How durable teams take you further, faster
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Slides from my talk at CTO Craft conference: https://conference.ctocraft.com/
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How durable teams take you further, faster
- 1. How durable teams take you further, faster Anna Shipman Technical Director, Financial Times
- 2. @annashipman
- 3. How durable teams take you further, faster Anna Shipman Technical Director, Financial Times
- 4. @annashipman 1.Why we moved to durable teams 2.How we did it 3.One year on, what we’ve learned I’m going to tell you
- 5. SOURCE The Financial Times is one of the world’s leading news organisations
- 7. Why we moved to durable teams
- 8. @annashipman I joined the FT in 2018
- 9. @annashipman The new site was great but there were a few problems with the way the teams worked
- 12. @annashipman Advantages to initiative-based teams —The team is focused on one goal
- 13. @annashipman Advantages to initiative-based teams —The team is focused on one goal —You can swarm on problems
- 14. @annashipman Advantages to initiative-based teams —The team is focused on one goal —You can swarm on problems —You don’t have to worry about legacy code – can move fast
- 15. @annashipman Initiative-based teams are good when launching a new product
- 16. @annashipman But there are downsides in a more mature product
- 17. @annashipman Downsides to initiative-based teams —Short-lived teams do not get a chance to perform really well
- 18. @annashipman Downsides to initiative-based teams —Short-lived teams do not get a chance to perform really well —Decisions are taken outside of the team
- 19. @annashipman Downsides to initiative-based teams —Short-lived teams do not get a chance to perform really well —Decisions are taken outside of the team – Admin overhead for me & reduced agency for team
- 20. @annashipman Downsides to initiative-based teams —The team is focused on one goal —Decisions are taken outside of the team – Admin overhead for me & reduced agency for team —Lack of technical ownership
- 22. @annashipman Small changes, maintenance, out of hours support?
- 23. @annashipman Lack of technical ownership is an operational risk you don’t know about yet
- 24. @annashipman Why don’t we have durable teams?
- 25. @annashipman Each team would be a multidisciplinary team that would own a whole domain
- 26. @annashipman The same teams would exist over time
- 27. @annashipman Teams would make strategic decisions about their domain Initiatives come from the team
- 28. @annashipman Between all our teams we would have full technical ownership of the estate
- 29. @annashipman Advantages we anticipated to durable teams —Teams making strategic decisions = more motivated people – and better product
- 30. @annashipman Advantages we anticipated to durable teams —Teams making strategic decisions = more motivated people – and better product —Long-term thinking is possible, allowing the team to work on bigger opportunities
- 31. @annashipman Advantages we anticipated to durable teams —Teams making strategic decisions = more motivated people – and better product —Long-term thinking is possible, allowing the team to work on bigger opportunities —Full technical ownership!
- 32. @annashipman Potential risks —Splitting the product could limit thinking about the opportunities
- 33. @annashipman Potential risks —Splitting the product could limit thinking about the opportunities —Handling work that falls across teams could be difficult
- 34. @annashipman On balance, it seemed like a good idea
- 35. How we moved to durable teams
- 36. SOURCE We worked out a first draft of domains @annashipmanPhoto by Paul Hanaoka on Unsplash
- 37. @annashipman We wrote a draft proposal
- 38. @annashipman
- 39. @annashipman We talked about it with the whole group (~75 people)
- 40. @annashipman This part took a few months
- 42. @annashipman We started with teams without much change
- 43. @annashipman We did it over three months
- 44. @annashipman We got it done just in time!
