SpringOne Platform 2019 Session Title: Tech Agility at TD Ameritrade Speakers: Poornima Rajendhran, Senior Software Engineer, TD Ameritrade; Michael Dennis, Senior Software Engineer, TD Ameritrade; Mounika Kikkuru, Software Engineer, TD Ameritrade Youtube: https://youtu.be/TzKlxr5R-Ew

1. Tech Agility at TD Ameritrade
Poornima Rajendhran
Michael Dennis
Mounika Kikkuru
October 7–10, 2019
Austin Convention Center
TD Ameritrade and Pivotal are separate unaffiliated companies and are not responsible for each other’s services, opinions or policies.
Presentation content provided by and property of TD Ameritrade. TD Ameritrade is a trademark jointly owned by TD Ameritrade IP Company,
Inc. and The Toronto-Dominion Bank. © 2019 TD Ameritrade

2. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
• TD Ameritrade Institutional has been on a modernization and transformation
journey.
• Vision: transform software delivery process
Introduction
2

3. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Areas for growth… two years ago…
• Project to product mindset
• Story writing
• Sprint planning
• Balanced team
• Testing
• Code quality
• Deployments
• Sustainability

4. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
• Introduction of Extreme Programming.
(XP) practices like :
• Test driven development (TDD)
• Pair programming
• CI / CD
• Small releases
• Collective code ownership
• Strategies like domain driven design,
consumer driven contracts, reactive programming
Pivotal Enablement & Impact
4

5. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Areas for growth
• Project to product mindset
• Story writing
• Sprint planning
• Balanced team
• Testing
• Code quality
• Deployments
• Sustainability

6. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Discovery &
Framing
• Stakeholder meetings
• User interviews
• Problem exploration
• Solutions/brainstorming
• Goals/anti-goals
• Tech stack decisions
• Personas

7. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Project mindset
A project that meets
• All deadlines
• Within budget
• Original scope
BUT is it the right PRODUCT ?
• Realizes a set of activities
• Over an agreed period of time
• Achieves a specific purpose

8. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Product mindset
• Focus on customer
Empowered teams
• Sustainable pace for
continuous delivery
• Enables measurement
of business metrics
• Adoption and retention
• Revenue or cost savings

9. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Areas for growth
• Project to product mindset
• Story writing
• Sprint planning
• Balanced team
• Testing
• Code quality
• Deployments
• Sustainability

10. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Story writing
Challenges:
• 20+ point stories
• Stories written based on developer skills & availability (horizontally sliced)
Strategies:
 Creating and representing the product strategy and vision
 Focusing on achieving customer delight
 Creating a product roadmap with frequent releases
 Maximizing revenues and return-on-investment

11. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
• Understanding of the needs,
wants, and limitations of users
• Analyzing and foreseeing how
users are likely to use a product
• Active involvement with users
• Incorporating user insights to
refine design
User-Centered Design(UCD)

12. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
User stories in XP
• Used to capture a description of a
software feature from an end-user
perspective
• Describes the type of user, what they
want and why
• Helps to create a simplified description
of a requirement
• Delivers clear user value
• Vertically sliced requiring full stack
development

13. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Story writing
Challenges of regular user
research and feedback:
• Difficulty in acquiring users
on a regular cadence
• Appropriate staffing for the
job
Business vs technical
requirements: spikes for
technically complex epics
first

14. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Areas for growth
• Project to product mindset
• Story writing
• Sprint planning
• Balanced team
• Testing
• Code quality
• Deployments
• Sustainability

15. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Sprint Planning
Challenges:
• Scrum way of committing to fixed
points on a sprint
• Limited opportunity for innovation
and spiking out new technologies
Strategies:
 Practice Kanban & rolling
backlog
 One week iterations
 Metrics for team performance:
Velocity & Volatility

16. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Areas for growth
• Project to product mindset
• Story writing
• Sprint planning
• Balanced team
• Testing
• Code quality
• Deployments
• Sustainability

17. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Challenges:
• Lack of team stability
• Individuals divided between
multiple teams based on need &
availability
Balanced Team
1
7
Strategies:
 Balanced team including Product,
UX, Engineers, Quality Assurance
 Minimal changes to team structure
 Pairing
 Full stack development
 Collective code ownership

18. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Insights:
• Collaborative
• Cross-disciplinary
• Self-sufficient
• Co-located (ideally)
• Team discussions
• OK to ask for help
• Regular retrospectives in a safe
setting
Balanced Team
1
8

19. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Areas for growth
• Project to product mindset
• Story writing
• Sprint planning
• Balanced team
• Testing
• Code quality
• Deployments
• Sustainability

20. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Challenges:
• Reliance on manual testing
• Late discovery of bugs
• Low confidence to refactor code
Testing
2
0
Strategies:
 Test Driven Development (TDD)
 Shifting left

21. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
RED:
Create a unit tests that
fails
GREEN:
Write code that makes that
test pass
REFACTOR:
Clean up the code

22. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
• Short feedback loops
• Built-in regression
• Supports iterative development
• Facilitates CI/CD
• Fewer bugs
Benefits of TDD
2
2
• Confidence to refactor
• More adaptable code
• Increases “bus count”
• Increases productivity
• Decreases time to market

23. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
What to test:
• Must have a full understanding of
the acceptance criteria
• Anticipate what could happen
• Define edge cases
Testing
2
3
Test coverage:
• Unit
• Contract
• Integration
• Browser automation
• Acceptance / E2E

24. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Areas for growth
• Project to product mindset
• Story writing
• Sprint planning
• Balanced team
• Testing
• Code quality
• Deployments
• Sustainability

25. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Challenges:
• Accumulating tech debt
• Waiting on code reviews / peer
reviews
• Legacy code risky to refactor
Code Quality
2
5
Strategies:
 Maintaining clean code through
refactoring
 Pay down tech debt early and
regularly
 Tests as documentation
 Pair programming

26. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
• Ping-pong pairing
• Navigator-driver
• Rotate pairs every day
• “Mobbing”
Pair Programming
2
6

27. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Areas for growth
• Project to product mindset
• Story writing
• Sprint planning
• Balanced team
• Testing
• Code quality
• Deployments
• Sustainability

28. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
• Integrate code into shared
repo several times a day
• Each commit – automated
build & runs test suite
Continuous Integration (CI)
2
8
• Trunk development
• Fixing broken build is
the priority for the team

29. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Continuous Delivery / Deployment (CD)
2
9
• Frequent small deployments
• Risk of deployment is low
• Leverage feature flags for large
functionalities
• Same artifact for all environments
• Homogenous environments
• Production is another stage in the
pipeline

30. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Deployment tool
3
0
• Immutable release unit comprising
binaries and configs from multiple
services
• Promoted to higher environments
using a single command

31. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Deployments – Before…
3
1
• Request VMs for new
services
• Setup the VM with required
software & configs for the
service
• Setup Jenkins jobs manually
and use scripts to deploy the
app into running VM
• 6 to 8 weeks release cycle
• Release all-nighters

32. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Deployments – After…
3
2
• Write and commit code

33. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Impact of PaaS
3
3
• Faster time to market
• More responsive
• Greater efficiency
• Increased productivity
• Resource utilization
• Automation
• Self-service
• Cost offset
0 20 40 60 80
Time to market
Before After
Developer
efficiency
improvement
25% to 30%

34. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
3
4

35. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Dev or Ops or DevOps ?
3
5
• We are a Dev team, not a DevOps
team
• Responsibilities of our Ops team:
• Setting up & configuring
Pivotal Platform environments
and spaces
• Deployment tool
• Releases
• Dev / Ops / DevOps: Vigilance
about who is responsible for what

36. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Areas for growth
• Project to product mindset
• Story writing
• Sprint planning
• Balanced team
• Testing
• Code quality
• Deployments
• Sustainability

37. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
• Enablement with other teams
• Sharing of knowledge
• Continuous discussions and
feedback
• Cross-over pairing
• Coopertition (Cooperation +
Competition)
Sustainability
3
7

38. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
What all of this helped us achieve…
3
8
• RESTful microservices architecture
• Implement Spring Cloud Gateway as
routing app for our backend-for-
frontends (BFFs)
• Domain driven design + consumer
driven contracts + other testing
patterns
• Demo app for our site providing
incredible value to sales & marketing
to promote the site

39. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
• Service discovery & registry for
microservices architecture
• Client side load balancing and
Circuit breaker patterns
• Deploy each microservice
independently
• Acceptance test suite that will
eventually replace Enterprise QA
cycle
Road Ahead
3
9
“”When the road ahead seems too long, look back to
see how far you’ve come. For, even if the hill before
you is steep, the view gives you hope to finish the
journey”
- Adira Daniella Kessler

40. Thank you
Please reach out if you have any questions
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