Etsy has adopted a practice of continuous deployment where small code changes are frequently deployed to production. This allows Etsy to be agile and continuously improve. Key aspects that enabled Etsy's continuous deployment include establishing a culture of transparency, implementing monitoring and metrics, automating testing, and emphasizing communication and blameless post-mortems. Continuous deployment has helped Etsy scale quickly while maintaining stability and encouraging innovation.

1. Continuous Deployment
at Etsy
March 10, 2012
SXSW
Chad Dickerson, CEO
chad@etsy.com / @chaddickerson

3. By the numbers
1.4B page views per month
$525MM sales on Etsy in 2011
39MM unique visitors / month
800K shops / 150 countries
100+ engineers

4. “The Etsy Way”
http://etsy.me/etsyway

5. Our simple definition of
continuous deployment:
Small, frequent changes
to production.

6. Continuous deployment
transformed Etsy

7. Timeline
First 1-button 3,029 10,068
StatsD deploys deploys
Etsy deploy; 7
I joined (graphs!) in ‘10 in ‘11
launches deploys in ’09
6/05 9/08 12/09 9/10 12/10 12/11 12/12
10x growth

8. September 2008

9. “There are issues to address now and there will
most certainly be bumps on the technology side
as Etsy grows, but I want all of you Etsians to
know that it is an honor and a privilege to be
serving the Etsy community as your CTO. If you
can give me some time and understanding here
in my early days at Etsy, I hope to make you
proud.”
- An Honest Beginning for Etsy’s New CTO
(company blog)
http://www.etsy.com/blog/en/2008/tech-update-an-honest-beginning-for-etsys-new-cto/

10. Problems!

11. What was missing
at Etsy at the time

12. • Culture of transparency!
• Monitoring
• Metrics / Graphing
• Automated testing
• Error log analysis

13. The present

14. Timeline
First 1-button 3,029 10,068
StatsD deploys deploys
Etsy deploy; 7
I joined (graphs!) in ‘10 in ‘11
launches deploys in ’09
6/05 9/08 12/09 9/10 12/10 12/11 12/12
10x growth

15. Confidence as a Service

16. Fred
Board members deploy!

17. Dogs deploy!

18. How we got there

19. Most important issue?
Culture.

20. Peopleware:
“the major problems of
our work are not so much
technological as
sociological in nature”

21. Conway’s Law:
“Any organization that
designs a system (defined
broadly) will produce a
design whose structure is a
copy of the organization's
communication structure.”
- Melvin Conway, 1968

22. Fix people and
team issues first.

23. Communication

24. Insist on transparency

25. Operability reviews
http://www.slideshare.net/jallspaw/go-or-nogo-operability-and-contingency-planning-at-etsycom

26. Blameless post-mortems
http://www.slideshare.net/jallspaw/advanced-postmortem-fu-and-human-error-101-velocity-2011

27. Key tools at Etsy

28. Deployinator:
One button deploy
https://github.com/etsy/deployinator

32. StatsD:
Graphs, democratized
https://github.com/etsy/statsd

33. Code talks.
Make graphs!

34. Yes! No.

35. Dashboard Driven
Development**
**60,000 graphs, ~30 of the most
important ones on deploy dashboard

36. Errors*
*Vertical lines are deploys!

37. Key business metrics*
*Vertical lines are deploys!

38. Automated Testing
http://codeascraft.etsy.com/2011/04/20/divide-and-concur/

39. What continuous
deployment
gives Etsy

40. Agility:
Always Be Shipping

41. MTTD / MTTR

42. Stability & predictability

43. Encourages
experimentation

44. Developer happiness

45. DevOps

46. Scales trust and risk

47. “Not being in a state to deploy is a matter of liability. It's
like having the only fire exit blocked. You ignore it at
everyone's peril.”
— Lacy Rhoades, Etsy Engineer

48. “an ecosystem where the lazy, excitable
and impatient really shine”
— Andrew Morrison, Etsy Engineer
“The Product Hacking Ecosystem”
http://codeascraft.etsy.com/2012/01/04/the-product-hacking-ecosystem/

49. Resources
Code as Craft blog
http://codeascraft.etsy.com/
Slides (including these)
http://www.slideshare.net/etsy
Github
http://github.com/etsy/
Join in the fun
http://www.etsy.com/careers/