KANBAN at MOBILE.DE Creating the Perfect Process, One Block at a Time
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KANBAN AT MOBILE.DE Creating the Perfect Process, One Block at a Time KANBANCASESTUDYSERIES pple’s App Store users gave it a one-star rating. The first entry by the online search tool for Abuying and selling vehicles, mobile.de, on the portable devices arena was not receiving a standing ovation by any means. Ralf Tomczak, mobile.de’s CTO, stood in disbelief as he saw how many downloads were followed by user reviews far below the top score of five. “We knew our first mobile application could be better, but we never expected the users to be that harsh,” he says. The year was 2010; iOS application downloads had reached the billion mark, and users were already being spoiled by a growing talent force equipped to make their mobile experience fulfilling and meaningful. Mediocre applications were not simply being criticized; they were also tarnishing the images of the companies that released them. A mid-September Friday in 2013 is Holger Hammel’s last day as Development Manager of the mobile development team for mobile.de. He is moving on to his next assignment within the parent company, eBay Inc., leaving behind three mobile applications and a mobile version of mobile.de. The rewritten iOS app now has an average ranking of 4.5 stars. The team has created iPad and Android apps and a mobile website portal. The site carries an app-like look and feel and generates roughly 35 percent of the overall traffic for the service. This is the story of how Holger and his team turned the odds with the help of the Kanban Method and Lean Thinking. In just two years they have managed to put the applications at the top of the mobile rankings for Germany. Background Facing a major reengineering, of visualizing the knowledge work and mobile.de was advised by the German instituting process changes to make it Holger first started working for the consulting company IT-Agile to flow more smoothly—both on the team Berlin-based company mobile.de in adopt emerging Agile practices such level and on the portfolio-management 2007 as a freelance developer, and he as Scrum1. At the time, companies level—were successfully implemented. later accepted a permanent position. worldwide were reporting improved By 2010, with an already The Internet platform hosts more delivery rates for software and reengineered browser experience, than a million offers for vehicles from significantly greater commitment from Ralf and the rest of the senior-level both private owners and dealers. team members through the increased managers decided to pursue the mobile Used primarily in Germany, as well involvement and empowerment such domain and extend the company’s as in many other Central and Eastern Agile practices provide. services in that direction. At the European countries, it receives up to Scrum helped the teams become time, it made more sense to hire 2,000 queries a second. more effcient, but a few things seemed an experienced external agency to The business was established in to be missing in the new Agile reality: produce the application rather than 1996 and was acquired by the giant the flow of ideas, a picture of all build a team from in-house developers, eBay Inc. in 2004. Soon after the ongoing projects, and the important as they would have had to learn the acquisition, the company grew and had combination of both a viable plan and platform first. to scale up to meet the consequences predictable feature delivery. In 2010, Apple’s iPhone and its of increased user demand, as well as In the search for something that mobile App Store were far more deal with the side effects of having a could address all of these, Kanban advanced than any others in the bigger team. The development teams Method practices were introduced on market, so the choice to go for the iOS realized as they faced these challenges top of Scrum in the following years. platform was obvious. that something in their process had to With time and the help of the external “We had objections toward the change. coaches from IT-Agile, the practices visuals and user experience of the – 2 – realize how weak the underlying During this time, Holger was a tickets per column, people present at technology of the proposed application software engineer on another team. or moderating those daily meetings— was,” Ralf recalls. Through the years he had developed nothing was ever a constant. He Experienced mobile users, curious a particular interest in the Kanban loved the idea of such freedom. His and enthusiastic for the product, Method. While he was on a Scrum colleagues told him that with each quickly found an array of glitches in team he noticed other teams that change the process became better. the app. Ralf soon realized that no visualized their work on whiteboards He was particularly interested in shortcuts were allowed in mobile. referred to as Kanban boards. seeing that even to an outsider like “Seven million people use mobile. Those boards were divided him, all these things seemed easy to de. We had to face the fact that many into columns that represented the spot. It was the inherent transparency of them were now wanting to look for individual process steps that a piece of that Kanban provided that gave such their next car on their mobile devices. work underwent from input and ready- detailed insight. If we wanted them to continue using for-development to deployment and He began reading more about the mobile.de, we had to provide a smooth release. The work items were written Kanban Method and became fascinated experience for that,” Ralf says. on colored post-it notes and put on the with another aspect of it: Some argued The mobile application needed to board. that estimating delivery time might not carry the spirit and philosophy that Holger saw his colleagues on the be necessary. Delivering features in a made mobile.de so popular. Internal other teams attend stand-up meetings reliable and constant flow seemed to developers knew best how to do that. every morning. He overheard them be much more vital than estimating. Learning and adapting to the mobile discussing tickets, especially the ones How much time that actually took was environment was the easier part of the that were not moving along the board a matter of measuring the progress equation. as easily as others. of tasks in real time. He had tried to “We figured out that the only chance Holger paid attention and saw convince his team leads to try the for a good mobile application to pop something particularly interesting: approach, but they never agreed, up was if a team was created and Nothing in the process stayed the same, thinking that it interfered with the nurtured in its own space with only and over time, many things changed. underlying principles of Scrum. that priority in mind,” Ralf explains. Names of the columns, numbers of – 3 – The Beginning Such an approach had its risks. “It might have taken us less time if Holger and the team were ready to we had selected an existing framework The mobile development team take responsibility for those risks. The and made it work for us. We all shared was established in 2011. Holger was question was, would the managers high expectations that the user base assigned as the Team Lead. Initially above agree? would grow exponentially. Without there were two developers, a Quality Projects in mobile.de were usually a tailor-made backbone to meet Assurance engineer, and a Product executed with clear milestones and that, chances were that the servers Owner. accountability for the investment of would crash and annoy users,” Holger “We were all very experienced in resources. Previous Kanban Method explains. building a high-traffic e-commerce adoptions had improved delivery, but Within a few months the backend website, but we knew little about how they came on top of existing release was built. to do mobile applications, and it was plans and processes. The mobile With the help of external developers certain we would run into pitfalls and team was the first ever to start from from IT-Agile, the team tried to salvage issues along the way where the answer scratch with Kanban; they insisted the iOS app. They realized it had to be could not be found in the codebase. We on no iterations, no estimations, and rebuilt from scratch to make it user- might have had to spend the first few no deadlines, just a constant flow of friendly, stable, and maintainable in the months outlining ideas and preparing a communication, learning, and delivery. long run. solution, but such preparation felt like “It did require a leap of faith that Part of the team took on rewriting a complete waste,” Holger says. this team, with no track record, would the iOS app and a little over a year The project had strategic value for succeed from the start, without metrics after the team was first assembled, the company, not only in economic to hold them accountable, using just a many iPhones owner in Germany had terms, but also in terms of proving Kanban board,” Ralf says. a much better way to look for their mobile.de’s ability to be an innovative The team made a commitment to next car. But the endeavour was far and fast-moving company. The team experiment with various solutions from over: a new mobile platform was had to start developing immediately. to each of the design and software growing hungry for apps. To ensure their endeavor, they architecture problems they came across decided to rely on the Kanban Method.