Etsy, a web based market for distinctive, handmade, and classic gadgets, has
seen excessive progress over the past 5 years. Then the pandemic dramatically
modified customers’ habits, resulting in extra shoppers purchasing on-line. As a
end result, the Etsy market grew from 45.7 million patrons on the finish of
2019 to 90.1 million patrons (97%) on the finish of 2021 and from 2.5 to five.3
million (112%) sellers in the identical interval.
The expansion massively elevated demand on the technical platform, scaling
site visitors virtually 3X in a single day. And Etsy had signifcantly extra clients for
whom it wanted to proceed delivering nice experiences. To maintain up with
that demand, they needed to scale up infrastructure, product supply, and
expertise drastically. Whereas the expansion challenged groups, the enterprise was by no means
bottlenecked. Etsy’s groups have been capable of ship new and improved
performance, and {the marketplace} continued to supply a wonderful buyer
expertise. This text and the following type the story of Etsy’s scaling technique.
Etsy’s foundational scaling work had began lengthy earlier than the pandemic. In
2017, Mike Fisher joined as CTO. Josh Silverman had not too long ago joined as Etsy’s
CEO, and was establishing institutional self-discipline to usher in a interval of
progress. Mike has a background in scaling high-growth firms, and alongside
with Martin Abbott wrote a number of books on the subject, together with The Artwork of Scalability
and Scalability Guidelines.
Etsy relied on bodily {hardware} in two information facilities, presenting a number of
scaling challenges. With their anticipated progress, it was obvious that the
prices would ramp up shortly. It affected product groups’ agility as they’d
to plan far upfront for capability. As well as, the info facilities have been
primarily based in a single state, which represented an availability threat. It was clear
they wanted to maneuver onto the cloud shortly. After an evaluation, Mike and
his crew selected the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) because the cloud companion and
began to plan a program to maneuver their
many programs onto the cloud.
Whereas the cloud migration was taking place, Etsy was rising its enterprise and
its crew. Mike recognized the product supply course of as being one other
potential scaling bottleneck. The autonomy afforded to product groups had
brought on a problem: every crew was delivering in numerous methods. Becoming a member of a crew
meant studying a brand new set of practices, which was problematic as Etsy was
hiring many new folks. As well as, they’d observed a number of product
initiatives that didn’t repay as anticipated. These indicators led management
to re-evaluate the effectiveness of their product planning and supply
processes.
Deciding on a companion
Etsy had by no means labored with a software program growth consultancy. To give you the option
to scale product supply and usher in some exterior experience, they began
searching for a vendor. After an in depth search, they chose Thoughtworks,
primarily as a result of they perceived a detailed cultural match and deep alignment
relating to trendy software program growth.
Thoughtworks has an identical method to Agile as Etsy – being Agile
relatively than doing Agile. Etsy’s crew was not seeking to undertake a
methodology that blindly follows strict rituals and practices, and needed
a companion that bases its method on agile rules and tradition.
Thoughtworks is thought for technical excellence and management in DevOps,
Steady Integration, and Steady Supply, all of which Etsy depends
on closely. As well as, the 2 firms shared comparable rules
relating to worker care, range, open-source, and expertise
sustainability.
The Thoughtworks crew began by embedding into product groups, working with
each purchaser and vendor groups, on numerous important initiatives akin to fee
mannequin adjustments, Search Engine Optimization (search engine marketing), and a notification platform.
This enabled Thoughtworks to know how Etsy labored, created a direct
influence on supply, and improved growth practices akin to automated
testing.
For Thoughtworks, Etsy was fairly totally different from the everyday consumer.
They’re a completely digital firm, and their technical course of and product
practises are very mature. In contrast to most purchasers who have interaction Thoughtworks,
Etsy had no massive transformation to undertake, and no ingrained habits
that wanted a serious shift. What they have been looking for was exterior perspective
and supplementive abilities, to assist them incrementally enhance and sort out
their urgent initiatives. The tradition and rules have been already very
aligned with Thoughtworks’ personal, so the partnership grew to become extra of an
change of concepts drawn from totally different experiences.
