Tuomas Kytömaa: Radikaali ketteryys Zalandolla

Radical Agility with Autonomous Teams and Microservices

tuomas.kytomaa@zalando.fi Lean Day, Helsinki, 24th of May 2016

background image based on https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CERN_Server_03.jpg

by Florian Hirzinger - www.fh-ap.com

15 countries 18+ million active customers ~160 million visits per month ~3 billion € revenue 2015 10.000+ employees 100+ nationalities Tech HQ in Berlin

AT A GLANCE: ONE OF EUROPE’S LARGEST ONLINE FASHION RETAILERS

Visit us: tech.zalando.com

●  Engineering site (backend and mobile, product and UX) ●  Opened on August 26th 2015 ●  50 people now, and more coming

Zalando Helsinki tech hub

Somewhere along the way…

Some time ago we realized we’re in a situation where:

•  we had a monolith which was hard to develop further

•  built on not-a-very-modern tech stack

•  control killed the innovation

•  slow to release new features

•  teams didn’t have E2E responsibility

And three major areas to be changed

1) Culture

2) Organization

3) Architecture and Technologies used

FROM COMMAND & CONTROL TO PURPOSE AND TRUST

A Purpose-driven organization composed of autonomous teams which deliver clearly defined products

As service-oriented architecture composed of loosely coupled elements that have bounded context

Radical Agility combines architecture and organization

PURPOSE

AUTONOMY

MASTERY

DELIVERY LEAD

PEOPLE LEAD

OKR

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

MICROSERVICES API FIRST SAAS REST CLOUD OPEN SOURCE

https://github.com/zalando/zalando-rules-of-play

TECHNICAL CHOISES RADICAL AGILITY TOGETHER & ALIGNED

KEY TAKEAWAY

What are the challenges with Radical Agility?

Trust can be misused (individual / team level)

Limited coordination may lead to overlaps and gaps

Freedom to select tech stack probably not great for short term productivity

People HAVE to be self-organized

Requires more communication, social skills and willingness to reach out

SUMMARY

Radical Agility in a nutshell - Purpose, Autonomy and Mastery. Small autonomous teams with E2E ownership and power to make decisions.

Zalando Helsinki – Continuously growing and hiring software professionals.

Thank you!

https://tech.zalando.com/