Skype agile - past, present and future

Skype Agilehistory, present and future plans

2012 © Skype.

AgileDays Alek Kozlov March 2012

Product portfolio – core proposition

2012 © Skype. Slide 2

Skype-to-Skype voice

Skype-to-Skype video

Messaging File andscreen sharing

Paid offerings


Call landlinesand mobiles

Group video calling

Skype WiFi

Online number SMS Call forwarding/ Caller ID

Context


Numbers• ca 25% of 2011 all phone calls by telegeography

• will grow 48% per year (twice as much as all telecos in world)

• http://www.webpronews.com/telegeography-skype-international-calls-2012-01

• 35 million users concurrently using Skype at peak times (March 2012)

• 200 million connected users per month (March 2012)


Context

Twitter - #ILoveSkype

http://www.webpronews.com/telegeography-skype-international-calls-2012-01



Organization• 6 dev sites and ca 50 products (with product candidates)

• ca 500 in engineering org – WE ARE HIRING!!!

• Ask me or please visit jobs.skype.com

• ca 1000 ppl in total

• Game name – „Buy/Sell Skype“

• eBay, Silverlake (begining of Agile era), Microsoft

• Living through „Transition programs“

• „Consultant“ syndromes

• „Every new consultant knows what is wrong with Skype“, „They are coming, AGAIN, to "fix us"!"


Context

Skype AgileWhy, How, What


Why Skype went agile

Situation (2010)

• Optimized around team

• Ad hoc engineering practices – lack of discipline

• No common taxonomy

• Knowledge sharing was missing

• As a result - a lot of waste


Why

Business Goals

• Shorter delivery cadence

• Be able to scale the product

• Reduse cost and risk

• Show business value of the purchase

How – the strategy

• Initiated by Silverlake (at that moment the main Owners of the Skype )

• Consultancy agencies was deeply involved

• Organizational transition program (so called "OPUS") was prepared and executed


How

„Top-Down Push“ of Agile/Scrum

What – the transition program „OPUS“• New org structure and roles was prepared

• agile transition execution

• Organization for driving and supporting the change was created

• For driving the engineering org change after OPUS ended


What

Product team concept


What

Product Team

Product Management organization

Product Manager

Analyst

Pixel perfect

desinger

UXdesigner

Design organization

ProductEngineering

Manager

Engineers

Product Engineering Management organization

Quality Engineeri

Organization

QualityEngineers

Skype Product Organization Skype Engineering Organization

Training program was rolled-out• Certified Scrum Master

• Certified Scrum Product Owner

• Scrum Team Member

• Intro to Scrum

• Cross products planning and delivery


What

Engineering Lifecycle (Lifestyle) and Services• Initial goal - Engineering Excellence

• Higher Velocity

• Higer Quality

• Splits into

• Engineering tools development and support (services) organization

• Engineering Lifecycle


What

Engineering tools organization• Jira – GreenHopper

• Centralized CI and build system infrastructure

• Quickbuild, Nexus, SVN

• ca 250 servers and counting

• Build agents is a major contributor to the number

• March 2012 – 1 million builds


What

Engineering Lifecycle organization• Agile practices and knowledge

• Agile Maturity Model


What

Agile Maturity Model (framework)• 3 Levels - each 11 YES/NO topics and 4 process metrics

• "Set of common sense„

• Incentives

• Level 1

• "If you breathing, you are good enough" to meet L1 – eg „One backlog for the product“

• Expected to get in 4 months after MM was introduced

• Level 2

• Harder to achieve – eg „centrilized CI in use“, „current +2 more sprints are estimated“

• Team were expected to get there in 8 months after L1 and L2 was introduced


What

Current stateGood, Bad, Ugly


Good• Transitioning „Everything at once“

• Vocabulary and common language for the whole company is in place

• Product Managers:

• We are doing much more features than did ever before

• At least 6 releases per year (previously – at the best once a year)

• Maturity framework

• As a reflecting, thinking and focusing tool


Current state

Bad• Need for coaching support were understood only after transition started

• People doing the practices but don't understand principles

• Some people feel that they were „opused“/pushed into this change


Current state

Ugly• Transitioning „Everything at once“

• Lessons learned: Preparation should be more thorough

• A lot of „agile leaders“ who thinks that they know what to do

• But they don’t know

• Even agile coaches were guilty in this sin

• Product management on portfolio level is a big challenge

• too hard to manage dependencies - we still need to discover the way how to do this well

• Product Quality

• Technical debt and cutting the corners (in push to deliver)


Current state

Next steps


Building the right product and engineering excellence

•Transitioning from push to pull

•Sustainable development

•Continuous delivery• Mass „hallucination“, but we believe that achievable


Nextsteps

Thank you!

Questions?
