This document summarizes the transition of Skyscanner from siloed marketing, product, and engineering teams to cross-functional "growth tribes" organized around lean startup and agile principles. It discusses how Skyscanner adopted a growth mindset and reorganized into autonomous teams focused on rapid experimentation. The goals were to break down barriers, speed up marketing activities, and embrace frequent small experiments over large initiatives. Metrics showed substantial impacts on growth after these changes.
3. 3.5 years at Skyscanner
7 years in FMCG marketing
Transitioned from marketing
to growth at the same time
as our business
@skyscannergrwth @mrdouglascook
4.
5. 60m app downloads
50m unique monthly visitors
Tech company first & foremost: 50% Software Engineers
@skyscannergrwth @mrdouglascook
16. We organised
ourselves into
central & regional
growth tribes
Central
Growth Tribe
EMEA Regional
Growth Tribe
AMER Regional
Growth Tribe
APAC Regional
Growth Tribe
https://medium.com/@Skyscanner/our-tribes-central-growth-and-regional-growth-9a28c41532f1#.ri13oz319@skyscannergrwth @mrdouglascook
17. Roles within Growth Teams
Product Manager
Experiment
Roadmap
Growth Engineer
Implementation of
features & products
Growth Marketer
Own acquisition of
channel
Growth Analyst
Draw insights from data
Growth Designer
Creative or user
experience design and
implementation
@skyscannergrwth @mrdouglascook
29. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
http://agilemanifesto.org/
Manifesto for agile software development
@skyscannergrwth @mrdouglascook
30. Validated learning over opinions and conventions
Customer focused collaboration over silos and hierarchy
Adaptive and iterative campaigns over Big-Bang campaigns
The process of customer discovery over static prediction
Flexible vs. rigid planning
Responding to change over following a plan
Many small experiments over a few large bets
http://agilemarketingmanifesto.org/
Agile marketing manifesto
@skyscannergrwth @mrdouglascook
Useful points of context, to understand our business.
Geographical tribes.
Central group for scale and algorithmically done.
Geographical tribes.
Central group for scale and algorithmically done.
This is Hypergrowth
Marketing needs to keep up with business.
Useful points of context, to understand our business.
This is the one statement today that I believe holds true in every growing company – growing in the Business and Organisational sense.
Continues improvement keeps us moving forward.
Data Retrieval – a one off long cycle time could only be done by Data Scientist
Data from the – slow – painful sometimes would crash – no data – no campaigns
1 Tool
1 Launch Date
Manual Data Retrieval
The foundations that we relied on had shifted under our very feet, that which we held true as markeeters was not fit for this new world. We had to change and we had to change dramatically in order to continue to be a Hyper Growth company that we had become accustomed to.
I’m going to go through 4 key areas that we’ve used to help drive growth at Skyscanner.
Buzzword bingo, not about worshiping one, but combining what works from multiple.
When at pace, needs to be huge autonomy
Gate meetings slow us down.
Used to have 2x per week, rather than 1x per month.
So teams are empowered to make their decisions themselves.
Spotify model.
Matrix organisation in its side.
Vertical day to day cross functional.
Horizontal function, share best practice.
Geographical tribes.
Central group for scale and algorithmically done.
Small, less than 8
Cross functional
Squad designed to be able to do everything in their given area.
My squad has 2x designers, 4x marketers.
Risk of autonomy is no need to communicate.
Big sharing culture, internal and external
Another part of the culture is to encourage people to be curious and learn and we have a set of recommended reading for all squads, that is always updated.
And it is all backed up by our competency framework.
No point suggesting these changes and expect people to act, needs to be tied to review and reward.
Within that framework there is a big focus on broadening the skillset of our marketing team and making them more T shaped individuals.
Internal ninja programme to embed.
Further visioin to make available publically.
Geographical tribes.
Central group for scale and algorithmically done.
Next is Lean Startup principles.
The Lean Startup is a must read for all employees at Skyscanner.
Key principle is BML Loop
Getting MVP in front of users as quickly as possible for real world response, not fake focus group environment
We have built these same principles into our growth model, with the idea to build a minimum viable campaign as quickly as possible to get in front of our travellers to see if it has the potential to scale.
Stage 1- We come up with the idea and validate it through some secondary research, why do we believe it’s a good idea?
Stage 2- We define a hypothesis for our test- IF we make a certain change then we expect a certain response.
Stage 3- We create the assets.
Stage 4- We test it, this may take many forms but the idea is how so we get it in front of the same users as the end idea, to test it real world.
Stage 5 and 6 we analyse the results and take a decision whether we need to iterate it and continue testing, if it’s good enough to ramp up then and there, or if it’s a fail.
Lack of stage gates is because of this.
Area 2- Agile Marketing
Agile marketing is not simply real time marketing by another name, as is assumed by many outside the tech industry.
The Agile Manifesto, also called the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, summarises 12 areas to allow for faster, iterative development.
Shift away from big batch, or in marketing case big bang, waterfall approach.
And this is how it then applies in Marketing
Validated Learning- BML loop
Customer Collaboration- Adapt to what they need, not rigidly sticking to convention.
Adapative & Iterative- Ie. lean start-up.
Customer discovery- Not an annual deep dive, always on research and understanding.
Flexible- The amount of change in a 12 month planning cycle is massive, need to be able to react.
Respond to change- As above.
Small Experiments- 5x things per sprint, looking for the one to scale.
So does it work?
Example was live temperature feed, needed resource to do properly
MVP was to manually get weather.
In this particular example the idea failed, but that’s not the point. We found that out a lot quicker, with less resource used.
Anonymised but gives an idea.
Top graph increase in bookings following PMF.
Accelerating search despite low spend.
Big bang to iterative showing increased impact.
So in summary, 4 areas
But just to be clear, what I have told you is definitely not right for your organisation.
We took principles and mashed them, so should you.
As I said already, we are very big on sharing at Skyscanner so there are various ways to get more information via Twitter or Medium.
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