Dealing with multiple teams in a product development organization is always a challenge. I would like to share with you a live case study about how we switched from a traditional R&D structure into a small product oriented start-up’s teams. These are some of the challenges we had to deal with: How to brake a single product development team into small pieces while keeping autonomy and productivity? How to use technical guilds to maintain a high technical level, personal development and collaboration between the “distributed” development team? How to create a culture, based on developer accountability even without a direct manager around? How to maintain high developers utilization in a small heterogenous feature team (iOS, Android, Web, Infrastructure)? How we use release trains model for lean development in cross mobile platforms world and, what is our strategy for continuous delivery implementation. I invite you to hear our personal experience about growing from a small start-up, to a middle size development organization. I invite you to hear how we maintained our developer happiness, start-up culture, productivity and giving each team members the ability to affect the product development (in both product and technical aspects).

1. Scaling Up Your
R&D Group
Avi Wortzel

2. Hello!I’m Avi
- Love technology, architecture,
development, and methodologies
- Also coaching, mentoring and training
developers and leaders
- Member of Como’s founding team
- VP R&D @ Como
Avi.wortzel@como.com
@wortzel
Avi Wortzel

3. Como
➜ Do-it-yourself mobile app solution
➜ Cross-platform solution (iOS, Android, Web)
➜ Powering more than 1 million apps around the
world, with thousands of new apps created
every day

5. Flat Structure (Starting Out)
Product Designer WebWeb InfraInfra
iOS /
Web
Android /
Web
Web QA
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

6. Small Teams
Product
Designer
Web
Web Infra
Infra
iOS /
Web
Android /
Web
WebQA
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

7. Small (Fragmented) Teams
Product
Designer
Web
Web Infra
Infra
iOS /
Web
Android /
Web
Web
QA
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

8. Large Teams
Leader
Dev
Dev
Dev
Dev
Dev
Leader
Dev
Dev
Dev
Dev
Dev
Leader
Dev
Dev
Dev
Dev
Dev
Leader
Dev
Dev
Dev
Dev
Dev
Leader
Dev
Dev
Dev
Dev
Dev
Leader
Product
Product
Product
Product
Product
Leader
Designer
Designer
Designer
Designer
Designer
Leader
QA
QA
QA
QA
QA
Web Infra iOS Design QAProductWeb AppAndroid
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

9. What went
wrong?

10. Challenge #1: Time to Market
Product
Designer
iOS
Android
Web App
CP
Infra

11. Challenge #2: Dependencies
Product
Designer
iOS
Android
Infra
CP
Web App

12. Challenge #3: Product Ownership
?

13. Challenge #4: Product Accountability
Motivation
Feeling like part of the product
Participating in product brainstorm sessions
Product contribution of developers who live the mobile native world

14. Challenge #5: Recruitment
HTML5
JS
CSS3
Ruby
C#
iOS/Objective-C
Android/Java
Ruby
PHP
C#
DB
RESTful/SOA
HTML5
JS
CSS3
ASP.NET/MVC
HTML5
JS
CSS3
Android
Java
iOS
Objective-C

15. How do
you scale up?

16. Goals
➜ Rapid development/high productivity
➜ High utilization
➜ Developer ownership (new
features/maintenance)
➜ Product contribution (everyone can influence)
➜ Easy implementation
➜ Focus on personal development
➜ Scalable

17. Component Team
➜ Responsible for only part of a
customer-centric feature
➜ Focus on single specialization
➜ Clear individual responsibilities
➜ High utilization
➜ Delivery based on the slowest team
➜ High dependencies between teams

18. Component Team
Component
Team
Rapid
Development
High Utilization
Developer
Ownership
Product
Contribution
Easy
Implementation
Personal
Development
Scalable

19. ➜ Temporary group created for one feature
➜ Resource pooling model
➜ End-to-end responsibility (new features)
➜ Hard to maintenance
Feature Group

20. Feature Group
Component
Team
Feature Group
Rapid
Development
High Utilization
Developer
Ownership
Product
Contribution
Easy
Implementation
Personal
Development
Scalable

21. Feature Owner: Feature Group on Steroids
➜ Full-stack developers
➜ End-to-end responsibility
➜ High utilization
➜ Minimal integrations

22. Feature Owner
Component
Team
Feature Group
Feature
Owner
Rapid
Development
High Utilization
Developer
Ownership
Product
Contribution
Easy
Implementation
Personal
Development
Scalable

23. Feature Team
➜ Long lived team
➜ All relevant skills in one place
➜ Cross-functional/component/discipline
➜ Focus on the product
➜ Shared team responsibilities
➜ Utilization challenge

24. Feature Group
Component
Team
Feature Group
Feature
Owner
Feature Team
Rapid
Development
High Utilization
Developer
Ownership
Product
Contribution
Easy to
Implementation
Personal
Development
Scalable

25. What is the best
structure for
you?

26. ➜ Basic unit of development (like a Scrum team)
➜ Experts on product area (a mini startup)
➜ Have a long-term mission
➜ Sit together
➜ Have all the skills
➜ Autonomous as possible
Squad

27. PO
Design
Infra
Android
iOS
Web
Squad #0
Designer
Designer
Designer
Design
PO
PO
Po
Product
Squad
Infra
Infra
Infra
Infra
QA
QA
QA
QA
iOS
iOS
iOS
iOS
Android
Android
Android
Android
QA

28. Tribe
➜ Collection of squads that work in related areas
(up to 100 people)
➜ Regular informal get-togethers to share what
working on, demos, etc.

