Etsy, a web-based market for distinctive, handmade, and classic objects, has
seen excessive development over the past 5 years. Then the pandemic dramatically
modified buyers’ habits, resulting in extra shoppers purchasing on-line. As a
outcome, the Etsy market grew from 45.7 million consumers on the finish of
2019 to 90.1 million consumers (97{de3f20c92ce224378c09657b28617526652b620c87a49ae1e3163637825b2011}) on the finish of 2021 and from 2.5 to five.3
million (112{de3f20c92ce224378c09657b28617526652b620c87a49ae1e3163637825b2011}) 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 in a position to ship new and improved
performance, and {the marketplace} continued to offer a glorious buyer
expertise. This text and the following kind 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 just lately joined as Etsy’s
CEO, and was establishing institutional self-discipline to usher in a interval of
development. 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 Art of Scalability
and Scalability Rules.
Etsy relied on bodily {hardware} in two information facilities, presenting a number of
scaling challenges. With their anticipated development, it was obvious that the
prices would ramp up rapidly. It affected product groups’ agility as that they had
to plan far upfront for capability. As well as, the info facilities have been
based mostly in a single state, which represented an availability danger. It was clear
they wanted to maneuver onto the cloud rapidly. After an evaluation, Mike and
his workforce selected the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) because the cloud companion and
began to plan a program to maneuver their
many techniques onto the cloud.
Whereas the cloud migration was occurring, Etsy was rising its enterprise and
its workforce. 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 workforce was delivering in several methods. Becoming a member of a workforce
meant studying a brand new set of practices, which was problematic as Etsy was
hiring many new individuals. As well as, that they had seen 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 chance
to scale product supply and usher in some exterior experience, they began
searching for a vendor. After an intensive search, they chose Thoughtworks,
primarily as a result of they perceived an in depth cultural match and deep alignment
concerning fashionable software program growth.
Thoughtworks has an analogous method to Agile as Etsy – being Agile
slightly than doing Agile. Etsy’s workforce was not seeking to undertake a
methodology that blindly follows strict rituals and practices, and wished
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
concerning worker care, variety, open-source, and know-how
sustainability.
The Thoughtworks workforce began by embedding into product groups, working with
each purchaser and vendor groups, on numerous crucial initiatives reminiscent of fee
mannequin adjustments, Search Engine Optimization (search engine optimisation), and a notification platform.
This enabled Thoughtworks to grasp how Etsy labored, created an instantaneous
impression on supply, and improved growth practices reminiscent of automated
testing.
For Thoughtworks, Etsy was fairly completely different from the everyday consumer.
They’re a completely digital firm, and their technical course of and product
practises are very mature. Not like most shoppers who have interaction Thoughtworks,
Etsy had no massive transformation to undertake, and no ingrained habits
that wanted a significant shift. What they have been in search of 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
alternate of concepts drawn from completely different experiences.
Scaling Product Supply and Discovery
Thoughtworks and Etsy shaped a cross-functional Product Supply
Tradition (PDC) workforce to investigate the present product supply and discovery
course of. They analyzed all the software program growth worth stream,
trying carefully on the complaints of managers and workforce members. Chosen
occasions have been replayed to realize a deep understanding of “how” it occurred
rather than who?. The Thoughtworks
workforce, as a result of they hadn’t lived by way of the issues, have been in a position to convey
an goal outsider perspective.
There have been numerous issues Etsy was doing rather 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
apply of their method. A code change sitting in a repository and never
deployed to customers just isn’t worthwhile, and successfully prices the corporate cash. Etsy
deploys a whole bunch 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
characteristic doesn’t ship sufficient worth versus its price, as evidenced by an A/B
check, it’s not rolled out, and the code is eliminated.
The workforce additionally uncovered alternatives for enchancment:
- Every workforce was doing supply in several 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 numerous initiatives that had not created worth as
they anticipated. For instance, Etsy tried a present wrap characteristic that had
decrease than anticipated adoption charges by sellers and consumers. - Previous to 2018, Etsy had been by way of a transitional interval, with
pivots in product technique and management adjustments main some product
managers to expres a need for larger possession over their product
choices.
Time to studying
The workforce created an enchancment program, based mostly on lean considering and the
concepts of Marty Cagan, who had just lately introduced at Etsy. The management workforce was
studying his e-book Impressed.
I promise you that at the very least half the concepts
in your roadmap are usually not 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 gained’t
carry out like they hope.)
