SendGrid has used Agile practices since 2011 to manage their growth from 20 employees to over 90. They initially adopted Scrum and trained their engineering team with help from Rally Software. Over the following years, they refined their Agile processes through experimenting with different roles, ceremonies, and tools as the company scaled rapidly. Key events included adopting pair programming in 2013 and establishing consistent product management in an effort to balance new features and technical improvements. While leadership and tool changes posed challenges, SendGrid continues setting goals like increasing innovation and building an ecosystem to support future growth.

1. Agile for Startups
SendGrid’s history with Agile
Victor Bonacci MBA, PMP
Agile Coach @SendGrid
@AgileCoffee
SoCal Code Camp -- November 2013

3. SendGrid powers your app
Cloud-based email service
– delivers email on behalf of your app/site
– increases deliverability
– improves customer communications
– via SMTP or REST API

4. We grow with your site
• scalable email infrastructure
• metrics on outgoing email
• handle the time consuming tasks involved
with implementing unsubscribe links,
abiding by anti-spam regulations, and
maintaining corporate branding

5. Stay out of the Spam folder

6. SG has sent over 160 Billion emails

8. http://sendgrid.com/careers

9. SG Culture

11. Flat Org Structure
Board (6)
CEO
|
VP Engineering
|
Developers, QA Engineers,
Project Mgrs
Founders (3)

18. PLAN
ADAPT
DO
INSPECT

20. Agile Flavors

21. Scrum

23. Agile…
… is a discipline
… is not a silver bullet

24. SendGrid’s Agile practices, 2009 - 2011
FIVE YEARS OF CHANGE

25. Five Years of Change
•
•
•
•
•
2009 – inception (sweat equity)
2010 – ramp-up (turning on the spigot)
2011 – going Agile (aligning strengths)
2012 – hello, Scale (massive growth)
2013 – future-proofing (more growth)

26. year 1: 2009
inception
• 3 founders
• 1 customer
• Scrambling to start something up

29. year 2: 2010
Lift Off !
• $$$
– Received funding
– Customers
– A lot of opportunity came at once
• Staff size = 20
– sales, support, dev relations, accounting, marketing
– ENGINEERS

30. year 2: 2010
how did we prioritize?
• Skype culture
• Customers had direct access to developers (SnapChats)
– Asked for customer feedback > Rapid response
• Flood of tickets
• Pivotal Tracker (without any basis in Agile understanding)

31. year 2: 2010
Engineering organization
• Ad Hoc
• Devs branched into features – became experts based on
skillset
– Organic
• Tim (co-founder, backend expert) would give direction
– No real timeframes (due dates)
– Devs would figure out how – no documentation or requirements

32. year 2/3: 2010/2011
tools in the early days
•
•
•
•
•
Skype
Google Docs
Pivotal
BaseCamp
RedMine

33. year 2/3: 2010/2011
urgent questions
• How can we do more faster?
• Where are we with regards to Roadmap?
• What’s the ETA of features?

34. Enter
Agile
… and Vic

36. Transition to Agile
• First acceptance criteria:
“Make Shit Not Suck”

37. year 3: 2011
Training from Rally
“SendGrid is one of my favorite groups to have worked with.
I always love checking in to see their progress.”
- Ann Konkler, Rally Software
– Week 1: execs for one day
– Week 2: full Engineering staff
• No tools, only cards on walls
– Week 4: follow-up with full staff

41. year 3: 2011
new VP Engineering
•
•
•
•
Brought Agile experience
Encouraged experimentation
Was available to all Engineers
Huge motivating force

42. year 3: 2011
Agile roles
• ScrumMaster (SM) duty rotated among
team members
• Product Owner (PO) was usually a VP
(Finance, Sales) or founder

43. year 3: 2011
Geography
• Tom organized Eng staff seven into teams
– All co-located: four in Anaheim, one in Boulder, one in Romania
– Plus new Ops team split between CO & CA
• POs and non-Eng in Boulder
– Support
– Sales, Mktg, Finance, HR…
• Specialists / contractors
– Newsletter team in Romania
– Graphic Designer in Phillipines

