Scaling Mobile at REA CTO Summit

As REA's technology capability has grown to over 500 people across many teams, its mobile development capability has been largely centralised in a few teams. In a world where almost every new product needs a presence in our mobile apps, we've been making changes to allow us to build for mobile at scale.

In this talk, Prasanna and Stewart will address some of the challenges faced as we've scaled, that are accentuated when building mobile apps as opposed to web. We'll share REA's experience meeting these challenges by moving away from a single mobile team to a federated model where mobile development happens across many teams. That model required a new approach to the architecture of both our mobile apps and their companion APIs.

Transcript

1. SCALING MOBILE PRASANNA GOPALAKRISHNAN @PRASANNAG STEWART GLEADOW @STEWGLEADOW
2. SCALING MOBILE OUTLINE • SCALING MOBILE • FEDERATED DELIVERY • MOBILE ARCHITECTURE • TIPS
3. ~8 MILLION DOWNLOADS
4. APP & WEB USAGE 2012 - 2018
5. SCALING MOBILE PEOPLE & SYSTEMS GROWTH
6. MOBILE TEAM
7. MOBILE TEAM
8. NATIVE APP WEB VIEW WEB VIEW WEB VIEW WEB VIEW
9. SCALING MOBILE
10. FEDERATED DELIVERY
11. FEDERATED DELIVERY
12. SEARCH RESULTS NEW DEVELOPMENTS INDIVIDUAL APARTMENTS SURROUNDING SUBURBS NOTIFICATIONS COLLECTIONS PROPERTIES MAP VIEW PROPERTY SHOWCASE ADVERTISEMENTS
13. MOBILE ARCHITECTURE
14. SCALING MOBILE ARCHITECTURE GOALS • Support all federated teams in contributing to key areas of the apps • Federated teams should be able to focus on their content, not on the infrastructure • Similar ways of contributing across iOS and Android
15. SEARCH RESULTS LISTING SUBURB SPONSORSHIP BANNER ADS NATIVE ADS NO EXACT MATCHES CARD SURROUNDING SUBURBS CARD NEW DEVELOPMENTS INDIVIDUAL APARTMENTS Residential Media Core New homes REGISTERING TO PROVIDE CONTENT
16. MOBILE COMPANION API
17. SEARCH RESULTS LISTING SUBURB SPONSORSHIP BANNER ADS NATIVE ADS NO EXACT MATCHES SURROUNDING SUBURBS DIVIDER NEW DEVELOPMENTS INDIVIDUAL APARTMENTS Residential Media Core New Homes
18. SCALING MOBILE MOBILE COMPANION API ▸ Engineers don’t talk about contract anymore. Only talk about domain modelling. ▸ One-fourth the size of JSON response ▸ Protocol buffers
19. DYNAMIC CONTENT
20. REUSE
22. SEARCH RESULTS LISTING SUBURB SPONSORSHIP BANNER ADS NATIVE ADS NO EXACT MATCHES SURROUNDING SUBURBS DIVIDER LOB 1 LOB 2 CORE NEW DEVELOPMENTS INDIVIDUAL APARTMENTS New Homes COMMONUI
24. BEYOND SEARCH RESULTS
25. SEARCH RESULTS LISTING SUBURB SPONSORSHIP BANNER ADS NATIVE ADS NO EXACT MATCHES SURROUNDING SUBURBS DIVIDER Residential Media Core NEW DEVELOPMENTS INDIVIDUAL APARTMENTS New Homes COMMONUI UNIVERSAL LIST
26. MOBILE TEAM MOBILE TEAM MOBILE TEAM MOBILE TEAM BEFORE
27. AFTER RESIDENTIAL MEDIA RESIDENTIAL NEW HOMES
28. Core Residential Team Commercial MOBILE AT REA (2016)
29. Commercial Core Value Value Customer MOBILE AT REA (2018) Residential “federated teams”
30. Construct Kit Locke Real Pay Shipper Treasure Map The next product…
31. SCALING MOBILE TIPS ▸ Identify the right time to scale ▸ Build trust between teams and business units ▸ Invest in documentation and training ▸ Requires alignment of product and UX, not just tech
32. SCALING MOBILE PRASANNA GOPALAKRISHNAN @PRASANNAG STEWART GLEADOW @STEWGLEADOW