Wie skaliert man eine Firma?Jesper Richter-Reichhelm (@rirei)

Why are big companies so demotivating?

What motivates developers

anyway?

but intrinsic motivation is even

more important

Money is important ...

• Autonomy• Mastery• Purpose

Daniel PinkCheck out his TED talk at http://

bit.ly/1gqPsVe

• Purpose• Making progress• Reaching goals daily

Linda Rising Check out her keynote at http://

bit.ly/1fJ87dz

• Self organization• Improving yourself• Incremental work• Meaningful work

My takeaway

• Small teams• Collaboration• Innovation• Agile principles• Team as Function

Company takeaways

Organize a company to

maximize motivation

Wooga makes games

Independent teams

FE Dev

BE Dev

Art

Product

Each team makes one game -

owning it completely

2009: 20 employees

2013: 250+ employees

Scaling the company by adding

game teams

Wooga is an incubator for game

team startups

Game Teams

Prototyping2 members

Production6 - 10 members

Live8 - 15 members

Small teams Start small, grow if successful

agilemanifesto.org

Agile? Sure, but following values not

methods

Independence

Teams can ignore CEO’s

advice and decide themselves

Freedom

• Weekly rhythm• Transparency• Fail fast

Constraints

Standard Framework

Scrum, Kanban or

something else?

Programming

Language?

Framework?

Data Center?

Tools? ExternalServices?

Innovation

Innovation allows self

improvement and learning

Diversity breeds innovation

Responsibility keeps freedom in

check

“You build it, you run it.”- Werner Vogels

The game team is responsible for

ops & biz

Impact

Small team + freedom =>

maximum impact for everyone

Small teams

Agile principles

Independence

Perfect recipe to attract great developers

humanepursuits.com/2012/04/05/anarchy-on-your-lapto

The tradeoff: Threat of anarchy

and chaos

Collaboration

Teams collaborate instead

of competing

Good counter for ‘anarchy’

Exchanging Knowledge

flickr.com/photos/swamibu/2868288357

Exchanging Knowledge

flickr.com/photos/wili/233621595

Share knowledge by talking (less

writing)

Communication Channels

... ACROSS teams!

Facebook groups are perfect

for bug reports!

Skype chats by ‘role’ across teams

flickr.com/photos/photomonkey/12746989

Weekly status The weekly heartbeat of the

company

Monday Morning

Mandatory all hands every mandatory - 15

minutes only

Optional info meetings by the

game teams

flickr.com/photos/mictlan74/3374564653

Meetups

Perfect for networking...

5mofMonthly

lightning talk meetups by topic

flickr.com/photos/rheinitz/8499706723Brown bag lunch

Listen at lunch time, then get free

food :-)

Being transparent

flickr.com/photos/marcomagrini/698692268

Don’t hide mistakes, make

your team comparable

Open Source

All code is available to

everyone else in the company

Only good libraries will be used by other

teams

Open Status

No budgets - no problems to get dashboards up

Monitoring data is available to other

teams

Open Data

The key: Default is making data

available

Daily reports with KPIs for all games (old

version here)

Easy to get historical KPIS, too

Simple but important: How to find someone...

Meeting people

flickr.com/photos/gviciano/4060850226

Personal trust removes barriers

flickr.com/photos/clearpathchiropractic/7864063782

Parties

Special badge for those who see the sun

coming up!

flickr.com/photos/kitchen/26313635

Lunch Eating together reduces barriers

flickr.com/photos/m_power/115186679

Backend lunch

3 years of the same pizza,

but I still go there every week...

flickr.com/photos/omcoc/8350510425Mystery lunch

Random groups of all employees,

company pays

flickr.com/photos/philipyk/160559925One kitchen

Have ONE central place where

people meet

Wooga’s kitchen area...

... with photos of all employees

Share knowledge

Be open and transparent

Build a community

Collaboration distributes knowledge

People

Hiringflickr.com/photos/vgm8383/2803305840

Finding unicornsflickr.com/photos/vgm8383/2803305840

Lifelong learning

flickr.com/photos/carlosporto/775089650

Most important trait for a dev

Social Fit

Open, sharing, motivated ...

Tech Crunch

Series of interviews for final decision on hiring

Developers do Tech Crunch and ‘vote’ at the end

Feedback

Not only helps improving,

but shows appreciation!

• Declare peers• Send questionnaire• Interview peers• Summarize feedback• Feedback Talk

Feedback

Feedback based on peers - works

nicely

Trust

How does a company sees its

employees?

“Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.”

- Agile Manifesto

80 developers3 managers

Only works because you CAN

trust people

In doubt, don’t hire

Trust people

Provide feedback

Hire good people, then get out of their way!

Unabängige TeamsTransparenz

Vertrauen

Wooga in a nutshell

Same approach, but it’s even in the

name! :-)

Check out the article at http://

tcrn.ch/19QWs6z

Grandfather of ‘service teams’ ;-)

Unabängige TeamsTransparenz

Vertrauen

Works for Wooga, works for others!

Es funktioniert

Give it a try!

• Daniel Pink• Linda Rising• Spotify Blog• Wooga Talks

• Jesper

bit.ly/1gqPsVebit.ly/1fJ87dztcrn.ch/19QWs6zwoo.ga/backend

@jrirei

Fragen?

Check out other slides at http://

woo.ga/backend