Talk of Dr. Johannes Mainusch “Learn to walk before you run – Case studies at XING AG” done at Agile

1. People do business: They communicate, they trust, they act as authentic
individuals. Business relies, to a great extent, on local social networks in the
„analog world“ as well. (Example: Lemonade booth.)
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2. XING represents 10.000.000 business professionals world wide, and the
equivalent of several large cities log in during peak hours. That‘s the ‘online’ part
(left image). What makes our network special and unique is the connection
between the online and the offline world – with more than 150.000 events per
year that ouor members organize. It’s anything from an after-work party to a golf
tournament.
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3. Roughly 1 billion people use social media [only on inquiry: various sources/
estimates, incl. Nielsen; usually includes instant messaging such as Skype, but
should not count individuals twice].
Growing fast.
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4. 4
Marshall McLuhan (Canadian media theorist, had a Cameo in Woody Allen’s
Any Hall) said that the technology that we use changes society much more
than the content that is distributed and communicated using it. (Obviously,
there is a lot of controversy about that, but there is a core point.) McLuhan
divided human evolution into four stages…

5. Four kinds of societies in the media evolution of humankind:
1. Tribal cultures relying mainly on synchronous, oral communication.
2. Literal societies with the means to preserve information and transport it.
3. The ‘Gutenberg Galaxy” after the invention of print, which led in the end to
the idea of copyright/authorship and the nation through establishing a
common language, and…
4. the global village.
5

6. The above are the pillars of communication – trust, identity, authenticity,
reliability. If they are not given, communication is disrupted. So how do we
facilitate communication, how do we ensure it…
6

7. …with the variety of services we offer for people to present themselves and
communicate authentically and diversely…
7

8. SSL – the same encryption used in online banking
Legal framework in Germany – one of the strictest in the world
We build security and trust into our platform – do people like it?
8

9. To ensure continuous reliability and also see how people use the platform, we
have a plethora of monitoring devices.
On the left: Usage of the platform during the world cup game GER-ESP showing
how people go back after the game and even in the break.
On the right: Twitter is probably the easiest real-time monitoring out there. If
Tweets go up dramatically, it’s either a press release or a downtime…
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10. Agil, Agil, Agil,...
Why are poeple discussing Agility so much...
1/3 of all IT projects fail without result
1/3 fail in one of the traditional aims „scope“, „time“ or „budget“
1/3 are succesful, ! this seems to be the silverstrip of light on the horizon.
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11. 14.10.2010
Dr. Johannes Mainusch 11
Weil IT-Komplex ist sind die Anforderungen häufig
ebenfalls komplex und damit der erste Schritt im Scheitern.
Wer arbeitet schon nach den Maßgaben
- Minimalanforderungen definieren
- so früh wie möglich releasen
- das Produkt dann iterativ verbessern
Wenn mach nicht so arbeitet, ergeben sich die bekannten Risiken in der
Produktenwicklung
- Unvereinbare Ziele
- Ausufernde Projekte
- Streit unter Stakeholdern...

12. Problems with the waterfall model:
- communication is document centric (which is good in some cases)...
- (LH-concept 300 pages, XING SPEC 200 pages, AOL operations manual 75
pages,...)
- focus on claiming not to be responsible rather then taking on responsibility
- forming of knowledge Silos (which can be good as well!)
- lots of conflict potential
- example: „Change-Management between customer and provider“, McEnroe
discussions
- -> communication problems
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13. 13

14. Agility is the art of small steps, reflection and continuous improvement.
14

15. Small steps allow for fast evaluation and correction.
Cornerstones:
- Iterations rather than milestones ahead ! gives transparency in the production
process
- Cross functional teams rather that expert silos ! serves communication
-the team decides about the hows ! delegation of responsibility
-only focus on a small number of prioritized issues ! serves staying focussed
15

16. There is a learning effect in repeating things iteratively:
-you improve your process by 7%-15% with each iteration
-i.e. with e.g. 10% the cost of production is reduced per step by
1: 100%
2: 90%
4: 82%
8: 73%
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17. If you are albe to cut a ingle project into 10 similar pieces, it should be 205 more
efficient than the en block project.
- Less risk
- Possibility of early corrections
17

