Microservice Teams - How the cloud changes the way we work

A lot of technical challenges and complexity come with building a cloud-native and distributed architecture. The way we develop backend software has fundamentally changed in the last ten years. Managing a microservices architecture demands a lot of us to ensure observability and operational resiliency. But did you also change the way you run your development teams?

Sven will talk about Atlassian’s journey from a monolith to a multi-tenanted architecture and how it affected the way the engineering teams work. You will learn how we shifted to service ownership, moved to more autonomous teams (and its challenges), and established platform and enablement teams.

1. MICROSERVICE TEAMS
@svenpet
Sven Peters
DevOps Advocate
HOW THE CLOUD CHANGES THE WAY WE WORK

5. Our living enviroment
changed how
we orginze our lives

6. Microservices
changed how
we organize our teams

7. In a galaxy far,
far away

8. JIRA
2002
CONFLUENCE
2004

9. CONFLUENCE
2010
JIRA STUDIO

10. 2010
JIRA STUDIO

11. 2010
JIRA STUDIO

12. JIRA STUDIO
2012

13. Jira | ConfluenceUnicorn platform
Linux derivative
2012

14. Jira | ConfluenceUnicorn platform
SINGLE TENANT APP
ONE CUSTOMER - ONE JVM
DIFFICULT TO SCALE

16. RELEASE CADENCE

17. RELEASE TRAIN

18. FEATURE FLAGS

19. GROWTH EXPERIMENTS

20. SHARED AND RE-WRITTEN CODE
CONFLUENCE
JIRA
BITBUCKET

21. SAME CODEBASE

23. Project Vertigo
2016

24. STATELESS
12 FACTOR APPS
https://12factor.net/

25. EVOLUTION
OVER
TRANSFORMATION

26. 2017
2018
THE BIG MIGRATION

29. TECHNOLOGY
A distributed
archtecture in the
cloud.
Shared
microservices

30. TECHNOLOGY
A distributed
archtecture in the
cloud.
Shared
microservices
TEAMS
?

31. BEFORE CLOUD DEVELOPMENT…

32. JIRACONFLUENCE BITBUCKET

33. DEVELOPER
TEAM

34. QA
TEAM

35. IT
TEAM

36. DURING CLOUD DEVELOPMENT…

37. LEAD THE WAY

38. SOLVING TECHNICAL CHALLENGES
…FOR 2 YEARS

39. Small teams On call

40. WE NEEDED TO CHANGE
THE WAY WE WORK

41. MICROSERVICE
TEAMS

42. MICROSERVICE
TEAMS
AUTONOMY ALIGNMENTSUPPORTTOOLING

43. SUPPORTTOOLING ALIGNMENT AUTONOMY

44. SUPPORTTOOLING ALIGNMENT AUTONOMY

45. TOOLING

46. 17,000
components
+

47. 17,000
DOCKER CONTAINER
CI/CD CONFIG
ADD OBSERVIBILITY
…
times

48. COPY | PASTE | CHANGE
17,000times

49. Micros
LESS
COGNITIVE
LOAD
CREATE
VALUE
FAST
BETTER
SERVICES
SRE
HAPPINESS

51. All these
microservices

52. What is it
doing?

53. What are the
dependencies?

54. Where’s the
documentation?

55. Where’s the
repository?

56. Who’s the
owner?

57. Who’s on
call?

58. We created a spreasheet

59. We created spreasheets

60. Microscope
Documentation tool for microservices

62. Microscope
Documentation tool for microservices

63. Microscope
Documentation tool for microservices
Communication teams

64. Microscope
Documentation tool for microservices
Communication teams
API changes

66. Is the service
ready?
Owner team
Documentation
No open Jira Issues
Added to Microscope

67. Before take off: Let’s go through the checklist

68. READY
Service
Before deployment: Check service readiness

69. READY
Service
Before deployment: Check service readiness

Owner team
✅ Added

Description
✅ Added

Deployment time < 5 min
⚠ Currently 6.2 min

Documentation
❌ Missing
Service readiness

71. DEVELOPER
COGNITIVE
LOAD

72. DEVELOPER EXPERIENCE
PLATFORM

73. Standardization
made easy

74. Allow for
Autonomy
Standardization
made easy

76. DEVELOPER EXPERIENCE
PLATFORM
TEAM

77. The
Platform

78. Developers find
a way
The
Platform

79. A PLAYBOOK
FOR
DEVS
Understand their
needs.
START
SMALL
Build an MVP.
Evolve from there.
API
FIRST
Make it easy to
run and integrate
services.
OPEN
SOURCE
Let developers
help.
FOR PLATFORM
TEAMS

80. SUPPORTTOOLING ALIGNMENT AUTONOMY

81. SUPPORTTOOLING ALIGNMENT AUTONOMY

82. AUTONOMY

83. AutonomyStandardization

84. Less dependencies
=
More speed
Autonomy

85. More ownership
=
Motivation
Autonomy

86. CONTINOUSLY
IMPROVE

87. CONTINOUSLY
IMPROVE
Autonomously

88. Pull Request reviews - How many reviews
Lines of code / changeTime to Restore - Time to bring a service up againStory points completed
Bug resolutions - Critical bugs More retrospectivesIncident Response Time -How fast are we reacting?
Change Failure Rate - Ratio between successful and failed deploys
Comments on Reviews
Earlier governemnt and security requirements
VPN keeps saying “login fail”
Test covorage Ticket Cycle Time - how much time from backlog to deployment
Wait time - time used to wait for tests to completeBuild timeUnit tests 1/2 Test the ticket for templates
Users are reporting that the green button is opeingin a popup in the wrong position
Less meetings

