Scaling Wix engineering

Scaling Engineering
by Hacking Conway's Law
•www.linkedin.com/in/aviran @aviranm http://www.aviransplace.com
Aviran Mordo
Head of

Wix In Numbers
 86M registered users from 190 countries
 3 Data centers + 2 Clouds (Google, Amazon)
 ~1200 people work at Wix
 Of which ~ 400 in R&D
http://www.calcalist.co.il/local/articles/0,7340,L-3660020,00.html
The most searched work place (in Israel) by software engineers - 2015 Google search survey
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From 100 to 1000 in 5 Years
http://indy100.independent.co.uk/image/19112-1y4vb9d.png
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http://p1.pichost.me/i/11/1339236.jpg
In the Beginning

Functional Teams
Client
Team
Server
Team
TL
TM
TL
TM
TM
TM
TM
TM
Products: 3
People: ~100
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Functional
unit model
Business
unit model
Structures for Scalability
There are 2 key common structures in the industry
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Functional Model
Disadvantages
 Lack of product ownership
 Lack of product level expertise
 Hard to predict and plan product roadmap
 Cross-function communication is hard
 Less focus on delivery and time to market
Client
Team
Server
Team
TL
TM
TL
TM
TM
TM
TM
TM
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Disadvantages
 Resource and work duplication
 Architecture alignment is hard
 Technology knowledge sharing is hard
 Limited opportunity for professional
development
 Product integration is hard
Project ProjectProject
TL TL
TM
TMTM
TM
TL
TM
TM
Business Unit Model
Creates Silos
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Our Assumptions
 There is no perfect model
 It depends on the company’s current challenges, life cycle
phase and culture
 Every model should be tuned constantly and evolve with the
company
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Wix’s Gangs & Guilds Model
Products: <10
People: ~400
Client
Team
Server
Team
TL
TM
TL
TM
TM
TM
TM
TM

Gang GangGang
Products: <10
People: ~400
A Guild is a group of people that
share expertise, knowledge, tools,
code and practice
Guild
Guild
GMGL
GL GM
TL TL
TM
TMTM
TM
TL
TM
TM
A Gang is a group of people that work on related products,
composed of all required resources from different disciplines.

 Independence of the product Gang
 Technical power of the Guild
 Healthy balance between product and tech
 Product features and technical equal in
priority
Gangs & Guilds – Why?
No Silos
Gang GangGang
Guild
Guild
GMGL
GL GM
TL TL
TM
TMTM
TM
TL
TM
TM
How

Products: <10
People: ~400
A Guild is a group of people that
share expertise, knowledge,
tools, code and practice
A Gang is a group of people that work on related products,
composed of all required resources from different disciplines.
Gang GangGang
Guild
Guild
GMGL
GL GM
TL TL
TM
TMTM
TM
TL
TM
TM
Team Lead /
Product
Team
Members
Guild Lead
Guild
Masters
Guild Core
Teams

Guild’s Role
 Recruitment (hiring and firing)
 Assignment to product teams
 Setting the professional guidelines and methodologies.
 Training.
 Setting compensation.
 Professional development / career.
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Next Step Even Bigger
Products: >10
People: >800

Managing Large Product Segments
Guild
Guild
Gang GangGang Gang
Products: >10
People: >800

Wix’s Company Model
 Company focus on large segment
 Has all the resources it needs to be
independent
 People within the company are aligned
with the Guilds
Company
CEO VP R&D
Guild
Guild
Company
Gang GangGang
CEO CTO
Gang
Product Product
Company
mgr
Tech mgr
Products: >10
People: >800

Wix’s Company Model
Each head of company
reports to a chairman on the management
board.
All products share the same infrastructure
Company
Guild
Guild
Company
Gang GangGang Gang
Product Product
Cross-Engineering Teams

