This is the story of Etsy's continuous development process, applied to the workflow of our growing operations team. We will explore the changes to our collaborative relationships, ongoing management challenges, and the changes to workflow that have helped Etsy operations scale. From a team of three to a team of nearly 30, we've gone from one big old list, to Kanban and now to BeerKan, and we've found that the ideas of workflow and management are interdependent, and both have an impact on failures and successes. As with any good Surge talk, we will talk about what went right, what went wrong, and give the audience confidence to decide how to shape their own workflow when making similar choices within their organization.

1. Scaling Workflow
&
Management
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2. Michael
Rembetsy
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3. Michael
Rembetsy
VP, Technical Operations
@mrembetsy
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6. About
• 30 Million Members
• 900K Shops
• 1.4Billion Page views/Month
• 200 countries
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7. • 400+ full time Employees
• Average 35 Web Deploys Daily
• We have offices around the world
About
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9. The Team
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15. ...of late 2008
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18. A Big List
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20. Management
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22. The Good
• Progress made with technical debt
• With few direct reports a big list
worked
• Cooperation
• Community communication
• Hiring push
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23. The Bad
• Risking burn out
• Priorities
• Easily context switched
• Always putting out fires and not
focused on people.
• Lack of clarity of what other are
working on
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24. 2008 End of Year
Snapshot
• Gross Merchandise Sales: $87.3
million
• Total Employees: 49
• Total Engineers 12
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25. 2009 End of Year
Snapshot
• GMS: $177 million (102.6%)
• Total Employees: 80 (63%)
• Total Engineers: 26 (116%)
• Page Views: 6.45 billion
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27. The Team 2010
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29. Kanban
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30. Why Kanban
• Better transparency inside the operations
team and out
• Higher output of work
• Less context switching
• More conversation around priorities
• Felt better as a team working!
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31. Show me how it works
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36. Limted #’s
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39. Management
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40. Management
• Accept failures but not lower standards
• Доверяй, но проверяй
• Blameless post-mortems
• Welcome one-on-ones (http://bit.ly/cCWMqr)
• Career planning
• Happy company = happy community
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43. The Good
• Single point of transparency
• Prioritization
• Acceptance
• Communication improvements
• Collaboration thrives
• Visibility
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44. The Bad
• Lack of metrics
• Tooling was inflexible
• Reporting was time consuming
• and..
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45. The Ugly?
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46. The Blockers
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47. • Gross Merchandise Sales: $307
million (73.4%)
• Total Employees: 177 (121%)
• Total Engineers: 75 (188%)
• Page Views: 9.25 billion (43.5%)
2010 End of Year
Snapshot
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48. • Gross Merchandise Sales: $526
million (71.4%)
• Total Employees: 269 (52%)
• Total Engineers: 109 (45%)
• Page Views: 12.9 billion (39.3%)
2011 End of Year
Snapshot
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49. 2012 End of Year
Snapshot
• Gross Merchandise Sales: $895
million (70.3%)
• Total Employees: 381 (41%)
• Total Engineers: 156 (43%)
• Page Views: 16.7 billion (30%)
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50. Monday, September 16, 13

51. So we changed
• Removed blockers
• Metrics
• Empowered the team
• Due dates
• Team expanded
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53. BeerKan
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54. What is it?
• It is our workflow version of Kanban
• has more movement
• has more flexiblity
• better metrics
• and...
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55. Driven by those
closest to the work
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61. Lets take a closer look at
the backlog flexibility
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66. Lets take a closer look
at the In Progress
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69. Queue Backlog
Done
In ProgressProject
Someday
P1 P3P2
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70. The Good
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74. What that?
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79. The Good
• It is our workflow
• Collaboration happening more
• More flexible
• Identifying issues quicker before user
impact
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80. The Bad
• Hard to say we are doing better
• Need more data
• Data can be misleading (old tickets!)
• Keeping the queue clear
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81. Lets Sum It Up
• Try something new
• Don’t be afraid to change it
• Measure it
• Start small
• Keep it simple
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82. Questions?
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83. Credits
• http://www.nicoledextras.com/index.php?/
wordssummer/culture/
• http://www.mcfc.co.uk/citytv/features/2013/
august/rewind-v-hull-city-2008
• http://www.revivebismarck.org/in-the-
beginning/
• http://www.inkhouse.net/wp-content/
uploads/2012/03/self-confidence3.jpg
• http://soowhatnow.files.wordpress.com/
2012/06/hair-on-fire.jpg
• http://realitypod.com/2010/07/top-10-ways-
to-pay-for-your-college/train-series-motion-
blur-of-a-fast-moving-train/
• https://www.etsy.com/shop/
MaryandVincent?ref=l2-shopheader-name
• https://www.etsy.com/listing/156380047/
keep-calm-and-go-with-the-flow-printable?
ref=sr_gallery_1&ga_search_query=keep
+calm+and+go+with+the
+flow&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=U
S&ga_search_type=all&ga_facet=keep
+calm+and+go+with+the+flow
• http://www.monsterthinking.com/wp-content/
uploads/dream-jobs.jpg
• http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/
featured/most-incredible-mazes-labyrinths/
4117
• https://www.etsy.com/shop/amyriceart?
ref=l2-shopheader-name
• http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/
krasphoto/krasphoto1202/
krasphoto120200015/12423799-beer-can-
isolated-on-white-background.jpg
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