18. An agile organization with smaller and more repetetive tasks in it production and
operation can be very efficient. E.g. repeat something for 100 times, by the
hundredths time you should be twice as efficient as on the first repetition.
If we take our weekly releases at XING, this kind of effect will take two years…
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19. ...but do we really support agility in our industry?
Cross functional teams, does that work?
If you have the choice, of hiring an IT-expert (in rails, javascript, java,…) or
a tech guy with two years of proven experience in an agile development
team (he’s also done some product, some QA besides java development…)
Whom do you hire?
! We still value expertise a lot higher than good communication skills.
! Expert are not stupid, why should they get cross-functional?
! do we as employers value good communication skills enough?
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20. http://www.modernmobilitynews.com/index.php/2008-07-11/energieeffizienz-
gehen-radfahren-auto-elektroauto-elektrokraftfahrzeuge/
Gehen (4km/h): 0,052 + 0,000 = 0,05 kWh/km
Radfahren (20km/h): 0,028 + 0,000 = 0,03 kWh/km
durchschnittlicher PKW (80km/h): 0,001 + 0,625 = 0,63 kWh/km
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21. http://www.modernmobilitynews.com/index.php/2008-07-11/energieeffizienz-
gehen-radfahren-auto-elektroauto-elektrokraftfahrzeuge/
Gehen (4km/h): 0,052 + 0,000 = 0,05 kWh/km
Radfahren (20km/h): 0,028 + 0,000 = 0,03 kWh/km
durchschnittlicher PKW (80km/h): 0,001 + 0,625 = 0,63 kWh/km
21

22. http://www.modernmobilitynews.com/index.php/2008-07-11/energieeffizienz-
gehen-radfahren-auto-elektroauto-elektrokraftfahrzeuge/
Gehen (4km/h): 0,052 + 0,000 = 0,05 kWh/km
Radfahren (20km/h): 0,028 + 0,000 = 0,03 kWh/km
durchschnittlicher PKW (80km/h): 0,001 + 0,625 = 0,63 kWh/km
22

23. http://www.modernmobilitynews.com/index.php/2008-07-11/energieeffizienz-
gehen-radfahren-auto-elektroauto-elektrokraftfahrzeuge/
http://www.wdr.de/tv/quarks/global/pdf/fahrrad.pdf
Gehen (4km/h): 0,052 + 0,000 = 0,05 kWh/km
Radfahren (20km/h): 0,028 + 0,000 = 0,03 kWh/km
durchschnittlicher PKW (80km/h): 0,001 + 0,625 = 0,63 kWh/km
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24. 24

25. At XING, as we become more and more agile, we think about these questions
and we strive for becoming still a better place to wok at. When we say agile, we
mean
- the way we cooperate
- the way we want to bring good quality and innovative stuff to our customers
- we use agile best practices (if there are any…)
-we observe the need for excellent communication
All this sums up to a high demand on our employees. So here are my thoughts
on the personal attributes of an agile animal…
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26. 26
We are people who have a natural longing for
optimum...
Hadn’t we strived for excellence in the past, we would have stopped
somewhere on the way in some cosy spot. But do we thing, we are anywhere
near the optimum yet? No, there is still a lot to be improved.

27. 27
enjoy learning...
OK, of course it is nice to know everything and always to be in the right. But
then improvement of development and operations processes, step by step
taking away the Muda (the sand in the clockwork/Kaizen) this we think is the
way to become excellent. Anything else is not progress, is static… Enjoying to
learn means also to accept that there is still a lot to learn and to improve. So
should we become insecure by out own ignorance. Not at all! Let’s enjoy the
yet unanswered questions and allow ignorance to gradually fade. Let’s ask
questions until we really understand what is going on and let’s not be satisfied
with easy answers. Let’s have room for doubt and criticism, without that, no
learning, no progress.
That’s hard as we all tend to go for easy answers. Here are some of my
favorite misconceptions:
- Earth is a disc
- Crop circles are easily man made
- Spinach contains a lot of iron (… and is thus good for children)
To summarize: having fun at learning requires a quizzical open mindedness, a
sometimes enerving endurance in asking “why…“

28. 28
New pathways through the jungle...
Might give me a fright, might spark fear, but then there could be an adventure,
if I walk them.
Old ways give security, so let’s honor them, but trying new ways is the only
way to find shortcuts, to find innovation. And there is new confidence and
strength to gain, once we completed a new way. Let’s be open for change, for
new ways…

29. 29
Everything we experienced was either good or bad. Let us keep the good
practices and improve them. This also means to change in small steps, so that
all our fellows will have a chance to come along and in a way that allows for
easy corrections (Kaizen) .

30. 30
I am with XING now for three years and and there were a lot of changes in this
time. Not always easy, sometimes not in the right direction but now I have the
feeling that we have evolved (and grown) a lot. On this pathway, braveness,
and endurance helped a lot.

