Scaling Engineering at BlaBlaCar @ InfoShare Gdansk 2016

BlaBlaCar is growing fast, so is its Tech department. We face huge challenges, and huge growth. This will be the story of how we got where we are (100+ tech people by May 2016) and what we did to keep the team efficient and happy.

Transcript

1. Scaling
   Engineering
   @
   

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2. @cestcri
   Christian Jennewein
   Head of Engineering
   github.com/cestcri
   linkedin.com/in/christianjennewein
   

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3. My story is about …
   a case study, 1 video & 18 animated GIFs
   ● 2012 - today
   ● 3
   ○ Fails
   ○ Learnings
   ○ successes
   

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4. BlaBlaCar?!
   

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6. CASE STUDY
   

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7. 2012 - today
   

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9. Perfect world
   2012
   

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11. Growing team = growing challenges
    2013
    

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13. Reaching & plateauing at cruising altitude
    2014
    

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15. Next reorganisation: needed, planned, implemented
    2015
    

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17. Autonomy scales
    2016
    

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18. 3 fails
    3 learnings
    3 successes
    

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19. 3 fails
    

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20. Weary scrum teams
    

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21. Weary scrum teams
    Declining productivity & team morale
    

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22. Language barrier
    

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23. Language barrier
    How to get people to understand each other?
    

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24. Innovation days
    

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25. Innovation days
    How to ensure constant renewal?
    

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26. 3 learnings
    

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27. Distance
    

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28. Distance
    Reduce it as much as possible
    

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29. The right people
    

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30. The right people
    Keep expectations & entry barrier high
    

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31. Chapters & Guilds
    

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32. Chapters & Guilds
    How to sync dispatched experts?
    

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33. 3 successes
    

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34. Team culture
    

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35. Team culture
    Define, live & spread
    

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36. Agile coaches
    

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37. Agile coaches
    Building a team of dedicated, full-time coaches
    

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38. Need of a second engineering hub
    Geographic
    scaling
    

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39. How to keep the team growing?
    Geographic
    scaling
    

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40. To summarise …
    

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41. We build
    

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42. We measure
    

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43. We learn
    

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44. We repeat
    

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45. We build.
    We measure.
    We learn.
    We repeat.
    

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46. Thank you :)
    Questions ?
    

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