Product development Where engineering meets business development
Product development Where engineering meets business development
Fortumo overview
➢ Leading global provider of direct carrier billing ➢ Operating in 90+ countries, partnered with 350+ carriers ➢ Founded in 2007, profitable since 2009 ➢ Over 150,000 merchants signed up ➢ Investment from Intel Capital in February 2013
2
Merchants using Fortumo
2-Oct-163
App stores: official in-app billing partner
VOD & Music: subscriptions for premium accounts
Gaming: sale of virtual in-game items
Social networks: sale of premium
features and airtime
Digital publishers: subscriptions for premium
accounts
Software: subscriptions for
premium accounts
Fintech: top-ups for virtual
credit cards
Challenges to adopt the classical way
6 Merchant Facing Payment Products
Merchant Onboarding
Merchant Services
Public Web
Fraud
Analytics
Backoffice
Commercial Management
Accounting
Infra
Carrier Connections
2
P L A T F O R M S
R U B Y
VS
J A V A
What should we do?
1. Bet on the future
2. Do iterative improvements
3.Focus on immediate revenue growth
Reality (today vs tomorrow) x 3
Merchant needs Internal needs Platform needs
Challenge. Comparing apples to oranges
Merchant needs • £$€ gained • £$€ lost
Internal needs • time saved => £$€ • stress removed
Platform needs • scaling => £$€ • maintainability
SCRUM. Planning & workflow
Engineering
P R O D U C T
S T R A T E G Y
ISH
ESH
ISH
ISH ISH
ISH
ISH
ISH
ISH
ISH
ISH
ISH
ISH
ESH ESH ESH
ESH
ESH
ESH
ESH
ESH
ESH
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Lets build an empire
CPO
PO PO PO
Scrum team
Scrum team
Scrum team
Team Lead Team Lead Team Lead
Minimum team:
15 PO-s 15 TL-s 60-120 engineers
Main shortcomings in our case• Relatively big organisational overhead• Constant multitasking, lack of focus• PO becomes bottleneck• PO looses touch with the market• Engineers not part of design and creative work• Ownership in engineering• Delivery meets the spec vs stakeholder needs
Merging Engineering, Product, Business
What we want to change?• Remove PO as a bottleneck
• Ones who feel the pain is the best stakeholder• Increase ownership in engineering
• Faster feedback loop and understanding what and for whom
• Delivery meets stakeholder needs not only the specs :)• Engineers directly in touch with stakeholders
• Remove distraction and reduce context switch for engineering
Fortumo. Stakeholders work directly with engineering
EngineeringS T R A T E G Y
EXTERNAL STAKEHOLDERS
ISH 1 ETL
Engineering
Engineering
ETL
ETL
ISH 1
ISH 1
ISH 1
ISH 1
Fortumo Product developmentFocus Products
Product Projects
Carrier Connections
Infra
BAU & Maintenance
Automation & Tech Debt
• Q focus -> monthly plans -> weekly sprints• Monthly plan review with stakeholders &
product steering• Allocated time for different areas from q to q• Continuous investment to the future• Most of the internal development and
feature requests managed by ISH• own budget, better decisions
• Every focus product has technical lead & owner
Feature requests. Can we not do it?Our first instinct is to keep our products lean and not to do it by asking the following questions:
• Does it make sense at all?• Is it something the merchant is asking for and we actually have something
already that solves the merchants’ need?• Does it make sense as a product feature to all merchants?• Does it fit to our overall vision?• Is it something that would require basically rewriting everything and
therefore not feasible?• Is there revenue to be gained?• Is it somehow remotely blocking additional revenue? • If we do this, what can’t we do?
9-Jun-16
Thank you!