This is the story of Christian and Nicolas, two Tech Managers at BlaBlaTech, who shaped the engineering team of the highly successful ridesharing startup. The team has grown from one single French five-person team to a dozen distribu¬ted and fully agile teams with 30+ people in only two years. Their main responsi¬bility? Building and scaling the development team by constantly improving engineering processes, integrating and training new talents, and anticipating tomorrow’s organization. Their challenges? Delivering the same level of quality software and services in an ever-growing business where customer feedback is instantaneous and shared all over the web. A presentation from the Lean IT Summit 2015 www.lean-it-summit.com

1. BlaBlaCar
BlaBlaTech
@
8 October 2015

2. Organising
BlaBlaTech
8 October 2015
BlaBlaCar

3. What it’s not about
Not about fundraising
Not about going to new markets
Not about the story from the founders

4. Christian
Jennewein
Nicolas Tricot
@cestcri
https://github.com/cestcri
@sholine4
2
https://github.com/sholine

5. BlaBlaWhat?

6. 30€ 30€
120 €
30€ 30€

7. 30€ 30€
120 €
30€ 30€

8. 20M
15M
10M
5M
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
20 million
members in 2015

9. ...in 19 countries

10. ...with 14 offices

12. Build the biggest
international transportation
network

13. From BlaBlaCar to
BlaBlaTech

14. BlaBlaTech missions
+ Experts...

15. BlaBlaTech culture

16. Internal hackathons

17. Loving beer

18. Common set of values

19. Common set of values

20. Common set of values

21. Common set of values

22. Common set of values

23. Common set of values

25. Warsaw
Bucharest
Paris
People

26. 1 in Miami
1 in Singapore
2 datacenters Paris
Servers

27. Case study

28. Being Lean by nature!
From the very beginning
Iterative product development
business-hypothesis-driven
validated learning
True startup spirit
Tech & product share one table

29. No real idea about lean,
we just did it

31. 2012

32. Hyper-growth at BlaBlaCar

33. How to stay efficient?

34. How to handle a growing team?
Let’s try scrum, it’s cool
(what we did instead: stand-ups only…)

36. Scrum implementation
Lack of knowledge
Lack of legitimacy
No added value
No leader

37. Introducing notions of agility
Preparing the next steps
Fail? Learn!

38. Privilege member requests

39. 2012

40. 2013

41. Obtain knowledge + legitimacy
had to prepare the transition
met external lean coach with philosophy
but we needed tools & structure

42. “Brainstormed in June,
applied in July”

43. Change requires time + preparation
Sell scrum internally
●Break resistance to change
●Define + communicate the new rules
●Onboard product team

44. Mr. Scrum, tear down this wall
tech product

45. Scrum by the book
●Split tasks into small units
●Iterations & feedback loops
○ Sprints of 1 or 2 weeks
●Quick newbie integration
●Coaching vs. directing

46. ScrumGuide says...ScrumGuide says...
TURN LEFT NOW!TURN LEFT NOW!

48. 2013

49. 2014

50. 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

51. Fully data driven

52. PINK
DB
ADMIN
OPS
INFRA
DEVOPS
WHITE
DEV
ARCHI
DATA
RED
BLUE
GREEN
YELLOW
PURPLE
ORANGE

53. 2014

54. The age of maturity

56. The teams liked it
Worse than before

57. The management liked it
●Organisation copes with team growth
●Stay productive
●Maintain high visibility
●Allow for responsibility & commitment

58. Becoming agile: it works!
● Another good reason to join
● Clarify the roles
● Small and efficient teams
● Self-assigning tasks

59. The dark side

60. 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

61. 2014

62. 2015

63. Quarterly roadmap
prioritisation by founders
and monitoring of progress

64. Kanban without knowing it...
More scrumban than scrum…
Continuous delivery
Limited work in progress
Sprint backlog challenged by
new demands

65. Full kanban
“Scrum does not
suit all teams”
More flexibility regarding the backlog
No need for micro-project management
Less time wasted in ceremonies

66. Member voice team

67. Going fully international
Our choice Warsaw, Poland
Strong Tech community
Few pure players
Existing BlaBlaOffice
Developers integrated in existing teams

68. It’s time to evolve further
Why?
Founders cannot define whole roadmap
Developers became more executors than actors
How?
Assign missions not tasks

69. 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

70. Testing a goal-oriented team
+ all the required skills inside the team
+ high commitment
+ solution defined by the team
- need for skill group sync
- ???

71. 2015

72. 2016

73. Future evolutions?
Founders focus on vision, mission & goals
Having more goal-oriented teams
Define & organise skill groups

74. Build

75. Measure

76. Learn

77. Repeat

78. Build

79. Measure

80. Learn

81. Repeat

82. Build

83. Measure

84. Learn

85. Repeat

86. Build. Measure. Learn. Repeat.
Questions?