Developing new software is near-impossible if every coding and design decision has to be filtered through multiple layers of management. That might seem unavoidable in a larger organisation, but the experience of PayPal shows it’s possible even when you have more than 13,000 employees.
Prior to transforming itself, PayPal’s system was so arcane, having a bug fixed required 37 separate support tickets. As excerpts from PayPal’s full slide deck about how it learned to scale its design process chosen by our sibling title Business Insider demonstrate, that process was replaced with a leaner startup-like approach, advocating a “minimal viable everything” attitude.
One key point? While carefully defining goals means you don’t need complete documentation, it doesn’t mean no documentation at all. Hit the link for the full story and more tips.
PayPal Shows How 7 Rules Of ‘Lean Scaling’ Saved It From Bureaucratic Paralysis [Business Insider]
Comments
One response to “How PayPal Streamlined Its Development Process”
I can’t see that it’s been saved from bureaucratic paralysis – their support and documentation processes are as bad as ever. Says I, after dealing with them in two countries in the last two months and getting support instructions obviously based on a completely outdated version of the UI. My support conversations feel like I’m talking to myself in the middle of a Beckett play.
Hmmm, it seems that opinion supported by facts are no longer appropriate comment?