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.

Transcript

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
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13. Craft maximizes the
    skill and creativity of
    the individual artisan
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14. Mass production
    optimizes for
    predictability and
    repeatability
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    Neither are without their downsides
    

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15. Mass production can
    make us faceless
    drones
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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
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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.
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22. The question:
    How do we grow
    without forgetting
    about craft?
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23. The formula
    (not perfected)
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    Lots of industrial practices to create room for craftsmanship
    

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

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25. Process Monitoring:
    Throughput
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    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
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    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
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    Deciding what to try is craft, determining whether it worked is math
    

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29. Automation:
    Developer setup
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    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
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    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
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    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
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    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
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    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
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    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?
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    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
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44. Automate any process
    that doesn’t involve
    craftsmanship
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45. Use the time you save
    to spread the values of
    craft through your
    organization
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46. Thanks!
    codeascraft.etsy.com
    follow me on twitter: @rafeco
    Friday, February 1, 13
    

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