skype agile - past, present and future
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Skype Agilehistory, present and future plans
2012 © Skype.
AgileDays Alek Kozlov March 2012
Product portfolio – core proposition
2012 © Skype. Slide 2
Skype-to-Skype voice
Skype-to-Skype video
Messaging File andscreen sharing
Paid offerings
2012 © Skype. Slide 3
Call landlinesand mobiles
Group video calling
Skype WiFi
Online number SMS Call forwarding/ Caller ID
Context
2012 © Skype. Slide 4
Numbers• ca 25% of 2011 all phone calls by telegeography
• will grow 48% per year (twice as much as all telecos in world)
• http://www.webpronews.com/telegeography-skype-international-calls-2012-01
• 35 million users concurrently using Skype at peak times (March 2012)
• 200 million connected users per month (March 2012)
2012 © Skype. Slide 5
Context
Twitter - #ILoveSkype
Organization• 6 dev sites and ca 50 products (with product candidates)
• ca 500 in engineering org – WE ARE HIRING!!!
• Ask me or please visit jobs.skype.com
• ca 1000 ppl in total
• Game name – „Buy/Sell Skype“
• eBay, Silverlake (begining of Agile era), Microsoft
• Living through „Transition programs“
• „Consultant“ syndromes
• „Every new consultant knows what is wrong with Skype“, „They are coming, AGAIN, to "fix us"!"
2012 © Skype. Slide 6
Context
Skype AgileWhy, How, What
2012 © Skype. Slide 7
Why Skype went agile
Situation (2010)
• Optimized around team
• Ad hoc engineering practices – lack of discipline
• No common taxonomy
• Knowledge sharing was missing
• As a result - a lot of waste
2012 © Skype. Slide 8
Why
Business Goals
• Shorter delivery cadence
• Be able to scale the product
• Reduse cost and risk
• Show business value of the purchase
How – the strategy
• Initiated by Silverlake (at that moment the main Owners of the Skype )
• Consultancy agencies was deeply involved
• Organizational transition program (so called "OPUS") was prepared and executed
2012 © Skype. Slide 9
How
„Top-Down Push“ of Agile/Scrum
What – the transition program „OPUS“• New org structure and roles was prepared
• agile transition execution
• Organization for driving and supporting the change was created
• For driving the engineering org change after OPUS ended
2012 © Skype. Slide 10
What
Product team concept
2012 © Skype. Slide 11
What
Product Team
Product Management organization
Product Manager
Analyst
Pixel perfect
desinger
UXdesigner
Design organization
ProductEngineering
Manager
Engineers
Product Engineering Management organization
Quality Engineeri
Organization
QualityEngineers
Skype Product Organization Skype Engineering Organization
Training program was rolled-out• Certified Scrum Master
• Certified Scrum Product Owner
• Scrum Team Member
• Intro to Scrum
• Cross products planning and delivery
2012 © Skype. Slide 12
What
Engineering Lifecycle (Lifestyle) and Services• Initial goal - Engineering Excellence
• Higher Velocity
• Higer Quality
• Splits into
• Engineering tools development and support (services) organization
• Engineering Lifecycle
2012 © Skype. Slide 13
What
Engineering tools organization• Jira – GreenHopper
• Centralized CI and build system infrastructure
• Quickbuild, Nexus, SVN
• ca 250 servers and counting
• Build agents is a major contributor to the number
• March 2012 – 1 million builds
2012 © Skype. Slide 14
What
Engineering Lifecycle organization• Agile practices and knowledge
• Agile Maturity Model
2012 © Skype. Slide 15
What
Agile Maturity Model (framework)• 3 Levels - each 11 YES/NO topics and 4 process metrics
• "Set of common sense„
• Incentives
• Level 1
• "If you breathing, you are good enough" to meet L1 – eg „One backlog for the product“
• Expected to get in 4 months after MM was introduced
• Level 2
• Harder to achieve – eg „centrilized CI in use“, „current +2 more sprints are estimated“
• Team were expected to get there in 8 months after L1 and L2 was introduced
2012 © Skype. Slide 16
What
Current stateGood, Bad, Ugly
2012 © Skype. Slide 17
Good• Transitioning „Everything at once“
• Vocabulary and common language for the whole company is in place
• Product Managers:
• We are doing much more features than did ever before
• At least 6 releases per year (previously – at the best once a year)
• Maturity framework
• As a reflecting, thinking and focusing tool
2012 © Skype. Slide 18
Current state
Bad• Need for coaching support were understood only after transition started
• People doing the practices but don't understand principles
• Some people feel that they were „opused“/pushed into this change
2012 © Skype. Slide 19
Current state
Ugly• Transitioning „Everything at once“
• Lessons learned: Preparation should be more thorough
• A lot of „agile leaders“ who thinks that they know what to do
• But they don’t know
• Even agile coaches were guilty in this sin
• Product management on portfolio level is a big challenge
• too hard to manage dependencies - we still need to discover the way how to do this well
• Product Quality
• Technical debt and cutting the corners (in push to deliver)
2012 © Skype. Slide 20
Current state
Next steps
2012 © Skype. Slide 21
Building the right product and engineering excellence
•Transitioning from push to pull
•Sustainable development
•Continuous delivery• Mass „hallucination“, but we believe that achievable
2012 © Skype. Slide 22
Nextsteps
Thank you!
Questions?
2012 © Skype. Slide 23