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Artisinal Software Manufacturing

Artisinal Software Manufacturing

How to grow an engineering team without losing a culture of craft. Note that I ignored all of the speaker notes when giving the actual presentation.

Rafe Colburn

January 31, 2013
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  1. Artisanal Software
    Manufacturing
    (No metaphors were harmed in the creation of this
    presentation.)
    Friday, February 1, 13
    Growth inevitably encourages an industrial approach, how do we avoid losing craft in the
    process?

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  2. Let’s confront our
    preconceived notions
    Friday, February 1, 13

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  3. Handcrafted Treasures
    versus
    Mass Produced Crap
    Friday, February 1, 13
    Mass production is often equated with low quality

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  4. Friday, February 1, 13
    In America, this is what we think of when we think of mass production

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  5. Friday, February 1, 13
    The dollar store, tons of cheap junk at very affordable prices

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  6. Friday, February 1, 13
    Apple has sold over 100 million of these

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  7. Friday, February 1, 13
    Here’s a mass produced product people like

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  8. Friday, February 1, 13
    Handmade Japanese chef’s knife, $900 on Etsy
    http://www.etsy.com/listing/115201436/tsubaya-stainless-steel-powder-layer-16

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  9. Friday, February 1, 13
    LAX desk, $4350 on Etsy -- moss design in Chicago
    http://www.etsy.com/listing/101087003/reclaimed-mid-century-modern-wood-and

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  10. Friday, February 1, 13
    Cute, but ...

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  11. Friday, February 1, 13
    Expensive and hated

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  12. Craft and mass
    production are
    value-neutral
    Friday, February 1, 13

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  13. Craft maximizes the
    skill and creativity of
    the individual artisan
    Friday, February 1, 13

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  14. Mass production
    optimizes for
    predictability and
    repeatability
    Friday, February 1, 13
    Neither are without their downsides

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  15. Mass production can
    make us faceless
    drones
    Friday, February 1, 13

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  16. Friday, February 1, 13
    Most people don’t want their job to feel like this
    \

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  17. Heroism doesn’t scale
    Friday, February 1, 13

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  18. Friday, February 1, 13
    Anthony Bourdain in “Medium Raw”
    “Hire more people like Justo” is not a strategy

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  19. Friday, February 1, 13
    The elephant in the room: in software development we don’t make things over and over.
    Everything is “hand crafted.” Writing code is more like building factories than working in one

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  20. Software is both a set
    of instructions for a
    computer and a
    document written for
    other humans
    Friday, February 1, 13
    Here’s how I put software in this context

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  21. Industrial practices
    apply to the first
    purpose, craft applies
    to the second.
    Friday, February 1, 13

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  22. The question:
    How do we grow
    without forgetting
    about craft?
    Friday, February 1, 13

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  23. The formula
    (not perfected)
    Friday, February 1, 13
    Lots of industrial practices to create room for craftsmanship

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  24. Software development,
    the industrial parts
    Friday, February 1, 13
    1. process monitoring
    2. automation
    3. interchangeable parts

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  25. Process Monitoring:
    Throughput
    Friday, February 1, 13
    The fundamental engineering question is, have we built a system that supports Etsy’s
    throughput. From the right side of the graph, you can see the answer is “not always”

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  26. Process Monitoring:
    Performance
    Friday, February 1, 13
    Load time for the top 5 pages at etsy.com. You can’t optimize without measurement.

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  27. Process Monitoring:
    Exceptions
    Friday, February 1, 13
    Any industrial process seeks to minimize exceptions while acknowledging that they cannot
    be eliminated. We do the same thing in software.

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  28. Process Monitoring:
    A/B Tests
    Friday, February 1, 13
    Deciding what to try is craft, determining whether it worked is math

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  29. Automation:
    Developer setup
    Friday, February 1, 13
    Every developer has a virtual machine with their development environment set up and the
    Etsy code checked out on day one.

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  30. Automation:
    Continuous integration
    Friday, February 1, 13
    We use Hudson, like most everyone else. We have a very robust set of tests. Unit tests,
    functional tests, static analysis, and style checks.

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  31. Automation:
    Deployment
    Friday, February 1, 13
    Running pre-production tests and pushing to the pre-production environment requires one
    button push. Pushing to production requires another.

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  32. Interchangeable Parts
    Friday, February 1, 13
    At Etsy, our goal is to keep our stack simple so that developers can be interchangeable parts
    -- reducing the friction when moving between teams or projects. This pays dividends that I’ll
    talk about shortly

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  33. Software
    development,
    the crafty
    parts
    Friday, February 1, 13
    What do engineers at Etsy do to make code better for the other engineers?

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  34. Craftsmanship:
    Code reviews
    Friday, February 1, 13
    1. Developers learn by being reviewed
    2. Developers learn by reviewing
    3. Exposure to more code always helps
    4. People get accustomed to constructive criticism

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  35. Craftsmanship:
    Bootcamps
    Friday, February 1, 13
    1. New devs -- meet people, learn how teams work, see some code
    2. Developers enjoy it, ask to boot camp periodically
    3. Senior Boot Camps -- one month boot camp on your annual hire date
    4. SPOF insurance

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  36. Craftsmanship:
    Bootcamps
    Friday, February 1, 13
    1. New devs -- meet people, learn how teams work, see some code
    2. Developers enjoy it, ask to boot camp periodically
    3. Senior Boot Camps -- one month boot camp on your annual hire date
    4. SPOF insurance

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  37. Craftsmanship:
    Bootcamps
    Friday, February 1, 13
    1. New devs -- meet people, learn how teams work, see some code
    2. Developers enjoy it, ask to boot camp periodically
    3. Senior Boot Camps -- one month boot camp on your annual hire date
    4. SPOF insurance

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  38. Craftsmanship:
    Bug rotation
    Friday, February 1, 13
    1. Bugs on features not in active development are pooled
    2. Several developers are on bug rotation every day
    3. Goal is to get people to work with new people and work on new code
    4. Teams can focus on new projects rather than on their bug queue

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  39. Craftsmanship:
    Code readers
    Friday, February 1, 13
    1. One person selects code, not necessarily from Etsy
    2. Just like a book club, everyone reads it
    3. We have a discussion
    4. We build some consensus around “good code”

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  40. The counterfactual?
    Friday, February 1, 13
    Scaling up process rather than automation

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  41. Friday, February 1, 13
    It’s inevitable that your company feels more and more like this as it grows

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  42. Friday, February 1, 13
    You want your developers to feel like this

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  43. Measure everything
    that can be quantified
    Friday, February 1, 13

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  44. Automate any process
    that doesn’t involve
    craftsmanship
    Friday, February 1, 13

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  45. Use the time you save
    to spread the values of
    craft through your
    organization
    Friday, February 1, 13

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  46. Thanks!
    codeascraft.etsy.com
    follow me on twitter: @rafeco
    Friday, February 1, 13

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