Post on 12-Apr-2017
Blending ITIL, Agile, DevOps and LeanUX at Auto Trader UK
@4ndyHumphrey
The Auto Trader Bit
Our Magazine History
1977 1988 1995 2008 2013
• Online
Our Online History – AutoTrader.co.uk
1996 2002 2010 2011 2015
Our People
PRIVATE Car Sellers
Trade Car Dealers
30,000
15,000
Auto Trader Staff
Product & Tech Teams
850
275
Our Customers
Our Technology Platform
Servers2400
UK Datacentres2
Services switched routinely
Our Technology Platform
1.2 billion page views per month
70 million peak page views per day
15 million unique visitors per month
Supported by 100 live applications
TechnologyArchitecture, Tech
Stack
OrganisationStructure, Culture, Location, Finance
ProductProject Methodology,
Product Design
Service Transition
A process that’s evolving
ITIL Foundation
1
Organise as a Digital
Company
Agile Transformatio
n
Continuous Product
Discovery
32 4
Our ITIL Foundation“What gets measured gets improved”
Peter Drucker
1
Strong Service Management Team
Getting our platform under control
Reporting and measurement
Continuous Improvement
Pragmatic, Focused on Business Value
Our ITIL foundation
Challenges we faced
Started to hit limitations
Too bureaucratic
Safety through control (change freeze?)
Un-scalable
Focussed on process over relationships
Complicated manual
processes
Detailed planning
Extensive approval process
Releases are complicated and costly
Infrequent Releases
Example: Service Transition
BIG BATCH DEATH SPIRAL!
Agile transformation2
What is Agile? - Values
Individuals and interactions over Processes and tools
Working software over Comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over Contract negotiation
Responding to change over Following a plan
http://www.agilemanifesto.org/
What is Agile? - Practices
Incrementally Instead of all at once
Effect on Service Transition
More face to face communication
CAB
Change Board (CAB)
Kanban for small changes
Kanban for small changes
More automation of build and test
Less, more oftenSmaller releases - Faster
Release all week
Safer releases – Open the floodgates
Release Team as Go-Betweens
Scaled using Release Team as go-betweens
“Monitoring is a tool for building a relationship between ops, developers and business”
Noah Zucker: https://twitter.com/noahlz
Effects on Release volume / success
FY10 FY11 FY12 FY130
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
1400
1600
Release Volume over Time
Effects on Release volume / success
FY10 FY11 FY12 FY1380.00%
85.00%
90.00%
95.00%
100.00%
Release Success rate over Time
Organize as a Digital Comapany3
till some Organisational Problems
Still some organisational problems
Still some Release Problems
Still some Release Process problems
Re-organization 2013
Product and Technology Teams brought together
Manchester
Spotify Engineering model
Small, multi-disciplinary team
Autonomous
Based around a Purpose
Led by Tech and Product experts
https://labs.spotify.com/2014/03/27/spotify-engineering-culture-part-1/
TRIBE – Audience + Brand
TRIBE – Retail Products TRIBE – Customer Experience
What did that mean for Service Transition?
Focused on Automation
Auto DeployAutomate deployments in Production
Long Automated Release migration
Mar 2014
Apr 2014
Apr 2014
May 2014
May 2014
Jun 2014
Jun 2014
Jun 2014
Jul 2014
Jul 2014
Aug 2014
Aug 2014
Sep 2014
Sep 2014
Sep 2014
Oct 2014
Oct 2014
Nov 2014
Nov 2014
Dec 2014
Dec 2014
Dec 2014
Jan 2015
Jan 2015
Feb 2015
Feb 2015
Mar 2015
Mar 2015
Mar 2015
Apr 2015
Apr 2015
May 2015
May 2015
Jun 2015
Jun 2015
Jun 2015
Jul 2015
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Auto Deployments Manual Deployments
Deployments by week: Auto vs Manual
Changing Release process again
Gradually given Delivery Squads the ability to LIVE release
Start to push Operational responsibility back to Delivery Squads
Our purpose: “To lead Continuous Delivery and innovation of the Auto Trader platform”
Operations teams then Re-organized as Squads.
Effect on our Service Transition Process
FY11 FY12 FY13 FY14 FY15 FY160
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
Release Totals
Overall Success Total Releases
Effect on our Service Transition Process
FY11 FY12 FY13 FY14 FY15 FY1693.0%
94.0%
95.0%
96.0%
97.0%
98.0%
99.0%
Release Success
Impact on working culture
End of Project Culture
End of Contractor Army
Operational and Technical issues highly valued
Improved operational responsibility within Squads
Continuous Product Discovery“Prediction is difficult, especially about the future”
Niels Bohr
4
Still some Organisational Problems
Starting to build the things right… but are we building the right things?
How do we build the right things right?
Product Discovery
Discover which changes add value by iterating designs and experiments with your customers
Change in approach
New Requirements Become Assumptions
We know Becomes We believe
Let’s build it Becomes Lets test it!
http://www.slideshare.net/jgothelf/better-product-definition-with-lean-ux-and-design-thinking
Data centeredScientificIterative approach
Not just Software - All Business Changes e.g. Process!
Product Discovery – effects on Service Transition
Squads need to prototype and experiment more with their customers
All ideas and decisions are validated with Data
Another step change in the numbers of changes
Needs new levels of of automation and self service
Our Business is continuing to grow and change
http://www.londonstockexchange.com/