Why Dodo Pizza 250 developers?

Last fall, we announced that we were planning to expand the IT team from 48 to 250 people. Immediately showered questions, which essentially boiled down to one thing: why the pizzeria network of 250 developers? Where does this figure come from? Therefore, in the first post in our blog, I want to answer precisely this question (and, of course, any others in the comments).

One system to rule everyone

Dodo Pizza is a pizzeria chain that develops according to the franchise model. Today we have more than 450 pizzerias in 12 countries of the world, including the USA, the UK and China. The core of our franchise is the Dodo IS information system , which manages most pizzeria business processes.

In Dodo IS, developers are simultaneously developing several subprojects: a mobile application, a website, CRM, ERP, HRM, a call center. Each subsystem on the scale of work pulls on a separate business. Take, for example, CRM - dozens of companies around the world are engaged only in creating normal CRM solutions and distributing them as SaaS, they build entire businesses on this (on Habré, an article came out back in 2010). In Dodo, this is just one part of the Dodo IS platform.

If you still have the question “Why did we decide to create our own information system?” You can read the answer to it in the blog of Fedor (our CEO).

Why do we need so many developers?

Today it is an obvious fact - technology will drive business development, and new features in Dodo IS will drive the development of our business. Now we understand that the current team of 50 people is critically small for such a scale.

We face urgent business challenges :

• We are actively entering the world level and discovering new countries. Now there are 12. Existing features need to be adapted to the specifics of each of them. For example, in order to run cash registers, you need to understand tax rates, features of integration with terminals and other equipment, how checks are fiscalized - this is only a small part. Further, we have a single mobile application, which now works only in Russia. We want to come to the conclusion that the mobile application will be launched simultaneously with the opening of the first pizzeria in a new country. And if you tried our pizza, you probably heard about the bonus program. But now dodorubli are available only in Russia, and technical improvements are needed so that we can run them in other countries.
• We need to build a system of accounting and inventory management. For example, now our logic of incomes and expenditures is not perfect, and revisions are very difficult to maintain in the system. That leads to unreliable data, errors in forecasts, losses and write-off of ingredients, which ultimately leads to a loss of money.
• Recently we launched a new product - pizza halves. And we plan to launch a pizza designer - this is when you yourself can collect any pizza from any ingredients. It would seem a simple task. But in order to launch this project, we had to make changes on the site, add a designer to a mobile application, change the tracking of orders in the kitchen, so that the pizza maker could see the composition of the halves and make a lot of changes to the logic of writing off the ingredients, accounting and setting the product itself.
• The network is growing and there are franchisees who have pizzerias in several cities. They need common management interfaces and statistics throughout the network. Now they are only for individual pizzerias.
• Not to mention the sea of ​​improvements that are asked by partners, managers and customers in each of the 12 countries.

Separately, there is the issue of system stability . Pizzerias work 24/7 around the world, so Dodo IS should work without interruption, so that idle time is measured in minutes a year, not hours (by the way, every minute of idle time costs about 100,000 rubles for us and this figure is constantly growing to the extent of revenue growth - and last year it doubled). Therefore, we have many technical tasks to cut the monolith, reduce the load on the main database, monitor errors and their cost, as well as quickly restore the system after a failure.

But that's not all. We, of course, look to the future . Briefly tell about in which direction:

• We pay attention to automation and investigate the introduction of speech recognition technologies in order to accept an order from a client.
• We started personalization to create a unique experience for each client.
• We already know how to predict shifts and stand on the threshold of sales forecasting in order to manage stocks and save a lot of money, reducing losses. After all, sometimes pizzerias are overrun by ingredients and have to be written off when the expiration date is suitable.
• We seriously want to improve delivery, make a smart order manager, so that the system itself determines which courier to which order to give, then it will be possible to minimize the delivery time.
• We want to make an open API, so that anyone can look at the Dodo data and, what the hell is not joking, make your own mini-application for ordering.
• We want to integrate with suppliers so that every time we bring pizza, the client knows what kind of cheese is in the pizza, where it was made and under what conditions it was stored.
• We open the pizzeria of the future in China. There will be no cashiers at all, orders will be accepted only via the WeChat messenger. The basis for the design of the pizzeria is video pane, where videos that are non-standard for the European pizza industry will revolve. QR codes will be located everywhere, the interaction maximum will be transferred to digital channels. This is not just the future, it is a reality that we are creating now.

