achieving growth through software agility
TRANSCRIPT
Achieving Growth Through Software AgilityTechnology Growth Lessons - CTO Summit 11/2014 Jim Chou CTO Shutterstock
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A Global Marketplace for Imagery
3
Shutterstock is a Global Marketplace for Imagery
With Multiple Rapidly Growing Brands
43 million images 2 million video clips 1 million user accounts 60,000 contributors 150 countries, 20 languages Headquartered in NYC Offices in Amsterdam, Berlin, Chicago, Denver, London, Paris, San Francisco 480 employees 21% adjust EBITDA margin
Revenue
Key Facts
2010 2011 2012 2013
$83
$120
$170
$236
42% CAGR
High Growth Leads to
Scalability Challenges…
Can’t hire fast enough (technology resources)
Need faster pace of innovation
Every business unit wants their project done
Balancing legacy code with future architecture
Recruiting - having cool technology problems to solve
Maintaining a high degree of up-time while code base is constantly updated
From Business From Within Tech
Growth Challenges in Technology
Proprietary and Confidential
A few things we learned along the way
9 Lessons to Share
PO
Service Owner/Technical Owner
Architect/Principal Engineer
Software Development Egr.
Software DevelopmentEngineer in Testing
Site ReliabilityEngineer
Product Owner
Designer
Technical Project Manager
Data Scientist
Security Engineer
TL
Arch
SDE
SDET
SRE
PO
UX
TPM
Data
SEC
...TL UX
•Defined roles and responsibilities •Self contained with necessary skills •Team decides how to accomplish
What’s the same in Agile practices:
•Startup culture permeates all •Team mission •Measure by metrics - not what was done •Recruiting for talent - people that we can
learn from
What’s different:
5-10 people
Stakeholders
Team Mission
incr
ease
rev
enue
drive retention
drive engagement
Lesson #1: Have a Differentiated Agile Cross Functional Team
Product Teams: Websites, Mobile, Etc…
Core Technology & ServicesTeams: Data, Apps, Backend, Common Shared Services
Infrastructure Global Tech Ops; Centralize for cost efficiency and scalability
Speed Customer Focus
$$$ / Efficiency
Organize Into Clusters that Balance Customer Focus & Efficiency
Video Music Enterprise Skillfeed
BigStockOffset
API Dev Value Licensing CRM
Data Content Identity Commerce
Shutter CloudSRE Operations
Data Centers
Mobile
WebDAM
Contributor
• Minimize date driven delivery • Don’t dictate solutions
• Minimize going up the flag pole • Ask for a fully baked plan with
tasks and estimates
Don’t:•Articulate what “problem” you
want to solve. •Articulate business drivers: what
results are needed / metrics to impact
•Celebrate success and learn from failure
Do:
Lesson #2: Educate Business on How to Be an Agile Stake-holder
•Co-location is best for teamwork
•Remove offices: everyone on the in the open
•Use rooms as pop-in shared space
•Support remote collaboration through
Hangout across multiple offices
•Roving robots for remote engineers; iPad
FaceTime
Lesson #3 : Create an Active Collaborative Work Environment
Giving everyone access to information they desire - begin with an assumption everything is open for sharing
Access to revenue financials
Access to user data & metrics
Team meetings; Open calendar
Company wide weekly updates - stream and saved videos online
Access to customer research - interviews
Recorded TechTalks
Lesson #4: Democratize Information Sharing
• Quarterly • Opportunities assessment • EPIC (rocks planning) - debate, prioritize, align • Review - how did the team do? time spent, etc
• Bi-weekly • KPI metrics review • Backlog review
• 2 week sprints •backlog maintenance •sprint planning •design/build/deploy •sprint demo •retro
Lesson #5: Establishing a Cadence Through Agile
2014
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
2015
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
2016
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
STRATEGY
Initiative Initiative Initiative Initiative
Initiative Initiative Initiative Initiative
S1 S2 S3 S4Q1 Sprints
Assess Opportunity
Evaluate Success
Metric reviews
And Connect / Trace Every Sprint to Company Strategy
Focus on sizable efforts with measurable impact
•How • Team collaborate with stake-holder in determining what
gets done
• Generally two rocks each quarter in each team
• Prioritize based on ability in moving the needle
• KPI metrics in revenue, engagement, technology plan or
company strategy
• Shared goals across all members
• Fully transparent across all
Debate & Prioritize Your Precious Resources to Biggest Impact - Think Rocks & Pebbles
Contributors
• Stakeholders • Goals • Metrics
Priority 1
• Stakeholders • Goals • Metrics
Priority 2
• Stakeholders • Goals • Metrics
Stretch
• Additional objectives
On Deck
Mobile
• Stakeholders • Goals • Metrics
Priority 1
• Stakeholders • Goals • Metrics
Priority 2
• Stakeholders • Goals • Metrics
Stretch
• Additional objectives
On Deck
Footage
• Stakeholders • Goals • Metrics
Priority 1
• Stakeholders • Goals • Metrics
Priority 2
• Stakeholders • Goals • Metrics
Stretch
• Additional objectives
On Deck
BigStock
• Stakeholders • Goals • Metrics
Priority 1
• Stakeholders • Goals • Metrics
Priority 2
• Stakeholders • Goals • Metrics
Stretch
• Additional objectives
On Deck
Etc…
• … • … • …
…
• … • … • …
…
• … • … • …
…
• …
…
Product:
Top Priority
Low Priority
Make a Roadmap
Qualitative - Customer research / interviews
Quantitative - User behaviors data analytics
MVP mindset; light planning over full detailed plan
A/B testing Shutterstock Labs
Test features in lower traffic sites
Lesson #6: Foster An Experimentation Mindset And Data-driven Decision Making
Example: Data Analytics on Ebola Images Users are Downloading
ActivityTop Content Trends
ebola
ActivityTop Content Trends
Example: Trending in Ebola related images & Downloads Activities
ActivityTop Content Trends
nov
50
100
150
200
250
dec jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct
Retrospective •What went well (Wins), what
could have been improved (Losses) -> action plan
Post Mortem •Issues occur - something happened •Don’t let it go •Get down to root cause -> action plan
Share Learnings Broadly
Lesson #7: Importance of Retrospective & Post-mortem
Shutterstock Labs Long range planning Code rage Hacks
Innovation showcases
HackathonTalk to peers / community
Prototyping
External Technology Innovation
Patent applications Detached new business - Skillfeed, offset
Partner with customers
Discretionary innovation budget
Lesson #8 - Create a Pipeline of Innovation
•Entire company
•Mix it up
•Make it the most talk
about event
•Identify passionate
people to push idea to
production
Hackathon: Shutterstock Way
http://vimeo.com/82037581
•Incubate ideas - start with a couple
•Start small - put small team on it - build
prototype
•Use ODesk, use DesignCrowd, etc
•Treated as a startup with separate area
•Allow new tech stack - e.g. Ruby Rail
Heroku - all external
•Build and test - validate the market and
product concept
•Scale with investments - similar to VC
fund by stage or milestone
•Expect to pivot from customer learning
Incubate Ideas
Validate Fund Scale
Lesson #9: Seed New Ideas Into Multi-Million Dollar Businesses