Scaling Product Supply and Discovery
Thoughtworks and Etsy fashioned a cross-functional Product Supply
Tradition (PDC) crew to investigate the present product supply and discovery
course of. They analyzed your entire software program growth worth stream,
wanting intently on the complaints of managers and crew members. Chosen
occasions have been replayed to achieve a deep understanding of “how” it occurred
relatively than who?. The Thoughtworks
crew, as a result of they hadn’t lived by means of the issues, have been capable of deliver
an goal outsider perspective.
There have been quite a few issues Etsy was doing very well:
- Cross-functional groups: They structured their groups round “4 desk legs”:
Product, Design, Engineering, and Analytics. All planning and supply practices
occur with collaboration among the many teams. - Incremental supply of worth to customers: Steady supply is the core
observe of their method. A code change sitting in a repository and never
deployed to customers just isn’t priceless, and successfully prices the corporate cash. Etsy
deploys a whole lot of occasions a day, with a 30-minute decide to manufacturing lead
time. - Options are prioritized utilizing information: Product managers and information analysts
collaborate to find out an anticipated worth, measured by KPI adjustments. If the
function doesn’t ship sufficient worth versus its value, as evidenced by an A/B
take a look at, it’s not rolled out, and the code is eliminated.
The crew additionally uncovered alternatives for enchancment:
- Every crew was doing supply in numerous methods, having disparate processes
and rituals, making onboarding new workers and altering groups tough. Some
groups have been utilizing a course of like Scrum, whereas others didn’t use any formal
course of. - There have been quite a few initiatives that had not created worth as
they anticipated. For instance, Etsy tried a present wrap function that had
decrease than anticipated adoption charges by sellers and patrons. - Previous to 2018, Etsy had been by means of a transitional interval, with
pivots in product technique and management adjustments main some product
managers to expres a need for better possession over their product
choices.
Time to studying
The crew created an enchancment program, primarily based on lean pondering and the
concepts of Marty Cagan, who had not too long ago offered at Etsy. The management crew was
studying his guide Impressed.
I promise you that at the very least half the concepts
in your roadmap aren’t going to ship what you hope. (By the way in which, the
actually good groups assume that at the very least three quarters of the concepts received’t
carry out like they hope.)
After some preliminary analysis the crew got here up with a metric they known as Time
to Studying – the time it took for a product crew to validate an thought with a
buyer and achieve a greater understanding of its worth. That they had a baseline of
50 days that they needed to scale back.
They have been additionally taking a look at different metrics.
- Enhancing the time to market
- Enhancing the effectiveness of merchandise (e.g. income, buyer
engagement) - Worker happiness
To influence the KPIs, they got here up with quite a few resolution hypotheses:
Lightweight prototypes that incorporate extra direct consumer analysis
Etsy has robust experimentation infrastructure and analytics capabilities.
They run many concurrent A/B exams on {the marketplace}. The issue the PDC
crew noticed is that the suggestions cycle will be fairly gradual. For an thought to be
prepared for an A/B take a look at it needed to be close to production-level high quality. It additionally had
to have sufficient information to indicate statistical relevance. A/B exams would run for
months in lesser-used components of {the marketplace}.
To set your expectations, robust groups usually
take a look at many product concepts every week—on the order of 10 to twenty or extra per week. I
need to emphasize that these are experiments, sometimes run utilizing prototypes.
A prototype just isn’t one thing that’s prepared for prime time and definitely not
one thing your organization would attempt to promote and stand behind. However they’re
immensely helpful, as they’re all about studying quick and low-cost.
To scale back the Time to Studying metric, the PDC crew utilized a lean UX
method. First, they began by shortly creating lo-fi prototypes and
instantly displaying them to customers. Second, the crew elevated consumer suggestions
periods to each two weeks and diminished the extent of ceremony. Third, they
created a dual-track system, with a design and analysis crew regularly
working forward of a supply crew. The thought was to effectively achieve confidence
in an thought earlier than it qualifies for an A/B take a look at. By lowering the price of
experimentation, they may enhance the range and amount of experiments,
discovering concepts that confirmed extra worth.
