Organising BlaBlaTech @ Lean IT Summit

This is the story of Christian and Nicolas, two Tech Managers at BlaBlaTech, who shaped the engineering team of the highly successful ridesharing startup. The team has grown from one single French five-person team to a dozen distributed and fully agile teams with 30+ people in only two years. Their main responsibility?

Building and scaling the development team by constantly improving
engineering processes, integrating and training new talents, and anticipating tomorrow’s organization. Their challenges? Delivering the same level of quality software and services in an ever-growing business where customer feedback is instantaneous and shared all over the web.

Transcript

1. BlaBlaCar
   BlaBlaTech
   @
   8 October 2015
   

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2. Organising
   BlaBlaTech
   8 October 2015
   BlaBlaCar
   

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3. What it’s not about
   ● Not about fundraising
   ● Not about going to new markets
   ● Not about the story from the founders
   

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4. Christian
   Jennewein
   Nicolas
   Tricot
   @cestcri
   https://github.com/cestcri
   @sholine42
   https://github.com/sholine
   

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5. BlaBlaWhat?
   

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6. 30€ 30€
   120 €
   30€ 30€
   

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7. 30€ 30€
   120 €
   30€ 30€
   

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8. 20M
   15M
   10M
   5M
   2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
   20 million
   members in 2015
   

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9. ...in 19 countries
   

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10. ...with 14 offices
    

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12. Build the biggest
    international transportation
    network
    

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13. From BlaBlaCar to
    BlaBlaTech
    

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14. BlaBlaTech missions
    + Experts...
    

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15. BlaBlaTech culture
    

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16. Internal hackathons
    

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17. Loving beer
    

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18. Common set of values
    

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19. Common set of values
    

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20. Common set of values
    

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21. Common set of values
    

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22. Common set of values
    

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23. Common set of values
    

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25. Warsaw
    Bucharest
    Paris
    People
    

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26. Servers
    

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27. Case study
    

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28. Being Lean by nature!
    ● From the very beginning
    ○ Iterative product development
    ○ business-hypothesis-driven
    ○ validated learning
    ● True startup spirit
    ● Tech & product share one table
    

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29. No real idea about lean,
    we just did it
    

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32. Hyper-growth at BlaBlaCar
    

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33. How to stay efficient?
    

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34. How to handle a growing team?
    Let’s try scrum, it’s cool
    (what we did instead: stand-ups only…)
    

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36. Scrum implementation
    ● Lack of knowledge
    ● Lack of legitimacy
    ● No added value
    ● No leader
    

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37. ● Introducing notions of agility
    ● Preparing the next steps
    Fail? Learn!
    

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38. Privilege member requests
    

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41. Obtain knowledge + legitimacy
    ● had to prepare the transition
    ● met external lean coach with philosophy
    ● but we needed tools & structure
    

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42. “Brainstormed in June,
    applied in July”
    

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43. Change requires time + preparation
    ● Sell scrum internally
    ● Break resistance to change
    ● Define + communicate the new rules
    ● Onboard product team
    

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44. Mr. Scrum, tear down this wall
    tech product
    

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45. Scrum by the book
    ● Split tasks into small units
    ● Iterations & feedback loops
    ○ Sprints of 1 or 2 weeks
    ● Quick newbie integration
    ● Coaching vs. directing
    

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46. ScrumGuide says...
    ScrumGuide says...
    TURN LEFT NOW!
    TURN LEFT NOW!
    

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50. Integrating remote teams
    ● Faster growth difficult only in Paris
    ● We integrate 5 remote developers
    ● Shift all communication to English
    ● Generate face time
    ● Have a dedicated scrum master & PO
    

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51. Fully data driven
    

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52. PINK
    DB
    ADMIN
    OPS
    INFRA
    DEVOPS
    WHITE
    DEV
    ARCHI
    DATA
    RED
    BLUE
    GREEN
    YELLOW
    PURPLE
    ORANGE
    

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54. The age of maturity
    

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56. The teams liked it
    Worse than before
    

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57. The management liked it
    ● Organisation copes with team growth
    ● Stay productive
    ● Maintain high visibility
    ● Allow for responsibility & commitment
    

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58. Becoming agile: it works!
    ● Another good reason to join
    ● Clarify the roles
    ● Small and efficient teams
    ● Self-assigning tasks
    

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59. The dark side
    

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60. Some problems...
    ● (too much) focus on tickets, lack of big picture
    ● One big remote team working together
    ● Perception of being controlled by metrics
    ● Rigid sprints vs. prod issues vs. roadmap
    

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63. Quarterly roadmap
    prioritisation by founders
    and monitoring of progress
    

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64. Kanban without knowing it...
    More scrumban than scrum…
    ● Continuous delivery
    ● Limited work in progress
    ● Sprint backlog challenged by
    new demands
    

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65. Full kanban
    “Scrum does not
    suit all teams”
    ● More flexibility regarding the backlog
    ● No need for micro-project management
    ● Less time wasted in ceremonies
    

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66. Member voice team
    

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67. Going fully international
    ● Our choice Warsaw, Poland
    ● Strong Tech community
    ● Few pure players
    ● Existing BlaBlaOffice
    ● Developers integrated in existing teams
    

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68. It’s time to evolve further
    Why?
    ● Founders cannot define whole roadmap
    ● Developers became more executors than actors
    How?
    ● Assign missions not tasks
    

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69. Testing a project-oriented team
    + one big feature for one ephemeral team
    + all the required skills inside the team
    + high commitment
    - solution not from the team
    - need for skill group sync
    

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70. Testing a goal-oriented team
    + all the required skills inside the team
    + high commitment
    + solution defined by the team
    - need for skill group sync
    - ???
    

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73. Future evolutions?
    ● Founders focus on vision, mission & goals
    ● Having more goal-oriented teams
    ● Define & organise skill groups
    

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74. Build
    

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75. Measure
    

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76. Learn
    

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77. Repeat
    

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78. Build
    

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79. Measure
    

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80. Learn
    

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81. Repeat
    

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82. Build
    

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83. Measure
    

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84. Learn
    

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85. Repeat
    

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86. Build. Measure. Learn. Repeat.
    Questions?
    

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