Growing the Tech team at ridesharing startup Blablacar by N.Tricot and C.Jennewein

BlaBlaCar

BlaBlaTech@

8 October 2015

Organising BlaBlaTech

8 October 2015

BlaBlaCar

What it’s not about

Not about fundraising

Not about going to new markets

Not about the story from the founders

Christian Jennewein

Nicolas Tricot

@cestcri

https://github.com/cestcri

@sholine4

2https://github.com/sholine

BlaBlaWhat?

30€ 30€

120 €

30€ 30€

20M

15M

10M

5M

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

20 millionmembers in 2015

...in 19 countries

...with 14 offices

Build the biggestinternational transportation

network

From BlaBlaCar to BlaBlaTech

BlaBlaTech missions

+ Experts...

BlaBlaTech culture

Internal hackathons

Loving beer

Common set of values

Warsaw

Bucharest

Paris

People

1 in Miami

1 in Singapore

2 datacenters Paris

Servers

Case study

Being Lean by nature!

From the very beginningIterative product developmentbusiness-hypothesis-driven

validated learning

True startup spirit

Tech & product share one table

No real idea about lean,we just did it

Hyper-growth at BlaBlaCar

How to stay efficient?

How to handle a growing team?

Let’s try scrum, it’s cool

(what we did instead: stand-ups only…)

Scrum implementation

Lack of knowledge

Lack of legitimacy

No added value

No leader

Introducing notions of agility

Preparing the next steps

Fail? Learn!

Privilege member requests

Obtain knowledge + legitimacy

had to prepare the transition

met external lean coach with philosophy

but we needed tools & structure

“Brainstormed in June, applied in July”

Change requires time + preparation

Sell scrum internally

●Break resistance to change

●Define + communicate the new rules

●Onboard product team

Mr. Scrum, tear down this wall

tech product

Scrum by the book

●Split tasks into small units

● Iterations & feedback loops○ Sprints of 1 or 2 weeks

●Quick newbie integration

●Coaching vs. directing

ScrumGuide says...ScrumGuide says...

TURN LEFT NOW!TURN LEFT NOW!

Integrating remote teams

Faster growth difficult only in Paris

We integrate 5 remote developers

Shift all communication to English

Generate face time

Have a dedicated scrum master & PO

Fully data driven

PINK

DB

ADMIN

OPS

INFRA

DEVOPS

WHITE

DEV

ARCHI

DATA

RED

BLUE

GREEN

YELLOWPURPLE

ORANGE

The age of maturity

The teams liked it

Worse than before

The management liked it

●Organisation copes with team growth

●Stay productive

●Maintain high visibility

●Allow for responsibility & commitment

Becoming agile: it works!

● Another good reason to join

● Clarify the roles

● Small and efficient teams

● Self-assigning tasks

The dark side

Some problems...

● (too much) focus on tickets, lack of big picture

●One big remote team working together

●Perception of being controlled by metrics

●Rigid sprints vs. prod issues vs. roadmap

Quarterly roadmap prioritisation by founders and monitoring of progress

Kanban without knowing it...

More scrumban than scrum…

Continuous delivery

Limited work in progress

Sprint backlog challenged by new demands

Full kanban

“Scrum does notsuit all teams”

More flexibility regarding the backlog

No need for micro-project management

Less time wasted in ceremonies

Member voice team

Going fully international

Our choice Warsaw, Poland

Strong Tech community

Few pure players

Existing BlaBlaOffice

Developers integrated in existing teams

It’s time to evolve further

Why?

Founders cannot define whole roadmap

Developers became more executors than actors

How?

Assign missions not tasks

Testing a project-oriented team

+ one big feature for one ephemeral team+ all the required skills inside the team+ high commitment

- solution not from the team

- need for skill group sync

Testing a goal-oriented team

+ all the required skills inside the team+ high commitment+ solution defined by the team

- need for skill group sync

- ???

Future evolutions?

Founders focus on vision, mission & goals

Having more goal-oriented teams

Define & organise skill groups

Measure

Repeat

Measure

Repeat

Measure

Repeat

Build. Measure. Learn. Repeat.

Questions?

Growing the Tech team at ridesharing startup Blablacar by N.Tricot and C.Jennewein

Technology

Transcript of Growing the Tech team at ridesharing startup Blablacar by N.Tricot and C.Jennewein