Davide ‘Folletto’ Casali

THE MAKING OF CALYPSO A TEAM PERSPECTIVE

Manifesto Ibridi F E L L O W

UX REDIRECTOR ADVISOR

NIGHT.EU

@Folletto

CALYPSO

PART I

WordPress OPENSOURCE CORE

Calypso

REST API

Front-End Theme

ADMIN USER SITE USER

FRAMEWORK

NOTIFICATIONSWIDGETS

CATEGORIESTAGS

USERSMENUS

SHARECUSTOMIZE

MEDIATHEMES

STATSCOMMENT

PAGESPOSTS

AUTHENTICATIONNAVIGATION

CALYPSO BEFORE CALYPSO TIMELINE

Open Source v1 ~20 months

Prototype ~3 months

Wireframe ~1 month

previous work

127Contributors

26,030Commits

6,915Reviews

March 2014 → November 2015 (20 months)

…how did you do that?You’re fully distributed…

Communication is Oxygen

Good, social, efficient

~470People

worldwide

~160kMessages per week

~1,000Deployments

per week

Highly Independent Individuals

Initiative and motivation

HYPERION

FRAMEWORK

NOTIFICATIONSWIDGETS

CATEGORIESTAGS

USERSMENUS

SHARECUSTOMIZE

MEDIATHEMES

STATSCOMMENT

PAGESPOSTS

AUTHENTICATIONNAVIGATION

THEME SHOWCASE

PART II

Themes

v2.0

THX

v4.0 v4.0

3 codebases

DIFFICULT TO MAINTAIN

3 designs

PAINFUL FOR USERS

Create one single Theme Showcase

for WordPress.com

LET’S BUILD

PART III

Meetups: face time is important

Know your people

MEETUP IN VIENNA HYPERION

14 April 2015

Pains Goals

Epic Planning

Only user-facing features

One major feature

Many smaller details & fixes

EACH MILESTONE HAS:

“”

Steve Seear, Hyperion

I found this session really valuable. It was intense, challenging,

and led on to a lot more discussions.

“”

Miguel Fonseca, Hyperion

+1000 on the value and ROI of our meetup exercises.

Focus on one thing

Communicate it well

FIRST MILESTONE

PART IV

Clear Communication Spaces

Each with a need

Slack Realtime

P2 Theme Async

Wiki Theme Stable

P2 W

TEXT STANDUP POSTED ON SLACK

INITIAL ROADMAP POSTED ON TEAM P2

MASTER THREAD POSTED ON TEAM P2

DES

IGN

ITER

ATI

ON

1

DES

IGN

ITER

ATI

ON

2

DES

IGN

ITER

ATI

ON

3

DES

IGN

ITER

ATI

ON

4

DES

IGN

ITER

ATI

ON

5

ITERATIONS POSTED ON P2

TRANSPARENT FEEDBACK

25

11

15

10

28

9

1

16

In Progress

Ready to Merge

Needs Review

Needs Design Review

In Progress

Ready to Merge

Needs Review

Transparency across all teams

Everything is visible

Horizon External Testing

JULY 21 JULY 15

Automattic Internal Testing

horizonfeedback.wordpress.com

M1 LAUNCHED 3 August 2015

THEME SHOWCASE M1 IN NUMBERS

5Design

Iterations

11Horizon Testers

6Automattic

Testers

100+Feedbacks &

Comments

124GitHub Tickets

85GitHub

Pull Requests

THEME SHOWCASE M1 TIMELINE

LIVE ~3.5 months

Meetup 4 days

THEME SHOWCASE M1 SALES CHECK

PRINCIPLES

PART V

THE REMOTENESS CONTINUUM

Distributed 100%

Local 100%

Remote in between

A separate floor, office, city, country…

MAKES THE COMPANY ALREADY REMOTE

Communication is Oxygen

Highly Independent Individuals

Meetups: face time is important

Focus on one thing

Clear communication spaces

Transparency across all teams

1 2 3

4 5 6

“

”Bruno Munari

To complicate is easy, to simplify is hard. To complicate, just add,

everyone is able to complicate. Few are able to simplify.

Thanks.

@Folletto

INTENSEMINIMALISM.COM