2,400

Pipelines per Week

672

Flaky Failures per Week

Our Approach

Week 1: Foundation

Installed read-only monitoring agent
Established baseline metrics and readiness index
Deployed PASS/WARN/FAIL gates on all PRs
Identified and quarantined top 5 flaky test patterns

Week 2: Fingerprinting

Fingerprinted recurring failure patterns
Expanded quarantine rules for noisy test suites
Implemented auto-rerun policies for known flakies
Started team coaching on flaky test patterns

Week 3: Fixes

Delivered 15 targeted fixes via pull requests
Removed flaky patterns from critical paths
Tightened WARN gates on protected branches
Updated signatures based on fresh telemetry

Week 4: Handover

Moved to PASS/FAIL gating on main branch
Delivered all scripts, dashboards, and playbooks
Confirmed 62% FFR reduction achieved
Established 90-day maintenance plan

Results After 28 Days

62%

Reduction in Flaky Failures

11%

New Flaky Failure Rate

220

Engineer Hours Reclaimed/Quarter

Business Impact

Time Savings

~220 engineer hours per quarter reclaimed
15-minute average triage time eliminated per flaky failure
Faster feature delivery with reliable CI
Reduced context switching for engineers

Cost Savings

£110k+ annual cost reduction
ROI of 8.5x on Sprint investment
Reduced infrastructure costs from fewer reruns
Improved team productivity and morale

Client Testimonial

"UnflakeOps delivered exactly what they promised. We went from 28% flaky failures to 11% in just 28 days. The team is more productive, releases are more reliable, and we've reclaimed hundreds of engineer hours. The ROI was immediate."

— CTO, European SaaS Company

What They Kept

Monitoring dashboards: Real-time flaky failure tracking
Automated scripts: Fingerprinting and quarantine management
Gate configurations: PASS/WARN/FAIL rules for all branches
Team playbooks: SOPs for handling flaky failures
Maintenance plan: 90-day roadmap for continued improvement