There's a lot to unpack here, but I'll focus on #2, specifically the client dependency. My approach is to assign projects to teams with members who can work on

There's a lot to unpack here, but I'll focus on #2, specifically the client dependency. My approach is to assign projects to teams with members who can work on both the client and server layers so that the question is less of client blocking on server and more of client and server working together. In addition, I like an "API first" approach, which in this case means building the signature of the API functions (e.g with mock data) before finishing the implementation. That is: client is still blocked on server to define the API, but they are not blocked on implementing the API and client works closely enough with server (or is able to do both) such that they aren't blocked on the definition. As always, many software problems devolve into people problems once you stare at them hard enough.