1. Agile At Brainly
Building an Empowered Team
Jason Green - Brainly

2. Building an Empowered Team
- Brainly
- Largest Social learning network for
students worldwide.
- 35 countries
- 42M monthly unique visitors
- 15M answered questions
- 600 worldwide moderators

3. Building an Empowered Team
“I have a feature request” “We need this built asap”

4. Building an Empowered Team
2 reasons why this happens:
- Team composition
- Team don’t know or understand the business
priorities

5. Solution
Problem Domain
Technical Implementation
Building an Empowered Team
CR on checkout in
PL is low
Implement a exit
intent solution
offer dotpay as a
payment provider rework the
checkout form

6. Solution
Stakeholder
Problem Domain
Technical Implementation
Project Manager
Building an Empowered Team
Team

7. Solution
Problem Domain
Technical Implementation
Product Owner
Stakeholders
Building an Empowered Team
Team

8. Solution
Problem Domain
Technical Implementation
Business Owner
Building an Empowered Team
Team
And now everybody is a stakeholder.
Other
Stakeholders

9. Place your team into the solution
domain.
Give them everything they need to
get there
Building an Empowered Team

10. Team
(Every Role is Optional)
- Design
- Business
Intelligence
- Development
- Devops
- and anything
else they need
Building an Empowered Team
Engineering
Managers
Business
Owners
Human
Resources
Subject
Matter
Experts
Agile Coach

11. Product Roadmap
There is no product roadmap. Instead:
Company Mission
|
Product Vision
|
SMART Objectives (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time Bound)
Product Roadmap becomes - Prioritised list of problems
- prioritised on business value
- clear hypothesis and measurable opportunities
Building an Empowered Team

12. How can we calculate BV?
- Business value in a marketplace may consist of:
- seller experience (acquisition, quality, NPS)
- buyer experience (CR, CLV, NPS)
- Legal & regulatory issues
- strategic decisions
- supporting functions (employer branding etc / HR)
Each of these need to be weighted in order to determine business value.
Building an Empowered Team

13. Requirements for a great team that sits in the solution
domain
1. Excellence
a. T - shaped people
b. Complementary individuals
c. Knowledge sharing
d. Varied experience
Building an Empowered Team

14. Concierge Roles:
Role of the Engineering Manager
a. Hiring (and firing)
b. moving people around & shaking things up
c. unblocking the team
d. listening to the team
e. ensuring the team have everything they need
Building an Empowered Team

15. Concierge Roles:
Role of the Business Owner
1. Sit in the Problem Domain
a. Find out what the root cause of the problem is
(talk to stakeholders, gather data)
b. prioritise the problems on business value /
opportunity with the other BOs
c. Bring the problems to the team
Building an Empowered Team

16. Other Concierge Roles:
- Human Resources
- Agile Coach
- Subject Matter Experts
Fulfil traditional business roles
Available to the team whenever the team requires
them
Building an Empowered Team

17. Role of the Team
1. Sit in the solution domain
a. come up with solutions for the problem
b. work out the best one to implement based on
simple analysis
c. implement solution in lean way with clear
hypothesis
d. Validate hypothesis
e. Iterate or move on
Building an Empowered Team

18. Lean
- fast feedback loop
- MVP approach
- Know when to move on
Building an Empowered Team

19. Agile At Brainly