89. Pull Request reviews - How many reviews
Lines of code / changeTime to Restore - Time to bring a service up againStory points completed
Bug resolutions - Critical bugs More retrospectivesIncident Response Time -How fast are we reacting?
Change Failure Rate - Ratio between successful and failed deploys
Comments on Reviews
Earlier governemnt and security requirements
VPN keeps saying “login fail”
Test covorage Ticket Cycle Time - how much time from backlog to deployment
Wait time - time used to wait for tests to completeBuild timeUnit tests 1/2 Test the ticket for templates
Users are reporting that the green button is opeingin a popup in the wrong position
Less meetings
Every team has different challenges

90. COMPASS | METRICS

91. Check
Ops
Weekly team ritual
METRICS

92. Measure what is important,
don’t make important what
you can measure.
Robert McNamara

93. Speed to ship quality code
Waiting time
Execution independence
Access to tools, processes, and practices
Effort managing external standards
Managing code, pipeline, infrastructure
Ramp up time
Developer satisfaction
Developer
Experience
Survey

94. Speed to ship quality code
Waiting time
Execution independence
Access to tools, processes, and practices
Effort managing external standards
Managing code, pipeline, infrastructure
Ramp up time
Developer satisfaction
Developer
Experience
Survey

95. Speed to ship quality code
Waiting time
Execution independence
Access to tools, processes, and practices
Effort managing external standards
Managing code, pipeline, infrastructure
Ramp up time
Developer satisfaction
Satisfaction

96. Speed to ship quality code
Waiting time
Execution independence
Access to tools, processes, and practices
Effort managing external standards
Managing code, pipeline, infrastructure
Ramp up time
Developer satisfaction
SatisfactionImportance

97. Satisfaction
Importance
Ramp up time
Wait time
Speed to ship
Managing code,
tools , pipelines
Access to tools
Execution independence
Managing external standards
Developer satisfaction

98. TEAM PLAYBOOK | DEVEX SURVEY

99. TEAM PLAYBOOK | CHECKOPS

100. Team Playbook

101. Team Playbook
Guidance for all teams

102. We hire smart people.
We don’t need to tell them what to do.
We just show them the way.

103. atlassian.com/team-playbook

104. Allow for
Autonomy
Standardization
made easy

105. SUPPORTTOOLING ALIGNMENT AUTONOMY

106. SUPPORTTOOLING ALIGNMENT AUTONOMY

107. SUPPORT

108. Learn
Better tester
Better designers
Better product managers

109. QA : Developer
1:30

110. Devs
Exploratory TestAutomated Test AQ

111. Devs
Exploratory Test
Automated Test
Quality
AssistanceA
Q

112. QA Kick-off TestingImplementation Demo Deploy
QA Kick-off
for team autonomy

113. Dependency Autonomy
with support
QA Developer

114. 2005

117. Dependency Autonomy
with support
Design Developer

118. Standard bricks Sven’s castle

119. Special bricks Instructions Sven’s castle
Designed by Lego

120. Design System

121. Design System

122. You build it

123. You build it,
you run it
Werner Vogel, AWS

124. You build it,
you run it,
you improve it
Sven Peters, Atlassian

125. FEEDBACK

126. 80k
Feedback items

127. 80k
Feedback items
10k
Atlassian’s

128. BROAD FEEDBACK

129. New feature
PROBLEM SOLUTION PROTOTYPES CODE TEST DEPLOY BLACK HOLE

130. Contextual Feedback
As a service
Insights help me to get a better overview of my
development process

131. Dependency Autonomy
with support
Customer experience Developer

132. Allow for
Autonomy
Standardization
made easy

133. SUPPORTTOOLING AUTONOMY ALIGNMENT

134. SUPPORTTOOLING AUTONOMY ALIGNMENT

135. ALIGNMENT

138. Developer Platform

139. Guidance

140. Support

141. Fast
Independent

142. QUALITY
MARKETING
OPERATIONS
DESIGN

143. Demo
Sessions

144. Demo
Sessions

145. Async videos

146. Demo
Sessions
$
%&
Why are we
doing it this
way?

147. Demos

148. Demos
50%
more engagement

149. #democulture
' 5000 demo videos in 2024

151. Projects
6,000+ active projects

152. What is a project?
Two people or more.
Longer than two weeks.

153. What’s the status?
Updates are due every Friday.
You just got 280 chars. Go!

154. ATLAS | PROJECT ABOUT

155. ATLAS | PROJECT UPDATES

156. Aligned by goals

157. Aligned by goals

158. Allow for
Autonomy
Standardization
made easy

159. SUPPORTTOOLING ALIGNMENT AUTONOMY

160. THE WAY WE WORK
DID CHANGED
?

161. THE WAY WE WORK
DID CHANGED
?

162. THE WAY WE WORK
DID CHANGED
?

163. THE WAY WE WORK
DID CHANGED
?

164. ?

165. WE NEEDED TO CHANGE
THE WAY WE WORK

166. WE WILL CHANGE
THE WAY WE WORK

167. THIS IS US

168. THIS IS US
300K CUSTOMERS
5K ENGINEERS
20 YEARS OLD PRODUCT
COMPETITIVE MARKET

169. Thank
you
@svenpet
CHANGE IS THE ONLY CONSTANT
MICROSERVICE TEAMS