Radical Agility with Autonomous Teams and Microservices Zalando adopted radical agility to transition from a monolithic architecture with centralized control to autonomous teams and a microservices architecture. This involved shifting from a control-oriented culture and organization to one driven by purpose and trust, composed of self-organized teams delivering clearly defined products. Radical agility combines organizational design that reflects Conway's Law with an architecture of loosely coupled microservices having bounded contexts. While this approach enables greater innovation, agility, and freedom, it also presents challenges around coordination, technology choices, and requiring self-organization and communication skills.

1. Radical Agility
with Autonomous Teams and Microservices
pekka.kosonen@zalando.fi / @zosonen
Scan Agile, Helsinki, 8th of March 2016
background image based on
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CERN_Server_03.jpg
by Florian Hirzinger - www.fh-ap.com

4. ● Engineering site (backend and mobile, product and UX)
● Opened on August 26th 2015
Zalando Helsinki tech hub

6. ZALANDO KEY NUMBERS
150.000+
PRODUCT CHOICES
130M+
VISITS / MONTH
2.2 B€
NET
SALES 2014
15
MARKETS
1.500+ BRANDS
~10 000
EMPLOYEES

9. The reality hit
Some time a go we realized we’re in a situation
where…
we had a monolith which was hard to develop
further
built on not-a-very-modern tech stack
control killed the innovation
slow to release new features
teams didn’t have E2E responsibility
Some of the believes used in the redesign
- - Conway’s law - organizational design
reflects the outcome
- - Motivation 3.0
And three major areas to be changed
1) Culture
2) Organization
3) Architecture and Technologies used

10. FROM CONTROL & COMMAND TO PURPOSE AND TRUST
A Purpose-driven organization
composed of autonomous teams
which deliver clearly defined
products
As service-oriented architecture
composed of loosely coupled
elements that have bounded
context
Radical Agility combines architecture and organization

11. PURPOSE - AUTONOMY - MASTERY

12. PURPOSE

13. AUTONOMY

14. MASTERY

18. DELIVERY
LEAD
PEOPLE
LEAD

19. OKR

20. https://github.com/zalando/zalando-rules-of-play

21. MICRO
SERVICES
https://github.com/zalando/zalando-rules-of-play

22. API FIRST
https://github.com/zalando/zalando-rules-of-play

23. REST
SAAS
CLOUD
OPENSOURCE
https://github.com/zalando/zalando-rules-of-play https://zalando.github.io

24. What are the challenges with Radical Agility?
Trust can be misused (individual / team level)
Limited coordination may lead to overlaps and gaps
Freedom to select tech stack probably not great for short term productivity
People HAVE to be self-organized
Requires more communication, social skills and willingness to reach out

25. Radical Agility – does it really work?

27. Takeaways
Radical Agility in a nutshell - Purpose, Autonomy and Mastery. Small
autonomous teams with E2E ownership and power to make decisions.
Zalando Helsinki – Continuously growing and hiring software professionals.
Getting sh*t done – soon releasing our first product!

28. Thank you and happy Women’s Day!
https://tech.zalando.com/