29. Tribe
PO
Designer
Infra
Android
iOS
Web
Squad #0
QA
PO
Designer
Infra
Android
iOS
Web
Squad #1
QA
PO
Designer
Infra
Android
iOS
Web
Squad #2
QA
PO
Designer
Infra
Android
iOS
Web
Squad #1
QA
PO
Designer
Infra
Android
iOS
Web
Squad #2
QA
PO
Designer
Infra
Android
iOS
Web
Squad #3
QA
PO
Designer
Infra
Android
iOS
Web
Squad #0
QA
Tribe #0 Tribe #1

30. Guild
➜ Small family of people having similar skills
➜ Some examples are the Web Technology guild,
the iOS guild, and the Product guild
➜ Guild lead is line manager for the Guild
members, responsible for developing people, but
remains part of squad and does day-to-day work
➜ Switching squads flexibility

31. Guild
PO
Designer
Infra
Android
iOS
Web
Squad #0
QA
PO
Designer
Infra
Android
iOS
Web
Squad #1
QA
PO
Designer
Infra
Android
iOS
Web
Squad #2
QA
Tribe #0
Android Guild
Design Guild

32. Additional Roles
➜ Product owner (PO)
➜ Scrum master / Agile coach
➜ System architect
➜ System owner

33. Squad
Guild lead Squad member
Squad member
Squad member
Product owner
Guild lead
Guild lead
How
How
How
Wha
t

34. How did we
implement it?

35. Breaking the Product
➜ Categorized the product
➜ Built the entire systems
graph
➜ Reorganized to related
product areas

36. Breaking the Product
SDK
Commerce
Squad
Applications
Squad
ClientWebsite
Marketing site
Blog
Campaigns
Onboarding
App editor
Payment
Retention
Management
Growth
Client Framework Squad

37. Breaking the Product

38. Building the Squads
➜ Define name, long-term mission and KPI’s per
squad
➜ Categorized required skills in each squad and
assign people into the squads
➜ Splitting the team leader role
➜ Build the system owner list

39. PO /
Designer
Infra
iOS
Web
Squad members
e-Commerce Squad
QA
Mission: provide a solution for SMBs to sell
their products via their mobile app
Short-term goals:
- Integration with Shopify
- Additional payment providers: Google Wallet
and Apple Pay
KPIs: increase #transactions by x%
Android

41. Sitting Together
Developers
PO Designer
QA

42. Everyone Has an Influence
➜ Product:
- Brainstorming - with stakeholders
- Grooming meetings
➜ Technology stack:
- Autonomy within the squad
- Guild supports

43. Release Train
B
A
D
C
E
F
G F C
➜ (Closest) CD in mobile world
➜ Preplanned schedule
➜ Every few weeks
(Depends on the product)

44. “Guilday”
➜ 1 day every 2 weeks (10% of the time)
➜ Don’t work on the usual squad tasks
➜ Share knowledge, tools, code, and practices
➜ Training developers
➜ Innovation ideas
➜ Open source projects
➜ Keynote session

45. Lean the Structure
➜ Guild backlog
➜ Full-stack developer training
➜ Moving developers between squads
➜ Transparency culture
➜ Loosely coupled systems

46. Existing Tribe Structure
Marketing Funnel Manage & Growth Application Commerce Client Framework
Edo
Yosef
Olga
Yaky
Vered
Eyal
Nir E.
Nir N.
Tammy
TBH
Rami
Oron
Maor B.
Haim
TBH
Alexey
Ehud
Ran
Stas
Yossi
Tal
Mati
Roei
Ofir
Yoav
TBH
Maor H.
Yoni G.
Oriel
Reuven
TBH
Michael
Shlomi
Evgeny
TBH
Yury
Lital Lior Oren
Darya
Erez
Eylon Ruth
Gil
Shiri Raanan
Avital
Alex
Dotan
Noa Deby Hila Adi
Tamar
Automation
Irmi
Matan
Itai
TBH
Tamar

47. Leftovers
➜ Developer measurements in matrix org.
➜ Code coupling
➜ Cross-squad tasks

48. Squads - Final Score
Component
Team
Feature Group
Feature
Owner
Feature Team Squads
Rapid
Development
High Utilization
Developer
Ownership
Product
Contribution
Easy
Implementation
Personal
Development
Scalable

49. Thanks!
Any questions?
Avi.wortzel@como.com
@wortzel
Avi Wortzel
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