Scaling (“Agile”?

) Teams
Solvitur Ambulando and the Circle of Trust

December 2018

http://solvi.to/1
Carl Leubsdorf Jr.
Tech / Product / Agile

Not a designer. Once a (scripting?) coder. Recovering Economist.

Tiny to medium-sized startups, medium and large companies, and
huge government agencies, as CTO, GM, consultant
This talk in four points
1. Solvitur Ambulando
2. The Circle of Trust
3. Know your team goals
4. Effective teams = effective technology
1. Solvitur Ambulando

(“It is solved by walking”)

1. Solvitur Ambulando

Diogenes the Cynic

Sophists: All motion is unreal

Diogenes: [Stands and walks away]

QED.
 Solvo = “To Solve”

Future
Passive
Sidebar: Latin verb forms Imperative:
“It Shall Be Solved”
as a source of domain (as a command)

(company) names
Easy to spell (for English Speakers)
Relatively short
.com often available
May have actual meaning

Latin verb forms make good domain (and company) names

2. The Circle of Trust

Using “Solvitur Ambulando” to

expand your team
The Motley Fool
aka Fool.com
Financial publishing / advice
Attract, addict, convert
Availability, speed, functionality
Team = Trust

● Late 1990s Startup Culture

● Foosball

● Friday (and interview) beers.

● Pep-rally meetings; jester hat trivia.

● Trust your teammates - go the extra

mile - benefit of the doubt - not just
shirking.
 Circle
of
Kevin (Web Dev) Trust

Keith (Content Prod)

The Team - Fool Early Days

 Circle
Carl (Web Dev) of
Trust

Thom (Web Dev)

Other Web Devs...

The Foolish Web Dev Crüe

 Content Fifteen-foot corridor Web
Production Dev

Circle
of
Trust

Web Dev and Content Production

 Web
“Do not remove this comment”? YES!
Server

Load Web
The Internet “Do not remove this comment”? YES!
Balancer Server

“Do not remove this comment”? No!!

YES! Web
Server

Web Site Load Balancing - Primitive View

 Web
“Do not remove this comment”? YES!
Server

!
The Internet Load
Balancer
“Do not remove this comment”? YES!

“Do not remove this comment”? YES!

Web
Server

Web
Server

!?!?!
Web Site Load Balancing - Primitive View
WTH are they doing (aka WTHATD)?!?

● What you can do now: (Get up and) Go talk to them. (Solvitur Ambulando)
● Does everyone know (enough of) how it all works? Is there a diagram?
● Communications failure can happen a few feet or meters away, another floor or
building, another country or continent.

● Expand the circle of trust

○ Frequent (daily?) interaction, face-to-face if possible
○ In-person team building helps (a lot)
 Content Fifteen-foot corridor Web
Production Dev

Circle
of
Trust

Web Dev and Content Production: WTH are they doing?

 Content Web
Production Dev
Circle
of
Trust

Web Dev and Content Production

2. The Circle of Trust:
Solvitur Ambulando
Stop WTHATD - get up and go talk
to them (or slack, facetime, ...)

Be conscious of the circle of trust -

who is on “your” team?

Agile: think about who is in your

daily standup or sprint review.
3. Know your team goals
Match.com Japan = eCommerce Site

● Click, register, subscribe = ¥ ($)

● Aggressive revenue target
● Public Company: Hit profit goal!
○ Perception - important factor?
Quality = Safety
(a theory)
● Historical dating site stigma / ‘incidents’

● No betas - polished, beautiful sites.

the ease of setting tobacco free
● Local cultural/design paramount.

● “The Menu Incident”

The Plan: Project
zero defects

● Make the site beautiful

● Use a local agency for both web dev and

design

● Reduce errors & fear

● Theory: Zero defects + Local design = ¥!

 Tech Team: Business &
Web Dev, QA, Content
DB, Product Ocean / Culture / Production
Dallas Language Tokyo

🇺🇸 🇯🇵
Tokyo
Design
Firm

Match Asia Team - Initial State

 Tech Team: Business &
Web Dev, QA, Content
DB, Product Ocean / Culture / Production
Dallas Language Tokyo

🇺🇸 🇯🇵
Revenue!
Partnerships!
Tokyo
Revenue!
Design
Product flow! Firm
Diff Circle
ere of
nt g Trust?
oal
s Beautiful
Design!!
Match Asia Team - Initial State, Motivations
Voila! New Design!