- 45. @annashipman
- 46. One year on, what we’ve learned
- 47. @annashipman Potential risks —Splitting the product could limit thinking about the opportunities
- 48. @annashipman Potential risks —Splitting the product could limit thinking about the opportunities We haven’t found this to be the case
- 49. @annashipman Potential risks —Splitting the product could limit thinking about the opportunities - We haven’t found this to be the case —Handling work that falls across teams could be difficult
- 50. @annashipman Potential risks —Splitting the product could limit thinking about the opportunities - We haven’t found this to be the case —Handling work that falls across teams could be difficult This has been difficult and we are working on it now
- 51. @annashipman There was an extra challenge we hadn’t anticipated
- 52. @annashipman Huge technical estate meant many teams were overloaded
- 53. @annashipman But this was a problem we already had, we just didn’t know the extent of it
- 54. @annashipman Addressing this is now our top priority
- 55. @annashipman My advice to you is think about ownership when you start building anything!
- 56. @annashipman On balance, it has been great
- 57. @annashipman Durable teams has worked really well —Teams are more empowered
- 58. @annashipman Durable teams has worked really well —Teams are more empowered —Decisions are being made by the people best-placed to make them
- 59. @annashipman Durable teams has worked really well —Teams are more empowered —Decisions are being made by the people best-placed to make them —Teams are taking full ownership of solving customers’ needs
- 60. @annashipman Durable teams has worked really well for us
- 62. @annashipman Think about ownership from the beginning of building anything
- 63. @annashipman Move decisions to those closest to the work
- 64. @annashipman Your team are your best asset, give them the power to be the best they can be
- 65. Thank you! Anna Shipman Technical Director, Financial Times
Editor's Notes
- Ft.com Component library Origami Upgrade - across entire technical estate 332 repos, 272 not assigned to teams I’m going to tell you how we solved that problem, and how we fixed that and other issues by moving to durable teams
- My name is Anna Shipman Customer Products We are responsible for the FT.com website and the iPhone and Android apps we are a team of about 75 of which about 55 are engineers
- The Financial Times is one of the world’s leading news organisations, recognised internationally for its authority, integrity and accuracy. I didn’t mention that it’s a newspaper, though it is, you may have seen it, the pink one But we now have many more digital readers and digital is hugely important to us We are behind a paywall We have 1m subscribers We recently had our highest ever traffic - when we covered the US election we had 19.6m page views
- The new FT.com site was launched in 2016 Microservices architecture Much faster than the previous site We A/B test all new features using a built-in A/B testing framework We can measure engagement and how likely subscribers are to stay with us or cancel
- For example, we decided we wanted to have podcasts on the site So we formed a podcasts team They spent around 8 months launching podcasts, and then disbanded to work on other initiatives
- I mentioned that the podcasts team had been disbanded Origami - I mentioned we had 272 repos that weren’t explicitly owned It didn’t mean that no-one knew about them but the fact was we didn’t know Some were well known But some of those were only known about only by people who had left the team or even the company You can see the potential problems this might cause with the Origimai upgrade
- Product Delivery Engineers Design User research Possibly data analytics
- Allowing team members to build up an expertise in that domain
- How we moved 8 minutes (7 mins to go)
- The diagram was really useful
- Meetings, 1:1, shared the doc
- Wanted people to be generally on board and have a chance to suggest improvements
- last handover meeting was Feb 24th, first day of working from home March 16th So glad wasn’t having to make an organisational change during what was a very stressful time
- As for the Origami upgrade I mentioned at the beginning Because we’d moved to durable teams and parcelled out the technical estate We were able to identify who would work on each bit And got the whole thing done in 3 weeks
- Platforms team now responsible for over 70 repos
- 11 minutes (4 mins to go)
- Teams are setting their own strategic direction Most teams put time into defining their mission and vision More meaningful to people on the team than a global mission or vision Those teams that did it decided to do this exercise themselves.
- Less decision-making outside the team - I am not constantly having to make decisions that I do not think should lie with me And the question of who should solve a particular problem, or who is best placed to decide what to do next is more obvious. We used to spend a lot of time on this part.
- For example the ads and privacy team had to deal with the recent legislation CCPA, California Consumer Privacy Act and they did part of the work by making changes to our CDN, Fastly, which previously they would not have felt confident doing because of lack of clear ownership and accountability.