31. Innovation at full operational speed...
Have 10 million satisfied and happy customers while constantly improving and
changing the platform.
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32. 32

33. 33
Performance and reliability are key factors to our success. Thus we like to
serve 95% ofour pages within 2 seconds and run at >99.9% availability...
period availability in %
15.02.10 99,84
15.01.10 99,97
16.12.09 99,28
15.11.09 99,8
16.10.09 99,91
15.09.09 99,76
16.08.09 99,83
16.07.09 99,95
16.06.09 99,96
16.05.09 99,87
16.04.09 99,93
16.03.09 99,8

34. 34
We release on wednesdays, 50 times per year...

35. 35

36. 36

37. 37
Innovation takes place when things need to be improved in an almost playful
athmosphere where people dedicate themselves to excellence…
We like innovation and creativety, but as an organization it is always hard not
to stay in the way.

38. 38
Examples:
- one slot search dropdown enhancer
- js-Error monitor
- Kilobytes per Pageview
- iPhone applikation #1
- Performance (Christophers Gadget nachlader, asset preloaing,...)
- Alis Protonet
- the digital handshake

39. …the mobile handshake. It’s everything mentioned previously: real-time and
location-based (time stamp with geo-location data), combining online and offline
(use case: you meet somebody at a trade fair) for a social purpose – and the
technology behind it (HTML 5) is device-independent.
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40. 40
Dialoge with users
- By feedback
- By user labs
helps us enormously at designing the site right. What is agile about it?
All, getting them involved, getting cross-functional…

41. 41
Example Job Board before the Usability…
Testers thought the info page is unclear, too much information/ text
Testers thought the advantages didn’t come out at once. This created
confusion about the differences between the product packages and the
products themselves

42. 42
Job Board after the usability test

43. Wir sind Agile-Fans, (…das war auch nicht super schwer)
wir haben Alle zusammen in einer Firma, hohe Fertigungstiefe
- Produkt, Entwicklung QA und Betrieb
- keine Kunden <--> Lieferanten Beziehung
- wir haben ein großes Produkt mit vielen Facetten und Teilen
- unser Produkt ist life und wird gleichzeitig weiterentwickelt, d.h. wir arbeiten
nicht so, wie viele Agenturen (bauen, life setzen, verlassen, nächstes Sales
Pitch,...)
d.h. wir haben gute Voraussetzungen und können als Tipp mitgeben, das es sich
lohnt, für das erste agile Projekt einen geeigneten Kandidaten auszuwählen. Also
folgenden Eigenschaften helfen:
- lange Betriebslaufzeit mit stetiger Weiterentwicklung
- alle Parteien wollen Agilität (keine Kunden/Lieferanten/Festpreis, Festzeit,
Festziel Geschichten)
- Die kurze Zeit bis zur Einführung ist wichtiger als alles andere
- gegenseitiges Vertrauen aller Parteien ist vorhanden.
Wir können (und müssen) erfolgreiche Methoden/Patterns/Code wieder
verwenden.
Agilität (SCRUM) kommt bei uns aus dem Projektumfeld. Wir machten zunächst
agile Projekte. Nun fangen wir mit den ersten agilen Betriebsteams an
(KANBAN). 43

44. Unsere ersten agilen Schritte waren mit SCRUM im Events Relaunch, danach
Company Profiles, ... Dann haben wir SCRUM in betriebsnahe Bereich
eingeführt und mussten schnell feststellen, dass wir hier etwas verändern
müssen. Details folgen. Hier nur so viel:
Wir finden momentan:
- SCRUM ist gut für Projekte
- Kanban ist gut für betriebsnahe Themen
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45. Für das Thema Maintenance wurde Anfang
des Jahres ein eigens für dieses Thema
gegründetes Team benannt.
Dieses Team ist zuständig für alle kleinen
Änderungen, Bugs und Störungen die
auftreten und für User Stories und oder
Themen für die es kein Projekt gibt.
Dieses Team startete, weil wir so gute
Erfahrungen mit Scrum machen, als Scrum
Team.
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46. 46
Das Team ging voller Energie ans Werk, alle waren Scrum erfahren und
so schien alles vorerst in Ordnung.
Ein Umstand zwang uns zum Nachdenken:
Das Team konnte in keinem Sprint ihr Committment halten.
->

47. 47
Scrum schützt die Teams für 1 Sprint lang. Das ist auch gut so für
Projekte.
Im Falle eines Continuous Improvement Teams haben die
Produktmanager allerdings eine andere Anforderung.
Sie möchten, abhängig vom Feedback der Mitglieder flexibler priorisieren
und nicht 1 Sprint lang warten, auch nicht eine Woche,
bevor sie, für sie wichtige User Stories (kleine) und Änderungen
einbringen können.

