A case study like no other. In this series of sessions at BoS Conference USA 2023 we deep dived into how Autobooks retooled their business and ask the question, “What Happens if Product, Sales & Marketing Work Together?” By focussing everything they did on the needs of their customers and helping them grow, they also grew faster, made their lives easier and changed the way they think about collaboration across the company. https://businessofsoftware.org/events/business-of-software-conference-usa-2023/how-autobooks-reinvented-itself-2/

1. Autobooks Product &
Engineering
LET’S GET BACK TO SHIPPING

2. Chris Spiek
Co-founded the Re-Wired Group
Formalized Jobs-to-be-Done with
Bob Moesta and Clay Christensen
Helped Facebook, Intercom,
Basecamp define product
strategy
Head of Product at Auth0
Chief Product Officer at
Autobooks

3. Business of Software 2013
3

4. Chris Spiek
Co-founded the Re-Wired Group
Formalized Jobs-to-be-Done with
Bob Moesta and Clay Christensen
Helped Facebook, Intercom,
Basecamp define product
strategy
Head of Product at Auth0
Chief Product Officer at
Autobooks

5. Justin Dickow Jobs-to-be-
Done practitioner since 2017
Previously Director of
Product and Head of
Engineering at The Tweddle
Group
Currently VP of Engineering
at Autobooks

6. 6

7. What do small business owners hire us to do?
7

8. Why aren’t we hitting the bullseye?
8

9. We shipped the
wireframe
9

10. How did we build this?
10

11. Assigned tasks
to engineers
Fixed scope +
variable time
Estimates
11
Assigned a project
to a team.
Fixed time +
variable scope
Appetites

12. The Experiment Worked
12

13. The Experiment Worked
13

14. The Pile Up
• The data shows we can
quadruple sign ups with a
simple UI change
• Our underwriting process
could easily be converting
500% its current rate with a
small change
• The drop off from sign up to
active users is 95%, we could
5x activation if we just
leverage data we already
have!
14

15. That's a legacy API you're talking
about changing, our new policy is to
port them over to the new
framework first. Add 4 weeks to your
appetite and we'll talk.

16. There are 30 different integrations
where we get that data depending
on the financial institution. This
project is a minefield of corner cases
that you haven't considered.

17. This is easy... first we just need to
finish rebuilding our CI/CD pipelines,
move everything to a managed
Kubernetes cluster, and finally
deprecate our custom feature
flagging for Launch Darkly

18. The Breakdown
• High emotion interactions
• Conversations about
problems, not solutions
• Every idea is a bad idea
• We're too busy
• You have more to figure
out before we will
commit to doing that
18

19. We had to figure out what was going on
19
• What is everyone
working on?
• Where is all this stuff
coming from?
• What does all this stuff
add up to?
• Who is making these
decisions?

20. It was working when engineers could focus on
big problems
20
• Engineering has their own
projects to address deeper
technical challenges and a
growing maintenance
burden
• There's high priority
technical work coming from
every direction

21. It was working when engineers could focus on
big problems
21
Aaand we're
drifting back to
scrum
• Engineering has their own
projects to address deeper
technical challenges and a
growing maintenance
burden
• There's high priority
technical work coming from
every direction

22. We need to produce an
input that engineering
could work with in this
new reality
22
We're a different business now

23. How we did it
(2 steps)

24. 1. Set the Appetite up front
24
• Product
frames the problem or
opportunity
• In v1 product shaped a
project and said "We have
a 6 week appetite for this"
• In v2 we're saying, "What
can we do in 6 weeks?"

25. 1. Set the Appetite up front
25
How do we know what we can do in 6 weeks?
• Product
frames the problem or
opportunity
• In v1 product shaped a
project and said "We have
a 6 week appetite for this"
• In v2 we're saying, "What
can we do in 6 weeks?"

26. 2. Dedicate a Senior Engineer to work alongside
product
26
• Progress happens
synchronously
• What are all of our options that
fit this appetite?
• Query the database
• Review the code

27. 2. Dedicate a Senior Engineer to work alongside
product
27
• Progress happens
synchronously
• What are all of our options that
fit this appetite?
• Query the database
• Review the code
The output is a project that
engineering can work on

28. 2. Dedicate a Senior Engineer to work alongside
product
28
• Progress happens
synchronously
• What are all of our options that
fit this appetite?
• Query the database
• Review the code
The outcome is that product
and engineering agree on a
path forward

29. There is hope.
It's time to
get un-stuck
and start
shipping
again
• Not hitting the mark?
o Assign a project to a dedicated team.
Use an appetite instead of an estimates.
Use fixed time and variable scope. They
need to deliver a house.
• Not shipping?
o Sr. Engineers dedicated to shaping the
next project with the product manager.
Find a shape that fits the appetite
together.
• Reach out for help
29

30. I joined Autobooks as a frontend
engineer, started immediately working
on a project that would help the
company grow. We shipped on time,
and I got a mention from our CEO and
applause at the next company all
hands meeting.

31. Let’s connect:
Thank You!
Chris Spiek - @chriscbs
Justin Dickow - @jujodi