This document discusses how to move fast at scale through organizational culture, structure, and practices. It recommends establishing a generative culture with psychological safety and inclusive decision-making. Teams should be organized around business domains and have full-stack capabilities. Common platforms and communities of practice can support teams. An iterative development approach delivers value early by focusing on high priority features. Organizations that move fast are more likely to exceed goals.

1. Moving Fast
at Scale
Randy Shoup
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2. Background
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3. Moving Fast at Scale
•Culture
•Organization
•Practices

4. Moving Fast at Scale
•Culture
•Organization
•Practices

5. Organizational Culture
• Generative Culture
o Trust and Sharing
• Bureaucratic Culture
o Rules and Processes
• Pathological Culture
o Fear and Threat

6. Psychological Safety
• Team is safe for interpersonal
risk-taking
• “Being able to show and
employ one’s self without fear
of negative consequences”
• More important than any
other factor in team success

7. Inclusive Decisionmaking
• Make better business decisions 87%
of the time
• Make decisions 2x faster with 1/2
the meetings
• Deliver 60% better business results
Cloverpop Inclusive Decisionmaking study, 2016
As we improve diversity, decisionmaking improves
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8. None of us is as smart as all of
us.
-- Japanese proverb,
as quoted by Bob Taylor
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9. Moving Fast at Scale
•Culture
•Organization
•Practices

10. All organizations are wrong,
but some are useful.
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11. Organizational Goals
• Sustainably deliver value
• Optimize for fast flow of
change and rapid
feedback
• Minimize team cognitive
load
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12. Traditional Organizations
Idea
Development
Quality
Operations
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13. “Stream-Aligned” Teams
<Business
Domain>
• Aligned around a customer /
business problem
• Clear goals and metrics …
o … that matter to customers!
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14. Full-Stack Capabilities
Idea
Development
Quality
Operations
Idea
Development
Quality
Operations
Idea
Development
Quality
Operations
Domain
A
Domain
B
Domain
C

15. Platform and Enabling Teams
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16. Platform and Enabling Teams
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17. Service Organization
• One domain: One team: One / few service(s)
o Organization reflects Architecture (“Conway’s Law”)
• Team can independently design, develop, deploy,
operate its service(s)
• Team owns its service(s) end to end, cradle to
grave
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18. Common Platform
• Common Capabilities
o Authentication
o Secrets management
o Observability
o Alerting
• Standard Frameworks
o Service “chassis”
o Communication protocols and
data formats
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• Shared Infrastructure
o Compute and storage
o Databases
o Event system
• Developer Experience
o Source control
o Development and testing
environments
o Continuous Delivery pipelines

19. Communities of Practice
Collaborating via
• Slack channels
• Groups and maillists
• Periodic meetings
• Internal conferences
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Organized around
• Language framework /
ecosystem
• Specialized roles
• Service / platform
consumers
• Techniques and Practices

20. Moving Fast at Scale
•Culture
•Organization
•Practices

21. Feature 1
Feature 2
Feature 3
Feature 4
Feature 5
Traditional Organizations
Month 4
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22. Fewer Things,
More Done
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23. Feature 1
Feature 2
Feature 3
Feature 4
Feature 5
Fewer Things, More Done
Month 4
Month 2
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24. Iterative Development
Month 4
Month 2
1a 1b 1c 1d
2a 2b 2c
3a 3b 3c 3d
4a 4b 4c
5a 5b
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26. Fewer Things, More Done
• Deliver Highest Priority Features First
o Don’t treat priority 1 and priority 5 the same ☺
• Deliver Full Value Earlier
o Benefit now is worth more than benefit in the future
• Deliver Value Along the Way
o Deliver increments along the way instead of everything at the end
• Deliver Value Despite Changing Priorities
o At any point, we have working software even if we pause or abandon the feature
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27. Moving Fast at Scale
•Culture
•Organization
•Practices

28. 2.5x more likely
to exceed goals
o Profitability
o Market share
o Productivity
Moving Fast at Scale
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29. Thank you!
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linkedin.com/in/randyshoup
medium.com/@randyshoup