Guild for Companies
A helping hand 

Company
Guild
Guild
Company
Gang GangGang Gang
Product Product
Cross-Engineering Teams
Guild’s Additional Roles
 Align between “Companies”
 Support the engineers working in
“Companies”
 Review and guidance
 Develop shared infrastructure
 Improving development velocity
 Temporary help “Companies” in need with
additional resources from the Guild
@aviranm

Remember Conway’s Law
“Organizations which design systems ... are constrained to
produce designs which are copies of the communication
structures of these organizations”
Conway, Melvin

How many Engineers can Work on a Single Project
?
http://cdn.wp.sunmotors.co.uk/get/2014/03/cars.28.620x413.jpg

Microservices = Engineering Scale
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Broken_glass.jpg

Minimize Architectural Dependencies
 Independent product lifecycle
 Loose coupling
 Independent scale
 Grow / build teams as needed
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Limit your Stack = Sharing Knowledge
 Code reuse
 Cross cutting concerns (session, security, auditing, testing, logging…)
 Faster system evolution
 Development velocity
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Over 200 microservices; Deploying ~100/Day

Microservices = Small Teams
Small Teams = Small Rooms
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Culture that ROQS
R
O
Q
S
esponsibility
wnership
uality
haring
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What Is The Common Denominator?
 Product manager
 Project manager
 QA
 Operations
 DBA
Develpers
can do
these jobs
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Developer
Product
QA
ManagementOperation
BI
Dev Centric Culture – Involve The Developer
 Product definition (with product)
 Development
 Testing (with QA engineers)
 Deployment / Rollback
(with operations)
 Monitoring / BI (with BI team)
 DevOps – to enable deployment and
rollback, fully automated
Support Circle
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Production State Changes Every 5 min

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Quality = Better Engineers
Better Engineers = Professional Growth
Professional Growth = Investment in People
/ Training
Enter the Guilds

Guild Day
 Engineers work 4 days with their company
 Thursday is Guild day.
 Developers conduct quality enhancing activities with the
Guild.
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Guild Day Goals
 Builds cross-team relationships
 Shares knowledge
 Assimilate the culture
 Lesson learned
 Continuous improvement
 Promotes innovation
 Professional development
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Guild Day Schedule
10:00-11:00 Open Space
11:00-11:15 Break
11:15-11:40 Project spotlight
11:45-13:00 Tech talk or Workshop
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Guild Week – Games of Gangs
One week each quarter
Pair programming with a person from another company
Enhancing infrastructure
Building tools
Helping companies
Work on open source
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Goal #1 – Improve engineering skills and quality

Communication Channels
 To company wide activities
 To knowledge centers
 To key personnel
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It is All About the People
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Do Not Compromise on Hiring
 Hire only good people
 Fit the culture
 Excellent technically
 Candidates can be dropped
 By anyone
 At any time
 If there is any doubt, then there is no doubt
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Seeds new Teams with Ambassadors
 Train “ambassadors” that practice dev-centric culture from
the Guild
 Seed new teams with at least one dev-centric ambassador to
assimilate new employees.
 Beware of hiring more people than you can train / assimilate
successfully into your culture
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Hiring Team Leads can Mess Up Your Culture
 Do not hire people directly into team lead position
 Hire potential team leads
 Only after a person can be a dev-centric ambassador she
can become TL
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Elements to a Healthy Growth
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Transparency
Quality
Trust &
Collaboration
Independence
Growth

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Don’t leave quality and velocity to
chance, create a system that balances
quality, growth and velocity
Guilds Companies
http://www.psdgraphics.com/file/gold-scales.jpg
Fast
Features
Better
Quality

Read some more:
http://goo.gl/c3WLsz - Building engineering culture http://goo.gl/fGUSZe - Building a Guild
What happens if we invest in
developing our people and they leave
us?
“
CFO asks CEO:
CEO:
“What happened if we don’t and they
stay? “
“
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Q&A
http://goo.gl/F8yWa3
http://engineering.wix.com
@WixEng
Aviran Mordo
Head of
•www.linkedin.com/in/aviran @aviranm http://www.aviransplace.com

Scaling Wix engineering

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