"Lessons learned from replatforming" at SaaS North 2016
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FreshBooks CEO and co-founder Mike McDerment discusses the organization's decision to replatform and the lessons learned in taking on the project.
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"Lessons learned from replatforming" at SaaS North 2016
- 1. Life or Death: Lessons Learned Launching the New FreshBooks
- 4. Approach
Editor's Notes
- Title: Lessons Learned From Building the New FreshBooks Was thinking about this talk. It’s my belief, the more leadership capacity we have as an ecosystem, the greater we will be. This is something you don’t see every day. Lived to tell the tale. Thought I would share some choice moments and some lessons learned in hopes it might help others. BTW – much motherhood and apple pie. You may all know this stuff, but what the heck. Many of these pro At FreshBooks, we believe in developing our people. Over the past 18 months, we’ve built a new platform from the ground up. Not something that happens every day in software. We’ve learned a ton in the process, more than I’ll have time to share here. But given I’m in a room with my peers, thought I would try and share the high level account in hopes it serves others. Just wanted to say, some of this seems like motherhood and apple pie. Leadership 101. sharing in hopes it might help some of you. BTW – I’m Mike McDerment. Co founder and CEO of FreshBooks. We are the #1 accounting software in the cloud for self employed professionals and their teams. Over 10 million users since we started.
- SO THE QUESTION IS: Should you rewrite? “Things you should never do, Part I: single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make: […]rewrite the code from scratch.” ## • Take longer • Cost more • May not recoup cost • Two platforms • Performs worse ## STORY: said it would take 2.5 years, so I said no…we’re not doing it. ## Joel is great and all, but I believe a better question is: “Can you iterate your way to greatness?” ## http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
- SO THE QUESTION IS: why a new platform? CONTEXT: Look at it from four perspectives: customers, team, founder, shareholders. Customers: #1 product for our segment…so why build a new one? There was no need, so why not refactor? Primarily due to design debt…can’t refactor your way to greatness, and our front end and backend were glued together Team (and tech): Felt slow, felt hard Founder code. In business cause got results, but it wasn’t pretty. Joe always wanted to refactor. I always said no. Founded before frameworks like Rails…net had come a long way Wanted faster cycles, take advantage of new tech Had tried twice before – front end refactor, back end improvement (which proved helpful) Backend and front end connected Couldn’t take advantage of open source Couldn’t make sweeping changes Culminated in mindset: “it’s too hard.” we laboured under that for a while. Vision: As a founder, still felt like I hadn’t started Prepared to take risks (it’s what founders do)…but…
- SO THE QUESTION IS: how do you tackle such a big problem. STORY: - We had tried and failed – 3 times already…but we got some helpful stuff in place, like a solid backend. This time was different. New CTO. Wanted a crack at it. Engaged me, asking for vision. Started with some sessions there. We sent a team into a loft at our old office and said, “you have two weeks to design a UX for the future. Two weeks. Insufficent progress, this experiment dies.” That’s 336 hours to reinvent out product. ## Started with a small team of 5 in a loft for two weeks. Two product. Two three design. They stayed late. They ordered pizza. Didn’t bath (just kidding, kinda) 168 hrs remaining. This was the hallway conversation conversation: “Have we done ANYTHING?” “relax” “I have no idea what to do.” After ## With 72 hours remaining, showed some mockups to customers. “Juvenile and childish.” “if this is where FB is going, don’t want any part.” ## So…that’s how it starts. As you can see, it’s HARD. We took things quarter by quarter as an “experiment”. We kept telling ourselves that. “Just an experiment” Afterall, it was just one team. And let’s face it, a business decision of this proportion should surely be well analysed in advance. A solid business case. It should be costed out. It should be derisked with careful planning. Should it not? How did we start?
- It started innocently enough. And ultimately, kind of by accident. Suddenly, there were three teams working on this “experiment”. Three of the nine we had. As luck would have it…the horse left the barn in sept 2014. Shareholders: Well BTW…did I mention, we had no stated plan to replatform till sept 2014…did I mention we had just raised our first round of venture in July? So board meeting #2 we are talking about replatofmring. This is where I have to give huge credit to our board: accomplice, Oak, Georgian were all new. Prior board members had seen past efforts. They were all supportive in continuing to advance. Why? One…I chose board members carefully. Two…our apporach…. HINDSIGHT: I know it’s not responsible to have let it get out of the barn. I also know, you can’t predict software projects this big, and if you do, they are wrong. Team did tell me it would take 2.5 years a couple months before. To which I said, “nope. Not doing it.” Once they finally deluded themselves into believing they could do it in 9 months, I was ready to go…I knew that would be 27 months, and I was good to go.
- Are We Winning? YES Metrics on track Customers love it QUESTION IS: What have you learned? Refactored our culture: 1. MINDSET OF THE TEAM 2. AMBITION OF A COMPANY 3. INNOVATION ### Mass coaching (story): problem, as you scale, you can’t be involved. Power of lying to yourself: (story?) as far as you can see. Change your mind later. You can’t plan it all out. You have to lie to yourself – and others…and let them lie to you. Flame passer (Story): problem: inertia. “are you paranoid enough?” that’s the metric I evaluate my leaders by. “I remember payments.” Situation. Problem. Results. Chief believer: (story?) takes longer and harder…you have to be the promoter, but…you have to ensure those around you are paranoid…interesting tension. ### Role as “visionary” and how to perform it. Enables me to spent more time on the next 5-10 years, which is huge. MINDSET OF THE TEAM: Before – intimidated by our codebase and technology. Now – fearless, hungry, ambitious. Remember the initial quote…2.5 years. That was a reflection of our mindset. We didn’t know yet what was possible. Ambitions are higher Proof: bank import, or payments. MINDSET – NOT JUST THE TEAM: What amazed me more than anything, was how the whole company rallied behind this effort. I’ve never worked anywhere else. I’ve never seen a team this large put their shoulders behind something. STORY? INNOVATION (Freedom for experiments): We ran this thing like an experiment throughout…but as it becomes the business, the team gets afraid. We have a brand to protect, customer to serve…the question is, “how do we maintain the spirit of experimentation”. This was the fear of one PM in particular. The solution: like facebook, and automated rollout app, so we can test gradually on sections of the base. CULTURE: So…those were unforeseen benefits…they don’t show up on paper, they can’t be quantified, but believe me they are real. If you know anything about me, I’m culture, culture culture. Changing mindsets, enabling more freedom for experiments…these are massive leave behinds. Also, it’s just frickin exciting…to have a new prodcut (assuming your customers love it)…everyone in a tech company can get behind that.
- SO THE QUESTION IS: What is the one thing I would have you take away? Sometimes, you are going to have a fork in the road. One path is continued success, the other one is a chance at greatness. It’s a big bet, you aren’t likely to get there…but if you take that road, your team will come along, and you can foster a culture of risk taking and customer dedication, and learn about yourself…that is ood. ## It’s a competitive world, and there will come a time where you’ll have to take a leap. • For us it’s been 10 years on one platform. • In business you’ll all have moments where you have to bet the farm in an quest for excellence • We could have stayed, but we didn’t.