Couple of lessons learned with changing the technology stack at PayPal to support Lean UX methodologies. This talk is happening as part of the Lean Startup in the Enterprise talk with Jeff Gothelf on Tues, Dec. 4, 2012.

1. enabling lean with tech
lessons learned applying lean at paypal
bill scott (@billwscott)
sr. director, user interface engineering, paypal
Lean Startup in the Enterprise. The Lean Startup Conference with Jeff Gothelf.
Dec. 4, 2012. San Francisco, CA

2. at Netflix 90% or more of
the “ui bits” were thrown
away every year.
doesn’t take too many
tests to result in lots of
throw away code.
followed buid/test/learn
designed for volatility

3. new dna
@paypal
march 2012
david Marcus becomes
president of PayPal
april 2012
we form lean startup team to
reinvent checkout experience

4. in the midst of transformation

5. tangled up
technology
big problem. technology and
processes not geared to
build/test/learn.

6. a tale of two stacks
non- long
non- release
standard UI standard UI cycles
two non-standard
xml jsp
stacks
c++ java new stack tied to Java
“one word” change
old new could take 6 weeks to
fix

7. leave the old behind
X
non- non-
standard UI standard UI
we can rule out the old
xml jsp
stack
c++ java
old new

8. need to design for volatility
prototyping non-
standard UI
is hard
but still the new stack is
“ui bits” jsp
not conducive to
could only prototyping
live here java
follows an “enterprise
application” model. ui
gets built into the “app”

9. 1. set the ui bits free

10. separate the ui bits
templates = JS code = JS style = CSS images
engineered the user
interface stack so that
the only artifacts are:
• javascript
• css
• images

11. separate the ui bits
templates = JS code = JS style = CSS images
templates get converted
to javascript
<p>Hello {name}</p>
JavaScript
we use dust.js

12. separate the ui bits
templates = JS code = JS style = CSS images
language independent
server/client agnostic
CDN ready
cacheable
rapid to create

13. make the ui bits portable
open source open source
JS template JS template
open source JS templating can be
JS template run in client browser or
server on the production
node.js java stack
we can drag & drop the
prototype production
ui bits from prototyping
stack stack
stack to the production
stack

14. free to work together
co-located lean ux team
whiteboard
to code code to usability
product/design user interface usability/customers
team engineers

15. free to work together
co-located lean ux team
whiteboard
to code code to usability
product/design user interface usability/customers
team engineers
templates = JS code = JS style = CSS images
node.js

16. free to turn sketch to code
forcing function.
it brings about a close collaboration between engineering
and design
it creates a bridge for shared understanding
requires a lot of confidence and transparency

17. free to test frequently with users

18. free to iterate independent of agile
usability usability usability usability usabili
lean ux - lean team track
{
user interface engineering - agile scrum team
agile
sprint 0 engineering - agile scrum team
release release release release

19. 2. embrace open source

20. use open source religiously

21. work in open source model
internal github revolutionized
our internal development
rapidly replaced centralized
platform teams
innovation democratized
every developer encouraged
to experiment and generate repos
to share as well as to fork/pull request

22. give back to open source
we have a string of projects that will be open sourced
node bootstrap (similar to yeoman)
contributions to bootstrap (for accessibility)
contributions to bootstrap (for internationalization)
component repository framework for github (similar to
bower)
and more...

23. 1. set the ui bits free
2. embrace open source