Determine 1: Experiment validation course of
Blueprint for product supply
The PDC, along with product crew leaders, got here up with a set of
product supply rules and associated supply observe adjustments. The
practices included: smaller extra targeted tales, redesigning story partitions to
higher match the crew course of, utilizing spikes to scale back technical uncertainty, and
higher methods of managing tech debt. They didn’t need to take away the autonomy of
groups. Steady enchancment is a giant a part of Etsy tradition. These practices
are supposed to be handled as wise defaults that may be tailored and improved
for every crew’s particular context.
The PDC crew first examined the observe adjustments on pilot product groups to
set up their effectiveness after which iterated. As soon as the observe
demonstrated an enchancment, the crew added to a data base and supplied
gentle teaching to introduce the brand new practices to all product groups throughout
Etsy.
Lean Portfolio administration
Some massive initiatives have been nonetheless being carried out, regardless that there was
not clear proof of the initiative creating worth. That is the everyday sunk
value drawback. To unravel this, the PDC crew
advised taking a lean method to portfolio administration.
Our runway needs to be an inventory of hypotheses to check, not an inventory of
necessities to construct. Once we reward our groups for his or her means to ship
necessities, it’s straightforward to quickly bloat our merchandise with pointless
options—resulting in elevated complexity, greater upkeep prices, and
restricted means to vary. Options delivered aren’t a measure of success,
enterprise outcomes are. Our runway is a collection of questions that we have to
take a look at to scale back uncertainty and enhance our understanding of progress
alternatives.
As a substitute of making prolonged mission specs and plans, the PDC crew
coached product groups to develop end result statements for every initiative. With
end result statements, beginning with a buyer or enterprise end result permits the
crew to experiment with many various concepts to attain the result by tying
them to measurable KPIs. The much less exact an end result is, together with its KPIs,
the tougher it’s to specify. When getting ready for attainable initiatives, every
product crew created a two-page temporary summarizing the result, the measurable
influence, and the preliminary funding required.
The chief crew prioritized the result statements, and every assertion
was considered as a “guess” amongst a portfolio. Impressed by the Lean Worth Tree
idea, the manager crew would observe a daily cadence to find out if a
guess was paying off, giving them the chance to pivot early.
Determine 2: An instance initiative assertion
Stronger product & engineering collaboration
One other enchancment was to incorporate engineers early within the product ideation
course of and to have them be part of consumer suggestions periods. The crew examined
engineers becoming a member of the speculation era and validation periods and
working intently with designers throughout design sprints. The outcomes of the take a look at
confirmed a number of advantages. Engineers improved their understanding of the
buyer, constructing empathy for his or her wants. They might present on-the-spot
suggestions on the feasibility of an method and shortly create prototypes to
show concepts to customers. Cross-functional engagement allowed engineers to
contribute quite a few nice concepts that made it to the product.
After the preliminary PDC initiative Etsy continued to strengthen the
collaboration between teams. At each degree of the group, product and
engineering are companions, which suggests they’re capable of have wholesome trade-off
discussions. The platform group expanded using product managers for
infrastructure and developer tooling groups – encouraging groups to consider
technical capabilities as merchandise and end-users being Etsy engineers. The
technical product managers do analysis and prioritization actions, simply as
they’d for a buyer product.
What was the influence of product supply tradition?
Testing with pilot groups indicated that the Time to Studying went from 50
days to five days. In the course of the pilot, one product supervisor mentioned, “What I like about
the (direct consumer analysis periods) pilot is that it lets us take a look at our concepts
quicker, it was very nice to not spend as a lot time diving deep into
one thing that we didn’t even know we have been going to make use of.” An initiative on
stock high quality that was predicted to ship a seven million greenback income
enhance as an alternative delivered eleven million {dollars} in incremental worth utilizing
the PDC advised enhancements. Following this pilot success, the crew coached
your entire product growth group on the product supply method.
In line with Mike Fisher, “It is vitally arduous to isolate the advantages of a
course of change on a company of a number of hundred engineers since we don’t
run A/B experiments of this kind. Nevertheless, we did have a look at excessive degree
productiveness metrics after having PDC applied for over 2 years, and all of
our metrics have been very optimistic. We had improved our velocity by doing this
work, and we have been capable of produce in the end extra advantages for the patrons and
sellers – extra options, higher search, higher processes; the entire
market grew to become higher for patrons and sellers and that was the purpose.”
