Bugs, tribes and clearer skies The epic story of Skyscanner’s service desk

Michael Hall Business Tools Team Lead

Skyscanner

Laura Haines Senior Project Manager

Skyscanner

Sarah Khogyani Product Marketing Manager

Atlassian

T H E T R I BA L O R G

B U G R E P O R T I N G

R E WA R D P R O G R A M S

B E T T E R TO G E T H E R

Skyscanner compares millions of flights to find you the cheapest deal, fast. They also compare and find the cheapest hotels and car rental for your next trip.

40 million users per month 30 different languages available Thousands of results per second #1 flight search engine in Europe 700 employees 9 global offices

Skyscanner: Quick facts

9 offices around the world!

Scaling development

Scaling the company

1. Improve service while growing the company 2. Increase product development speed while

maintaining a highly available service

Needed to achieve two things:

Tribes

Squad

Squad

Squad

The autonomous squad

•Acts as a mini-startup •Chooses its own tools •Self-organizing •Has everything they need to execute

Squads at SkyscannerGlobal Availability Performance Business Tools

Hotels Flights

Going agileGlobal Availability Performance Business Tools

Hotels Flights

T H E T R I BA L O R G

B U G R E P O R T I N G

R E WA R D P R O G R A M S

B E T T E R TO G E T H E R

We synchronized engineering, but we needed a way to bring in the rest of the company, even the

non-technical staff.

After JIRA

How did staff raise tickets?

After JIRA

• Break regularly • Not scalable • Too many hops between systems • Portal not user-friendly • No visibility on tickets

Old Service Desk

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Staff had a hard time reporting issues

Goodbye Cherwell, Hello JIRA Service Desk

•Missed issues •Poor adoption •No visibility or reporting •Misfiled tickets

Before JIRA Service Desk

•Staff love to use it •Easy triaging •Better visibility •Reporting on issues

After JIRA Service Desk

T H E T R I BA L O R G

B U G R E P O R T I N G

R E WA R D P R O G R A M S

B E T T E R TO G E T H E R

How we created a feedback-driven culture

•Encourage product usage •Beta releases for employees •Make it easy to give feedback

Skyscanner’s customer portal

Skyscanner’s customer portal

•Changing and adding fields •Customizing descriptions •Continuous improvement

Customer portal features we like

Service desk queue

Service desk queue

•Customizable queues •Adapts to how our teams work

Queue features we like

Reporting with JIRA dashboards

Which service desk has the most tickets?

How much time is spent in each status?

What is everyone’s workload?

How many issues resolved vs. created?

Ticket triaging

•Devs can see details in one place •Devs can work it into their backlog

Benefits of triaging in JIRA

Service experience

End-user updates

•Get email updates •Updated when problems are fixed •Understand their impact on product improvement

Our end-users benefit, too!

Skyscanner service desk results

700 happy employees using

JIRA Service Desk

Have we resolved more bugs?!

Difficulty seeing metricsNo reliable information Painful customizations

The old way The new way

Z z

Reporting is easyCustomizable

Flexible

Comparing numbers is hard..

1,650 tickets a month

94% resolved

Results across the company

We can now focus on individuals and interactions and are no longer limited by tools

We are more focused on improving software, rather than documentation

We improved collaboration across squads to make sure we are accomplishing the same goal

We can now respond to change and continuously improve going forward

T H E T R I BA L O R G

B U G R E P O R T I N G

R E WA R D P R O G R A M S

B E T T E R TO G E T H E R

“Bug of the Week” ProgramAWARD REQUIREMENT

Sticker 1

Lanyard 2

T-shirt 4

Hoodie 5

Gift Voucher (£25) 7

Gift Voucher (£50) 10

Gift Voucher (£100) 12

+1 Week Annual Leave 15

REPRODUCABLE

WELL-DOCUMENTED

Our team

Skytrek Missions

Book a flight for a summer trip, passing through 3+ airports, include as many legs as you wish

and try using multiple devices

Skytrek MissionsRANK PRIZE

Ensign Lanyard

Lieutenant Laptop sticker

Lieutenant Commander Laptop sticker

Commander Laptop sticker

Captain T-shirt

Commodore Hoodie

Vice Admiral £50 gift voucher

Admiral £100 gift voucher

Fleet Admiral +1 week shore leave

Key takeaways

•Grow while staying agile •Open up collaboration •Enable a feedback-driven culture •Focus on improving products

JIRA Service Desk allowed Skyscanner to:

Our team

Learn more

Follow us on Twitter! @JIRAServiceDesk