Where does the number 250 come from? Why not 300 or 500?

At some point it came to the realization that, in general, all the achievements of Dodo in business occur due to one very simple factor - the goal . Not just a goal, but one to which one wants to go, which drives, motivates to get up in the morning. Then you start thinking differently, thinking about what to do to make it closer. At first it seems unrealistic, but then the goal becomes more tangible and achievable.

Tell why 250? Because it is a lot, it is a big goal. 300 is also a lot, but when we talked to the financial director, we realized that there are risks. Maybe 300, but for 3 years? No, 3 years is very far away, it will create the feeling that time is still a car. It should be for 2 years. Let's 250 for 2 years? Agreed

Everything. Life has changed.

Each question, the onboarding of a new developer, prioritization of backlog, investment in growth and development, questions of salaries, and a whole lot more is solved through a prism of 250. Does what now exist work? Will it work when there are 250 people? Not? We are changing.

Team scaling

Now we have 11 teams, Product Owner knows and remembers all the tasks and nuances of the project. When there are 50 teams, it’s just impossible to keep everything in mind.

We have an understanding and the rules described how to scale the team, we have already begun to do this. The basic framework we use is LeSS or Scrum on a large scale. Recently, we have implemented the first LeSS Huge case in Russia . This is a story about how to apply the principles, elements and elegance of Scrum to 250 people as simple as possible. Every day we prepare the guys for the fact that there will be 50 teams, not 10.

In future articles we will tell in more detail about how our development team is structured.

Who is he, Dodo developer?

Dodo-developer is a person, first of all, keen. Each of us is passionate about our business, code, product. We are not afraid to make decisions, to take responsibility for them. We are not afraid to make a mistake. We want to make the world better. We are ready for challenges and for constant growth. One of the most important values ​​is trust. Trust in decision making, building and developing a team, system, stack of technologies. Trust in everything. Trust creates responsibility.

Write

We need people to continue rolling mountains. If you want to join the team and try your hand, write to us ( Acne is waiting ). If you also believe that these are cool ideas, write. Write, even if you think that the article is bulsit. We are open to fair criticism and new ideas. This is the only way to move forward and change the world.

UPD . Based on your comments, I decided to supplement the article with two facts and paint them below:
1. 250 is our way to change thinking. 250 is not an end in itself.
2. We are not assholes to hire 250 people at once. The main thing for us is not to lose as hiring.

Why and why 250? First of all, it is an ambitious goal that makes the brain think differently and teaches how to scale. Think about it, your team of 48 people for 2 years should grow 5 times. At this point, you realize that the current processes are not working, you need to change the structure.

No, we did not use complex calculations and task planning for 2 years ahead. This is just one of our ways to grow above ourselves. Everyone can have his own.

The number 250 is not an end in itself. We can stop at 199. Or maybe we will grow to 300. The number 250 is a clear vision in the next 2 years, which gives us a big goal to learn how to grow and scale in order to develop business.

An attentive reader will have a logical question - Guys, you will now hire 250 people, and then there will be no tasks for them and you will either fire half of the team, or the developers will sit and beat the backdoor. Are you normal?

Yes, we understand that perfectly. Therefore, we hire gradually. First, we form the backbone of the team, after which we add newbies to it.

A goal of 250 does not mean that we begin to hire people indiscriminately, just to get to the figure of 250. The selection process remains as thorough as it was half a year ago. It is important for us to work with people who think the same way and look with us in the same direction. This strengthens the team and helps to avoid wasting time and energy on any useless game.