● Outcome: Nothing to show for it - conversion, registrations, subscriptions, revenue all flat.
● Designers’ goal was a great design, not subscriptions or revenue. (e.g. CTAs)
十一億円 (1.1 billion ¥)
● Focus all effort on a specific goal: 十一億円
● Two day team offsite with follow-up
● Add in-house designers, Beijing dev team
● Switch to smaller, incremental releases
(sprints)
● Evaluate based on evidence
○ A/B Testing: does it move the numbers?
○ Sprint goals tied to 十一億円 and
direct-impact KPIs, (click, reg, etc.)
■ 1,000 Registrations/Day
● Celebrate (sm)all wins - shared success
builds team cohesion and trust.

● Team-building (including karaoke)

 Tech/ product Design/
Dallas marketing
Tokyo
🇺🇸
十一億円
🇯🇵
Circle
Web Dev of
Trust
Beijing

🇨🇳
Match Asia Team - One Goal
 Tech/ product Design/
Dallas marketing
Tokyo
3. Know your team goals 🇺🇸
Make product decisions based on
十一億円 🇯🇵
evidence: Solvitur Ambulando! Web Dev Circle
of
When using an agency, make sure their Beijing Trust

goals and yours are aligned.

Agile: base sprint goals on user (biz) 🇨🇳
goals. Deliver and measure every sprint.
Share wins and Have fun!
4. Effective teams =
effective technology
National Institutes of Health
(NIH) Login
Single-sign on service for all NIH Applications
30-50,000 users daily.
Availability (uptime) and speed.
Desired availability (“SLA”): 99.99%.
Actual availability: 82% at worst, typically 95%.
30 hour outages; frequent (weekly) slowdowns.
Sidebar: SLA, SLO, SLI
SLA: Service Level Agreement (what you promise)
SLO: Service Level Objective (what you shoot for)
SLI: Service Level Indicator (what you measure)
Stated NIH Login SLO: 99.99%
Source: https://uptime.is/four-nines
See:
https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/sre-fundamental
s-slis-slas-and-slos
https://uptime.is/
 Application Down, but App
Server “Up”
Server
Network Congestion i n y
T
(slow but not “down”) SLOW
n k
Li

Active
Switch Tiny
SLOW
Directory
(Network) Link
Down - Server person: if I can ping it, it's up. DB
(Wrong SLI)
Bi
Slow - Network person: I told the consultant. g
Li
nk

The Big
SLOW Login
STOP
Internet Link
Server
 Conway’s law
"Any organization that designs a system
(defined broadly) will produce a design whose
structure is a copy of the organization's
communication structure."[1]
— Melvin Conway

Fausto de la Torre, “Applying Conway's Law to improve your

software development”
[1] http://www.melconway.com/Home/Conways_Law.html https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/applying-conways-
law-improve-your-software-development
 Conway’s law App
Server
"Any organization that designs a system
(defined broadly) will produce a design whose n y
T i
structure is a copy of the organization's
n k
communication structure."[1] Li
— Melvin Conway

Active
Switch Tiny
Directory
(Network) Link
DB

Bi
g
Li
nk

The Big
Login
[1] http://www.melconway.com/Home/Conways_Law.html
Internet Link
Server
 Conway’s law Server
Team
"Any organization that designs a system
(defined broadly) will produce a design whose
i l

Email
structure is a copy of the organization's a
Em
communication structure."[1]
— Melvin Conway

“Because the design that occurs first is almost

never the best possible, the prevailing system
Network Email
AD
concept may need to change. Therefore, flexibility Team Team
of organization is important to effective design.”[2]
— Melvin Conway

Email
Em
(Cited by Fred Brooks in The Mythical ai
l
Man-Month[3])

Login
[1] http://www.melconway.com/Home/Conways_Law.html
[2] http://www.melconway.com/Home/Committees_Paper.html
Circle
of
Team
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month Trust
 Server Team

Network
99.99% AD Team
Team
Circle
of
Trust

Login Team
SSO Solvers Tiger Team
4. Effective teams =
effective technology
4. Effective teams =
effective technology
 NIH Login Availability - Q1 2014

4. Effective teams =
effective technology
So how’d we do?
Q1 2014: 99.89-99.95% uptime.
4. Effective teams =
effective technology
Draw a picture!
Systems mirror team communications
Know your SLIs. Make them public.
Agile: structure your (scrum) team
based on user goals; refactor it when
needed.
http://status.asm.ca.com/30534/
This talk in four points
1. Solvitur Ambulando x 3: contemplate, go forth, prove it.
2. Find ways to expand the Circle of Trust.
Agile: Think about who is in your stand-up or
sprint review.
3. Know your goals and share them (especially w/ agencies)
Agile: sprint goals = user/biz goals.
4. Effective teams = effective technology
Agile: Refactor teams when necessary
** Celebrate wins to build cohesion and trust.**
Thank You!
Special Thanks to:
DevJam
David Hussman

Contact: carl@solvitor.com

Access these slides here: http://solvi.to/1

(PDF version: http://solvi.to/1-pdf)