Sharethrough's process evolution

Evolution of Sharethrough’s Product Process

From 2008 to 2013

The Sharethrough PlatformPowering Advertising For the Modern Web

Sharethrough supports all types of digital content

Distributing your content in the “newsfeeds" of the Modern Web

Year Methodology # of Engineers # of Product # of UX

2008 “Cowboy” 3 0 0

2009 Agile Scrum 4-5 * 1 0

2010 DIY XP 3 1 1*

2011 Pivotal XP 3-5 1 0

2012 Pivotal XP 5-8 2 1

2013 Agile XP 10 2 1

* Includes contractors

Our Methodologies Over the Years

I’m cracking on some code at Sharethrough’s first office located on 650 Mission St. At the time of this picture, the company was only 5 people. !Picture was taken in March 2008.

Year 1 “Cowboy’ing it”

1st Phase of Vision Build Cycle 1

2nd Phase of Vision Build Cycle 2

Year 1 - “Cowboy’ing it”In Theory

1st Vision Build Cycle 1

2nd Vision

3rd Vision. . .

nth Vision

Year 1 - “Cowboy’ing it”In Reality

Frequency

Visioning/Roadmap Daily

Iteration Planning None

Daily Planning Sporadic

Feedback None

Stability/Predictability None

Business 3

Engineers 3

Year 1 - “Cowboy’ing it”

Schedule(Day$1$ Day$2$ Day$3$ Day$4$ Day$5$• Daily(Scrum(• Sprint(Planning((1(hr)(

• Daily(Scrum( • Daily(Scrum( • Daily(Scrum( • Daily(Scrum(

Day(6( Day(7( Day(8( Day(9( Day(10(

• Daily(Scrum(• Backlog(Grooming((1(hr)(

• Daily(Scrum( • Daily(Scrum( • Daily(Scrum( • Daily(Scrum(• Sprint(Demo((15(min)(• Sprint(RetrospecCve((1(hr)(

Scrum$Master$•  Burn(Down(Charts(•  Remove(Impediments(

Delivery$Team$•  EsCmates(of(Work(Remaining(

Product$Owner$•  Looking(Ahead(w/(Business(•  Adding(stories(&(acceptance(criteria(

Daily(Roles(

After hours of reading, attending Scrum school, I summarized all my learnings in a series of slides to the entire company (a whooping 8 people). This a slide taken from presentation given on April 24, 2009.

Year 2 Agile Scrum

Year 2 - Agile Scrum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(software_development)

24 hrs

2 weeks

Database/Backend

Frontend

Testing

Deployment

Year 2 - Agile ScrumIn Theory

Database/Backend

Frontend

Testing

Deployment

Year 2 - Agile ScrumIn Reality

Frequency

Visioning/Roadmap Daily

Iteration Planning Every 2 Weeks

Daily Planning Daily

Feedback Weekly Sprint Demo & Weekly Retro’s

Stability/Predictability Average

Business 3

Product 1

Engineers 5

Year 2 - Agile Scrum

After getting tired of everyone throwing features over the wall to part of the stack, we started trying out XP. !Here are two pictures that represent our short lived Kanban board (I don’t think post cards ever ended up on this board) and one of our first 5 Why’s.

Year 3 DIY XP

Testing

Full-Stack

Deployment

Year 3 - DIY XPIn Theory

Testing

Full-Stack Development

Deployment

TDD without experience slowed productivity down and made deployment extremely brittle

In Reality

Year 3 - DIY XP

Frequency

Visioning/Roadmap Monthly



Feedback Weekly Sprint Demo & Weekly Retro’s

Stability/Predictability Low

Business 3

Product 1

Engineers 3

Year 3 - DIY XP

In our new offices on Jackson St with our early pairing stations. This was toward the end of our engagement with Pivotal as 3 Pivots came back with us to ramp the team “down”.

Year 4 “Pivotal XP”

Pivotal Tracker

Pivotal Tracker

Pivotal Tracker

User Stories

Pivotal Tracker

Test

Code RefactorPair Up

Year 4 - Pivotal XPIn Theory

Year 4 - Pivotal XPIn Reality

Pivotal Tracker

Pivotal Tracker

Pivotal Tracker

User Stories

Pivotal Tracker

Test

Code RefactorPair Up

With the right discipline this methodology worked for us.

Frequency

Visioning/Roadmap Every 3 Months

Iteration Planning Every Week


Feedback Weekly Retro’s

Stability/Predictability High

Business 10 Product

1

Engineers 5

Year 4 - Pivotal XP

A former Shaethrough Product Manager presents Mission Control to key business stakeholders.

Year 5 Balanced Team Experiment

Year 5 - Balanced Team Experiment

Year 5 - Balanced Team ExperimentMission Control

Year 5 - Balanced Team ExperimentStakeholder Meeting - Identifying “Problems”

User Stories

Eng PM

UX XP Process

Year 5 - Balanced Team ExperimentIn Theory

Design Studio


User Stories

Eng

PM

UX

XP Process

Design Studio

In Reality

Frequency

Visioning/Roadmap Every Week

Iteration Planning Every Week


Feedback Weekly Retro’s


Business 50

Engineers 8

Product 2

Design 1


Pictured here are our two information radiators. The one on top of our quarterly roadmap with stories cards under each milestone. While the one on bottom represents one teams current sprint commitment.

Year 6 (aka Now)

Agile XP

Year 6 (aka Now) - Agile XP

Epics

Roadmap Review

EpicsEpicsEpics

Roadmap

Milestone Meeting

Milestone Planning

Epics

Story Cards

Story Cards w/

Dod

Story Cards

Spikes

Spike Learnings

Execs

Dir of PMVP of Eng

Inputs

Outputs

2 Eng

PMUX

Customer

Business Request

2 Eng

PMUX

Epics

Cust Dev Cust DevLearnings


Inputs

Outputs

Frontend

PM

UX

Backend

Dev Ops

Systems

EpicsEpicsEpics

Roadmap

Sprint Planning

EpicsEpicsEpics

Sprint Radiator

Story Cards w/

Dod

Frontend

PM

UX

Backend

Dev Ops

Systems

2 Week Commit

Story Cards w/

Dod

Product Features

Frequency

Visioning/Roadmap Every 2 Weeks



Feedback Retro’s Every 2 Weeks Demos Every Week


Business 80

Engineers 12

Product 2

Design 1


Processes Evolve with the Business

You can’t expect a process that works at 3 people, work when the

organization is also 80 people. !

The process needs to change as the business needs change.

Culture of Change

Create a culture for process change from the start. Enact

process change very swiftly but with very detailed plans.

No Process is Perfect

Every process will have it’s inefficiencies, it’s all about what

is best for your business and where you want spend the time resolving those inefficiencies.

Retrospectives are an essential element to successfully evolve a

team’s process.

Six Years and Six Processes4 Key Learnings and Take-Aways

Retros are a Must1 2 3 4

Thank you.@robfan

@robslifka

Sharethrough's process evolution

Technology

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