44. year 3: 2011
Agile ceremonies
• Daily standups in the morning
– Overlapping time – Vic floated to observe, capture
dependencies
• Retrospectives included full Engineering staff
– Vic facilitated
• Demos lasted up to two hours
– Every team demo’d every story/bug/task

45. year 3: 2011
Dev Days
• Mid-sprint Wednesday
• Opportunity for engineers to work on “something cool”
• Not well organized
• Tech Debt / Bugs
• Low accountability
– Abused by some
– Gone after 8 months

46. year 3: 2011
Bug Sprint
• Succeeded in cleaning up large backlog of
accumulated defects
• Rewarded with K1 Racing day
• QA engineers on each team

47. year 3: 2011
Spice up the Experience
• Named the sprints
• Team banners

48. 25 Billionth email sent
In just over two years,
25B messages passed through the pipes
SCALE had not yet begun to show itself…

49. year 4: 2012
Kickoff in Mexico
• All employees (~90) met in Cancun for
three days of
– Tacos – Tequila – Teamwork
• Payback for the pre-Agile demands
– Heroku & Rackspace integrations

50. year 4: 2012
Another Tool change
• Switched from Rally to Pivotal Tracker

51. year 4: 2012
2nd VP of Engineering
• Isaac (founder) as interim VP
• Additional Eng team in Boulder
• Second Project Mgr / Agile Coach hired
(Anaheim)
– Each PM was SM of three teams
• First POs hired (Boulder)

52. year 4: 2012
Agile Education
• Tech Talks
• Conferences

53. year 4: 2012
SendGrid Labs
• R&D in Rhode Island
• Loader.io

54. year 4: 2012
Weekly Stakeholder meeting
•
•
•
•
Weekly?!?
Started as status update
Priorities get set, reset
No consistent focus on either
Scalability/Stability or new features

55. year 4: 2012
Engineering & Ops
• 3rd VP of Engineering hired
– Formerly of Amazon
– Metrics-driven
– * Not great culture fit
• Director of Ops hired
– Ops now out of Engineering

56. year 4: 2012
Agile changes
• Agile training “Refresher”
– 2-days with all Eng & Ops staff in Anaheim
• Team retros after each sprint (not full dept)
– Quarterly Eng retro
• Include sprint metrics (velocity, etc) in team’s
Demo

57. year 5: 2013
Mike Cohn, then Mexico

58. year 5: 2013
Yet Another Tool change

59. year 5: 2013
Changes
• Team restructure
– Eight Eng teams
– Team Leads
• 3rd PM/AC hired
• Overlapping sprints (every other week)
• Smaller demos (groups of teams)
– Goal of increasing attendance / participation by non-Eng

60. Pair-programming
• 2 programmers solving one problem
– 2 chairs, 2 monitors, 2 keyboards
• Saves time
– Knowledge transfer
– Better coding practices
– Built-in code review

62. year 5: 2013
Camp SendGrid
• Replaces Agile refresher for full staff
• Quarterly visits to offices to train new staff
(not just Eng)

63. year 5: 2013
New VP Eng
• Joe (employee #4) as interim VP Eng
• “Going Green” – 20% of items each sprint
– Bugs, tech debt, security, stabilization
• 80% new features

65. Product Management

67. year 5: 2013
Director of QA
• Director and four QA engineers

68. STILL TO COME…

69. 2015 Goals
•
•
•
•
More Pair-programming
CI / CD
Kanban
TDD

70. 2015 Goals
• Getting to Innovation vs. hardening /
strengthening
• Build an ecosystem for 3rd-party developer
community

71. Challenges
• Leadership turnover
• Long-term planning
• Tool change

72. Questions?

73. Victor Bonacci MBA, PMP
Agile Coach @SendGrid
@AgileCoffee
THANK YOU