facebook and scrum

Facebook and Scrum

Scrum Breakfast Zürich 06.07.2011

Jens Meydam (Twi/er: @jmeydam) Swiss Limited WIP Society

h/p://www.limitedwipsociety.ch/

… sequel to:

h/p://www.limitedwipsociety.ch/en/case-‐study.html

Don Reinertsen

h/p://www.scrum-‐breakfast.com/2011/07/lean-‐business-‐lunch-‐with-‐don-‐reinertson.html

Sources on Facebook

Facebook

h/p://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-‐Xr_PJdNmQ

Facebook

h/p://www.businessinsider.com/chart-‐of-‐the-‐day-‐facebook-‐vs-‐the-‐rest-‐of-‐the-‐web-‐2011-‐6

Facebook

h/p://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.151210881613324.38273.105215052879574

Facebook

h/p://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=469716398919

Facebook

Facebook and Scrum (1)

The Short Version

What is Scrum?

“Scrum is the process that is defined in the Scrum Guide. If the process is not rigorously followed, the result should not be called Scrum.”

Evidence for Scrum at Facebook

“11:30 on a Wednesday morning and the Facebook Profile team is in the middle of a ‘Scrum’ - …

Evidence for Scrum at Facebook

… that’s what they call these daily meetings when engineers, designers and data experts meet to set out the tasks for the day.”

Dec 2010: New Facebook Profile

The Profile team – Daily Scrum

h/p://www.ame.com/ame/video/player/0,32068,712448402001_2037228,00.html

The Profile team – Daily Scrum

The Profile team – Product Designer

The Profile team – Data Experts

The Profile team – Product Manager

The Profile team – Engineering Manager

Summary

As of July 2011, there is one documented example of a Facebook team that uses a Scrum pracMce (Daily Scrum).

It is not clear to what extent they follow the Scrum Guide.

(End of short version)

Facebook and Scrum (2)

The Longer Version

What’s programming got to do with rugby???

Rugby as a metaphor for a style of development

h/p://hbr.org/1986/01/the-‐new-‐new-‐product-‐development-‐game/ar/1

Rugby as a metaphor for a style of development

From Takeuchi and Nonaka’s paper

•  The tradiaonal sequenaal or "relay race" approach to product development [...] may conflict with the goals of maximum speed and flexibility. Instead, a holisMc or "rugby" approach -‐ where a team tries to go the distance as a unit, passing the ball back and forth -‐ may be/er serve today's compeaave requirements.


•  [...] the product development process emerges from the constant interacaon of a hand-‐picked, mulMdisciplinary team whose members work together from start to finish. Rather than moving in defined, highly structured stages, the process is born out of the team members' interplay [...].


•  [...] the team may be forced to reconsider a decision as a result of later informaMon. The team does not stop then, but engages in iteraMve experimentaMon. This goes on in even the latest phases of the development process.


•  Top management kicks off the development process by signaling a broad goal or a general strategic direcMon. It rarely hands out a clear-‐cut new product concept or a specific work plan. But it offers a project team a wide measure of freedom and also establishes extremely challenging goals.


•  Fuji-‐Xerox located the mulMfuncMonal team building the fX-‐3500 -‐ consisang of members from the planning, design, producaon, sales, distribuaon, and evaluaaon departments -‐ in one large room.


•  The self-‐organizing character of the team produces a unique dynamic or rhythm. [...] they all must work toward synchronizing their pace to meet deadlines. [...] the team begins to work as a unit.


•  Because members of the project team stay in close touch with outside sources of informaMon, they can respond quickly to changing market condiaons. Team members engage in a conMnual process of trial and error to narrow down the number of alternaMves they must consider.


•  They also acquire broad knowledge and diverse skills, which help them create a versaMle team capable of solving an array of problems fast.


•  Although project teams are largely on their own, they are not uncontrolled. Management establishes enough checkpoints to prevent instability, ambiguity, and tension from turning into chaos.

Scrum is at its core what Takeuchi and Nonaka described

comp.client-‐server / Sep 14, 1995

First paper on Scrum (OOPSLA’95)

h/p://assets.scrumfoundaaon.com/downloads/2/scrumpapers.pdf?1285932052

Scrum in sopware development started with these three people

Jeff Sutherland John Scumniotales Jeff McKenna

Sopware Magazine / Nov, 1993

h/p://findaracles.com/p/aracles/mi_m0SMG/is_n16_v13/ai_14635699/

Announcement of first release InfoWorld / Feb 21, 1994

h/p://books.google.com/books?id=BzsEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA19&dq=%22easel+preps+development+tool%22

Announcement of second release InfoWorld / Aug 29, 1994

h/p://books.google.com/books?id=jjgEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA30&dq=%22easel+to+ship+object+oriented+tools%22

The product is sall under acave development

h/p://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/main/products/products-‐objectstudio/

Achievements

•  The first sopware Scrum team did not only produce sopware fast

•  It created highly innovaMve features that defined a product for years to come

Fun fact

•  Scrum is the only Agile process/methodology/framework with roots in product development

•  All the others came out of internal projects or consulang projects

Back to Facebook …

Thesis:

While there is li\le or no evidence for “prescripMve Scrum” at Facebook, there are striking parallels to Scrum as described by Takeuchi and Nonaka.

This may be called a variant of Scrum, just as Jeff Sutherland referred to the process used on the Borland project as a variant of Scrum.