48. 48
Da unsere Product Manager alle geschulte Scrum Product Owner sind,
wussten sie. Wenn sie vor Sprintende Einfluss nehmen wollen müssen
sie eine Bugkarte aufhängen, auch wenn es sich um eher dringende
kleine Features handelt.
In unserem Falle war es allerdings so, dass BUGS so zahlreich ins Team
getragen wurden, dass alles andere liegen blieb.
Am Ende waren zwar viele Bugkarten erledigt, die fast nie wirkliche Bugs
waren, aber das Committment des Teams konnte nie gehalten werden.
Das machte unzufrieden, das Team, den Scrum Master und die
Produktmanager.
Der damalige Scrum Master Ralf Wirdemann brachte die Idee auf, dass
vielleicht Kanban geeigneter wäre.
Wir im Projektmanagement Team, allesamt Scrum Master und Agile
Coaches, machten uns gemeinsam Gedanken und entschieden:
Wir versuchen es. Warum erläutere ich gleich noch.
Zu dem Zeitpunkt übernahm ich die Aufgabe als Kanban Coach für das
Team „Continuous Improvement“.

49. 49
Wir wollten agil bleiben und „Lean Software Development“ hatte sich
schon in unsere Seelen eingeschlichen.
Also sollte es ein „pull“-System bleiben: Das Team nimmt sich die
Aufgaben vom priorisierten Stapel.
Diese queue ist total flexibel und kann vom Product Owner jederzeit neu
priorisiert werden.

50. 50
Das Team sollte weiterhin geschützt sein. Unser Kanban Team ist für die
max. 5 items in progress geschützt.
Da hier bereits angefangen wurde zu arbeiten kann nur die Queue neu
priorisiert werden.
Das Team bearbeitet geschützt diese Karten.
Max 5 ist erst mal beliebig.
Die Anzahl sollte so niedrig wie möglich sein, aber so hoch wie nötig und
ergibt sich aus der Praxis.
Ziel: Jede Karte so schnell wie möglich zu bearbeiten. Vieles gleichzeitig
zu bearbeiten ist dazu kontraproduktiv.

51. There are still numerous issues to be dealt with. Not everything is
automagically perfect today:
- cross team communication
- product maintenance or how to embed product operations in the process
- how to honour expertise in a cross functional team?
51

52. 52

53. We might still have silos, but different ones…
- example: mobile web integration spans currently over 5-6 responsibilities (we
will reduce that to 3?)
53

54. 54

55. " Scrum und Kanban wird positiv angenommen
" Wir haben Routine entwickelt
" Wir sind agiler & flexibler geworden
" Wir sind schneller geworden
(können aber immer noch nicht zaubern)
" Wir haben Lean Management, Pair Programming und
(wieder-)entdeckt
55

56. Wir haben bislang gute Erfolge mit agiler Entwicklung im Projektumfeld
gemacht.
Auch die Erfolge sind viel versprechend.
Daher wollen wir diesen Weg immer weiter gehen. Die nächsten Schritte
sind:
- Agile Operations
- Agiles Management
- Agile Projekte im Kunden Lieferanten Umfeld...
56

57. You are the one of the best experts in the field our your work.
Inspired by this years nobel price winner:
Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo has been given PEACE NOBEL PRIZE of 2010.
- So is agile just another way to shove more work down the organization?
- What will happen to managers like me in the future, if the people themselves
become mature process designers?
- Are we ready for true democracy?
I believe, future better communication will change the world.
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59. DISCLAIMER
This presentation was produced in November 2009 by XING AG (the
"Company") solely for use as an information source for potential business
partners and is strictly confidential. It has been made available to you
solely for your own information and may not be copied, distributed or
otherwise made available to any other person by any recipient. This
presentation is not an offer for sale of securities in the United States. The
distribution of this presentation to you does not constitute an offer or
invitation to subscribe for, or purchase, any shares of the XING AG and
neither this presentation nor anything contained herein shall form the basis
of, or be relied on in connection with, any offer or commitment whatsoever.
The facts and information contained herein are as up-to-date as is
reasonably possible and are subject to revision in the future. Neither the
Company nor any of its subsidiaries, any directors, officers, employees,
advisors nor any other person makes any representation or warranty,
express or implied as to, and no reliance should be placed on, the
accuracy or completeness of the information contained in this presentation.
Neither the Company nor any of its subsidiaries, any directors, officers,
employees, advisors or any other person shall have any liability
whatsoever for any loss arising, directly or indirectly, from any use of this
presentation. The same applies to information contained in other material
made available at the presentation.
While all reasonable care has been taken to ensure the facts stated herein
are accurate and that the opinions contained herein are fair and
reasonable, this document is selective in nature and is intended to provide
an introduction to, and overview of, the business of the Company. Where
any information and statistics are quoted from any external source, such
information or statistics should not be interpreted as having been adopted
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