After some preliminary analysis the workforce got here up with a metric they known as Time
to Studying – the time it took for a product workforce to validate an concept with a
buyer and acquire a greater understanding of its worth. That they had a baseline of
50 days that they wished to cut back.
They have been additionally taking a look at different metrics.
- Bettering the time to market
- Bettering the effectiveness of merchandise (e.g. income, buyer
engagement) - Worker happiness
To impression the KPIs, they got here up with numerous resolution hypotheses:
Lightweight prototypes that incorporate extra direct consumer analysis
Etsy has sturdy experimentation infrastructure and analytics capabilities.
They run many concurrent A/B checks on {the marketplace}. The issue the PDC
workforce noticed is that the suggestions cycle might be fairly sluggish. For an concept to be
prepared for an A/B check it needed to be close to production-level high quality. It additionally had
to have sufficient information to point out statistical relevance. A/B checks would run for
months in lesser-used elements of {the marketplace}.
To set your expectations, sturdy groups usually
check many product concepts every week—on the order of 10 to twenty or extra per week. I
need to emphasize that these are experiments, usually 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 workforce utilized a lean UX
method. First, they began by rapidly creating lo-fi prototypes and
instantly displaying them to customers. Second, the workforce 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 workforce frequently
working forward of a supply workforce. The thought was to effectively acquire confidence
in an concept earlier than it qualifies for an A/B check. By lowering the price of
experimentation, they may enhance the variability 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 workforce leaders, got here up with a set of
product supply rules and associated supply apply adjustments. The
practices included: smaller extra targeted tales, redesigning story partitions to
higher match the workforce course of, utilizing spikes to cut back technical uncertainty, and
higher methods of managing tech debt. They didn’t need to take away the autonomy of
groups. Steady enchancment is an enormous a part of Etsy tradition. These practices
are supposed to be handled as smart defaults that may be tailored and improved
for every workforce’s particular context.
The PDC workforce first examined the apply adjustments on pilot product groups to
set up their effectiveness after which iterated. As soon as the apply
demonstrated an enchancment, the workforce added to a data base and supplied
mild 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, though there was
not clear proof of the initiative creating worth. That is the everyday sunk
price downside. To resolve this, the PDC workforce
advised taking a lean method to portfolio administration.
Our runway must be a listing of hypotheses to check, not a listing of
necessities to construct. Once we reward our groups for his or her skill to ship
necessities, it’s straightforward to quickly bloat our merchandise with pointless
options—resulting in elevated complexity, larger upkeep prices, and
restricted skill to alter. Options delivered are usually not a measure of success,
enterprise outcomes are. Our runway is a collection of questions that we have to
check to cut back uncertainty and enhance our understanding of development
alternatives.
As an alternative of making prolonged undertaking specs and plans, the PDC workforce
coached product groups to develop consequence statements for every initiative. With
consequence statements, beginning with a buyer or enterprise consequence permits the
workforce to experiment with many alternative concepts to realize the result by tying
them to measurable KPIs. The much less exact an consequence is, together with its KPIs,
the more durable it’s to specify. When making ready for attainable initiatives, every
product workforce created a two-page temporary summarizing the result, the measurable
impression, and the preliminary funding required.
The manager workforce prioritized the result statements, and every assertion
was considered as a “wager” amongst a portfolio. Impressed by the Lean Worth Tree
idea, the manager workforce would apply a daily cadence to find out if a
wager 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 a part of consumer suggestions periods. The workforce examined
engineers becoming a member of the speculation era and validation periods and
working carefully with designers throughout design sprints. The outcomes of the check
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 rapidly create prototypes to
reveal concepts to customers. Cross-functional engagement allowed engineers to
contribute numerous 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 implies they’re in a position to 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 might for a buyer product.
What was the impression of product supply tradition?
Testing with pilot groups indicated that the Time to Studying went from 50
days to five days. Through the pilot, one product supervisor mentioned, “What I like about
the [direct user research sessions] pilot is that it lets us check 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 a substitute delivered eleven million {dollars} in incremental worth utilizing
the PDC advised enhancements. Following this pilot success, the workforce coached
all the product growth group on the product supply method.
In response to Mike Fisher, “It is rather 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 sort. 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 constructive. We had improved our velocity by doing this
work, and we have been in a position to produce finally extra advantages for the consumers and
sellers – extra options, higher search, higher processes; the entire
market grew to become higher for consumers and sellers and that was the aim.”