Julie Zhuo, Product Design Manager

h/p://www.zurb.com/aracle/515/podcast-‐of-‐julie-‐zhuos-‐talk-‐on-‐how-‐facebo

Julie Zhuo

We believe in really small teams, so, you know, we have, at this point in time, like, a team for Search, a team for Newsfeed, a team for the Profile, a team for, you know, ads, and generally, those teams are pretty tiny.

Julie Zhuo

Like, we have generally one PM, one designer, who is responsible for the whole feature or even a vertical, in some instances, we have a handful of engineers and …

Julie Zhuo

… as much as we can, we like to, you know, have everyone work together but keep sort of a tight-knit kind of community so that each team can sort of feel like it's one small company in and of itself.

Julie Zhuo

So I'm a designer, I actually manage half of the product design team, and right now the product design team is about eighteen people.

Julie Zhuo

… the way that we think of product design at Facebook is it's!-  you know, some companies have a segmentation of like, visual designer, interface designer, design strategy –!and for us it's really just one role …

Julie Zhuo

... and traditionally we've also tried to hire really technical designers and people who can go into the codebase and, you know, write up the front-end …

Julie Zhuo

… or at least have some familiarity with the front-end layer so they don't have to sort of go in, you know, always ask an engineer to tweak something by five pixels.

Adam Mosseri, Product Design Manager

h/p://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKZiXAFeBeY

Adam Mosseri

Org Charts

h/p://www.bonkersworld.net/wp-‐content/uploads/2011/06/2011.06.27_organizaaonal_charts.png

(Chief) Product Owner: Mark Zuckerberg

h/p://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfN1YaYdgRg

Mike Schroepfer, Vice President of Engineering

h/p://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/nov/22/facebook-‐developer-‐life-‐inside

Mike Schroepfer

How many projects do you have going at once?

It's hard to tell, because we have them running all the ame, but they might be just a singe person or two. The answer I guess would be somewhere between several dozen to 100 at once.

Mike Schroepfer

How do you know if they're running to plan? The big problem as organisa=ons like Google or Microso@ get larger is keeping what they're doing synchronised.

Well, intuiMon is what gives us the ideas for what to do, and data tells us if we're ge_ng it right. We iterate to find out if a project's doing it right. Or you might make something live and then you look at whether people are using it frequently, or whether they use it once and don't come back.

If they don't come back then we probably didn't get it right. It's a constant process of iteraMon. The longer it gets before you get in data from the outcome, the worse it's going to be if it's not right.

Mike Schroepfer

As companies get bigger, they face the problem of decisions having to flow up and down management, and inevitably things ossify -‐ it's been like that for Microso@, and there are signs of it at Google. Is there a way to avoid that at Facebook?

(laughs) Yes, we don't have the layers of management approval! We don't pass things up and down the chain. The team working on the product development makes the decisions. If there's a problem or if they think it merits it then they will talk to Mark [Zuckerberg] directly.

We try to do a good job of se_ng out the context of the task and release people to get on and do it.

People are pushing new features and code to the site every day. It's really about trying to remove barriers and reduce fricMon in development.

HipHop Team


Facebook Video Team (Hackathon)

h/p://vimeo.com/6220145

So what do you think?

Thesis:

While there is li\le or no evidence for “prescripMve Scrum” at Facebook, there are striking parallels to Scrum as described by Takeuchi and Nonaka.

This may be called a variant of Scrum, just as Jeff Sutherland referred to the process used on the Borland project as a variant of Scrum.

Finding suitable abstracaons

Roles

•  Mark Zuckerberg as (Chief) Product Owner •  Role of product managers and teams

•  Hackathons as a way for developers to get their ideas on the “Backlog”

•  Role of project managers and engineering managers

Organizaaonal pa/erns (Jim Coplien)

•  Community of Trust •  Unity of Purpose •  Holisac Diversity •  Few Roles •  Producers in the Middle

•  …

Flow principles (Don Reinertsen)

•  The Principle of Mission •  The Principle of Peer-‐Level Coordinaaon •  The Principle of Regeneraave Iniaaave •  The Principle of Face-‐to-‐Face Communicaaon

•  The Principle of Colocaaon •  The Trust Principle •  ... (see h/p://www.limitedwipsociety.ch/en/case-‐study.html)

Forces shaping Facebook’s culture

•  How would you organize development if your engineers were themselves users of your product?

•  How would you organize development if your team got realame feedback from actual users?

THANK YOU!

Supplementary Material

Joe Kinsella’s retrospecave

h/p://www.hightechinthehub.com/2010/10/8-‐lessons-‐from-‐the-‐first-‐scrum-‐team/


The team grew over the years, but never during my Mme exceeded 6-‐8 people. For a while we had Mike Morris from our San Diego office, Dave Hoag from Easel consulang, and Jeff McKenna, an external object oriented consultant. We also had several developers from a Danish consulang firm working with us. But throughout the Mme, we maintained a moMvated and high performance team with a real passion for the crah of sohware engineering.


Eight Lessons


#1: Work With Integrated Cross FuncMonal Teams #2: Engage in Constant CommunicaMon #3: ConMnuously Demonstrate Your Product #4: Hire ConMnuous Learners #5: Work Directly With Customers #6: Invest in Code ConsolidaMon #7: Create Mentoring OpportuniMes #8: Build Social Bonds


#1: Work With Integrated Cross FuncMonal Teams

The Easel team was a Mghtly knit group that included development, quality assurance, and product management. One day our product manager, Don Roedner, took me aside to tell me how different this was from his previous experience. The Mght cross funcMonal integraMon allowed for a more rapid product development process, increased agility, and eliminated the need for more formal communicaaon.

HipHop


facebook and scrum

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