www.techsylvania.com

1. Moving Fast
at Scale
Randy Shoup
@randyshoup

2. Background
@randyshoup

3. Moving Fast at Scale
•Culture
•Organization
•Practices

4. Moving Fast at Scale
•Culture
•Organization
•Practices

5. Organizational Culture
• Generative Culture
o Trust and Sharing
• Bureaucratic Culture
o Rules and Processes
• Pathological Culture
o Fear and Threat

6. Psychological Safety
• Team is safe for interpersonal
risk-taking
• “Being able to show and
employ one’s self without fear
of negative consequences”
• More important than any
other factor in team success

7. Inclusive Decisionmaking
• Make better business decisions 87%
of the time
• Make decisions 2x faster with 1/2
the meetings
• Deliver 60% better business results
Cloverpop Inclusive Decisionmaking study, 2016
As we improve diversity, decisionmaking improves
@randyshoup

8. None of us is as smart as all of
us.
-- Japanese proverb,
as quoted by Bob Taylor
@randyshoup

9. Moving Fast at Scale
•Culture
•Organization
•Practices

10. All organizations are wrong,
but some are useful.
@randyshoup

11. Organizational Goals
• Sustainably deliver value
• Optimize for fast flow of
change and rapid
feedback
• Minimize team cognitive
load
@randyshoup

12. Traditional Organizations
Idea
Development
Quality
Operations
@randyshoup

13. “Stream-Aligned” Teams
<Business
Domain>
• Aligned around a customer /
business problem
• Clear goals and metrics …
o … that matter to customers!
@randyshoup

14. Full-Stack Capabilities
Idea
Development
Quality
Operations
Idea
Development
Quality
Operations
Idea
Development
Quality
Operations
Domain
A
Domain
B
Domain
C

15. Platform and Enabling Teams
@randyshoup

16. Platform and Enabling Teams
@randyshoup

17. Service Organization
• One domain: One team: One / few service(s)
o Organization reflects Architecture (“Conway’s Law”)
• Team can independently design, develop, deploy,
operate its service(s)
• Team owns its service(s) end to end, cradle to
grave
@randyshoup

18. Common Platform
• Common Capabilities
o Authentication
o Secrets management
o Observability
o Alerting
• Standard Frameworks
o Service “chassis”
o Communication protocols and
data formats
@randyshoup
• Shared Infrastructure
o Compute and storage
o Databases
o Event system
• Developer Experience
o Source control
o Development and testing
environments
o Continuous Delivery pipelines

19. Communities of Practice
Collaborating via
• Slack channels
• Groups and maillists
• Periodic meetings
• Internal conferences
@randyshoup
Organized around
• Language framework /
ecosystem
• Specialized roles
• Service / platform
consumers
• Techniques and Practices

20. Moving Fast at Scale
•Culture
•Organization
•Practices

21. Feature 1
Feature 2
Feature 3
Feature 4
Feature 5
Traditional Organizations
Month 4
@randyshoup

22. Fewer Things,
More Done
@randyshoup

23. Feature 1
Feature 2
Feature 3
Feature 4
Feature 5
Fewer Things, More Done
Month 4
Month 2
@randyshoup

24. Iterative Development
Month 4
Month 2
1a 1b 1c 1d
2a 2b 2c
3a 3b 3c 3d
4a 4b 4c
5a 5b
@randyshoup

26. Fewer Things, More Done
• Deliver Highest Priority Features First
o Don’t treat priority 1 and priority 5 the same ☺
• Deliver Full Value Earlier
o Benefit now is worth more than benefit in the future
• Deliver Value Along the Way
o Deliver increments along the way instead of everything at the end
• Deliver Value Despite Changing Priorities
o At any point, we have working software even if we pause or abandon the feature
@randyshoup

27. Moving Fast at Scale
•Culture
•Organization
•Practices

28. 2.5x more likely
to exceed goals
o Profitability
o Market share
o Productivity
Moving Fast at Scale
@randyshoup

29. Thank you!
@randyshoup
linkedin.com/in/randyshoup
medium.com/@randyshoup