Chris Lacy-Hulbert, Betfair’s Head of Sports Technology reminds us that “cool” just isn’t good enough for mainstream web sites. Says, Chris:
First of all, the customer expects the website to work. Pure and simple. When a user visits your homepage, or logs into your application, they do not expect to see a sign on the door saying ‘we are undergoing maintenance – why not try one of our competitors’. If your website is frequently unavailable, or doesn’t meet the basic needs of its intended purpose, then you have ‘bottom of the pyramid’ problems which you need to resolve. You simply do not have the luxury of dreaming up new bells and sprinkles.
Check out Chris’ full post on Betfair’s Hierarchy of Website Needs.
In March, I cross-posted Rodney Barlow’s article about the Fire Chief role on an Agile team. In his article, Rod told us:
- Teams can have their cake and eat it too: Responding to problems without killing yield
- Removing the “Fire Chief” from a team’s capacity can increase velocity and improve quality
- A culture of passion and ownership can make an otherwise tough role coveted and fun
- Practical steps for creating an effective Fire Chief on your team
Twitter post from @uclajug inquiring about the yield of the Fire Chief role
Rod has posted a case study (“Fire Chief Role Yields Results”) on the real results of the Fire Chief role at Shopzilla. The proof seems to be in the numbers. Since the inception of the Fire Chief:
- The team’s average completion rate has gone up by 48%
- Their “worst” iteration improved more than 300%
Nice job Inventory 
Rodney Barlow, a seasoned Architect at Shopzilla, has introduced the concept of a Fire Chief – an Agile role designed to protect a team’s yield while still responding to production issues. In his article, Shopzilla’s Fire Chief – Running Cover for your Team, Rod tells us:
- Teams can have their cake and eat it too: Responding to problems without killing yield
- Removing the “Fire Chief” from a team’s capacity can increase velocity and improve quality
- A culture of passion and ownership can make an otherwise tough role coveted and fun
- Practical steps for creating an effective Fire Chief on your team
Why does any of this matter? Rod writes:
With few exceptions, it generally doesn’t take an entire team to fight a fire. The “all hands on deck” approach to production issues is often born from a misguided – albeit well-intentioned – desire to resolve an issue quickly in order to get back to work on the “new stuff”. Best case, this approach may optimize a single engineer’s time-to-resolution at the cost of lowering the overall yield of the team. Worst case, “drop everything” is a trained response designed as much to create the appearance of motion as any real progress.
…
While the first step may be acknowledging the need for a strategy, the real “magic” in making your strategy work comes from teams’ ownership of the need.
(entire article here)
Read more about Shopzilla’s approach to creating business value through technology on Shopzilla’s Tech Blog.
