Building software is complicated. And it gets more so as the scope of the project increases – balancing legacy code and new features, velocity and quality, and a growing volume of user feedback. This means even small UX pain points become big issues. The session will explore how Venmo approaches these trade-offs to build great software while keeping users happy without being "reactionary."

1. Scaling Client Engineering
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2. Scaling building
int!ro a sto! ry some le!arnings Q&! A
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5. Feature A Feature B
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6. Scaling Platform
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7. The cloud
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8. Sharding Load Balancing
Distributed
Computing
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12. Platform Client
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Scaling building
intro a sto!
ry some le!arnings Q&! A

14. Making major changes to large products is hard
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15. …or at least noisy
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17. I really liked my "favorites" at the bottom. Now it seems I
have to search for the few people I pay every day? Am I
missing something?
~Venmo User
Please bring back the recent recipient bar at the bottom of the
screen. Most of my payments are to the same five people.
~Another Venmo User
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20. Did we break, or diminish, a sensible user flow?
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21. Users want a quicker way to pay
their closest friends
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22. Well.. actually more like this
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23. Well.. actually more like this
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24. Well.. actually more like this
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25. Well.. actually more like this
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26. Hypothesis driven development
Finding root cause of user feedback -> feed into new features
Not reversions
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27. Enabling ‘Product Engineers’ to ‘Have their say’
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28. WHAT IF
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29. A framework to put things in production, infront of small
numbers of users to validate ideas & designs.
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30. 30-40 iterations later..
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31. The recents drawer was born
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34. Scaling building
! ! ! a story another story Q&A some le!arnings
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35. Support-Product Tradeoff
Still Learning
Your FAQ is a tool to protect
yourself as you execute on the
vision.
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Hiring a support person will
allow you the bandwidth to
focus on building what you
need to.
I can’t take it anymore
Feedback volume means that
bugfixes need to be
responsive and canned
responses / FAQ are a
necessity.
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You also need to re-calibrate
your level for including
feedback in the product
process (you will hear about
everything!)
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< 10,000 10k - 100k 100k - 500k 1,000,000 10M +
LEARN
You should be answering
every support request
personally, ship everything and
figure out what works.
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Start building an FAQ and
have it inform your product
fixes and support proceses.
This is starting to hurt I have no idea. :s
Depending on the nature of
your business, you may be
;)
starting to feel a real burden
of customer support.
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Key customer complaints
should be considered for fixes
or frame conversations
around broken UX.
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36. Quality matters (a lot)
As your team grows, focus on what’s core
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37. Build processes that empower engineers
(Data empowers everyone, including engineers)
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38. Feedback must inform fixes!
Feedback cannot drive direction
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39. Figuring out what to work on?
Clearly define vision & goals towards that
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Collaboratively build a roadmap
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Provide a framework for testing hypothesizes (from everyone)
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40. Scaling building
! ! ! a story another story some
learnings
Q&! A
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