15. Why do today what you can easily
put off until tomorrow?
16. Why try to get a lot of stuff done
when you could just do one thing
instead?
17. Swarm Example
• 5 developers (25 dev days)
• 5 x 1 week projects (25 dev days)
• Do Lots – done in a week
• Swarm – done in a week
18. Minds Change on Tuesday
• Do Lots: nothing ready to ship, wasted 2 days
• Swarm: 2 projects ready to ship, wasted zero
Being Busy != Being Productive
Being Productive = Shipping Code
Shipped Code = Opportunity to Gain Value
37. How We Roll
Monitoring and Alerting Cacti (OS) and Nagios (OS)
Servers Wowrack, Wordpress.com, Linode, MediaTemple
Deployment ICHC Publisher (IH)
Continuous Integration Team City (Free,$), NCover ($)
Source Control Mercurial (OS)
Code Review Review Board (OS)
Test Automation Visual Studio ($), ASUnit ($), iMacros ($) , Selenium (OS)
Development Environment Visual Studio ($), Zend Studio ($), CS3 ($), ReSharper ($)
OS: Open Source
IH: In-House/Proprietary
$: Licensed
38. How We Connect
• Gmail, Google Talk
and Google Docs (Free)
• Skype (Free)
• Tokbox (Free)
• Campfire (Almost Free)
• FogBugz ($)
50. Moral of the Story
Lazy = Conserve Resources
Messy = Progress vs. Perfection
Backwards = Solid Foundation
Lazy + Messy + Backwards = WIN!
51. KTHXBAI!
Scott Porad
CTO, Pet Holdings, Inc.
scott@cheezburger.com
http://scottporad.com
http://twitter.com/scottporad
Editor's Notes
Hello!
Pet Holdings is the company behind the hugely popular I Can Has Cheezburger? and Failblog.org. A quick show of hands: Who is familiar with our sites? Is it part of anybody’s daily “coffee break” routine? Okay, last question: has anybody actually created a LOLcat or submitted a FAIL to Failblog?Well, if you’re not familiar with these sites, let me give you a quick introduction:Two points – humor and entertainment-- user-generated / user-driven model
Growing Really FastSmall Teammaximize resources and productivityFlexible and adaptHappy and successfulDidn’t design this philosophy intentionally,Lots of Agile and Lean
Minimum necessary to get what you need.Resources are limited.Corollary: wasteGet what you need is an important phrase
User-generated and user-driven modelAPI
Previous stuffOpen sourceFree Services – JS-KIT, GoogleAnalytics drugstore.comThink carefully about core competencies -- Joel spolsky, core competency … never outsourceBackwards example: S&S Toys
We rely heavily on partners:Wordpress, JS-KIT and WowrackTwo aspects to strategic partners: strengths and weaknesses
2 Agile Concepts - Simplest Thing that Could Possibly Work - Minimum Marketable FeatureTwo examples - Recommendations - Farm Sites – e-mail us content – but we get them now
Another Agile concept: wait until the last responsible moment.there’s lots of stuff that MUST be done today, so focus on that.if it doesn’t need to be done today, then you might change your mind which will cause waste.
We do swarm: -- greater flexibility -- faster progressSuccess begets success
Being busy and making value / getting stuff done.
Comixed Builder or the Walmart Game Key: tight feedback loop.
Approval ProblemOTOH: E-mail system
We: ship brokenApple: prefers not to shipBut we can’t do both…if we did, we’d run out of money before we shipped.
Opposite: push off the things people tend to do too early
Martin: Firefighter vs. Fire Marshall
TALK about DEPLOYMENT
Hello!My name is Scott Porad and I am the CTO at Pet Holdings, Inc. Before PHI, drugstore.comBefore that, ESPN.com at StarwaveAnd before that I lived in NYC where I worked for Seth Godin’sYoyodyne Entertainment and a little company called Small World Software
