1) The document discusses strategies for successfully integrating an acquired startup into a larger parent company. It outlines an initial strategy of pre-negotiating details, determining desired outcomes, and learning the parent company's vocabulary. 2) It recommends over-communicating, identifying champions within the parent company, building reusable components, and raising all boats. 3) It also covers internal tools like IRC bots and GitHub for managing a remote team, and stresses the importance of change from the side and respecting the existing culture of the parent company.

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Getting Things Done
at Scale
Craft Conf '14
Amber Case
@caseorganic
caseorganic.com

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I: History

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Geoloqi:
founded
2010

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Joined Esri Sept 2012

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Geoloqi:
2 years old
6 employees
10s of
customers

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Esri:
45 years old
3,000 employees
20 buildings
Thousands of
customers

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Psychological
Factors

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Most Mergers &
Acquisitions Fail

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Most Mergers &
Acquisitions Fail
Why?

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I asked 50 people (founders,
employees, investors)
for stories

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Only 1/50 had a good
experience

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• Crippling management/overhead
to get simple things done
• Founder flight
• Lack of detailed transition plan
• Loss of passion for original product
• Left of respect and cross-
compromise
Why acquisitions fail

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• Culture clash
• Jealousy/blocking from
parent company employees
• Sprinters vs. Marathon
runners
Why acquisitions fail

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We determined not to
do any of these things

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1.5 years later
What we got done
!
Open Source
(hundreds of repos)
Developer Site
(hundreds of thousands
of site visits per month)
Geotrigger Service
(original product)

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II: Initial Strategy

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1. Pre-negotiate
• Don’t leave the details for later and hope
they work
• Be as detailed as possible and get
corporate buyoff.
• Don’t be vague! Vagueness breeds
confusion and paranoia.

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• Create and lead the transition plan
• Retain passion for original product
• Help parent company to sprint
• Adopt traits of a marathon runner
• Maintain and improve team
quality
2. Predetermine Your Desired
Outcome

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• Optimize and consolidate overhead
• Prevent founder flight by removing
lock-in
• Work together to build a better
overall culture
• Create successful products that
support company

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3. Learn the Local Language
Our Vocabulary
• Cloud Storage!
• Map Tiles!
• Zoom!
• Directions!
Esri’s Vocabulary
• Feature Service!
• Basemap!
• LOD!
• Routing!

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Our Vocabulary
• Code!
• IRC!
• Github!
• Work sessions!
• Prototypes!
• 2 week dev cycles
Esri’s Vocabulary
• PowerPoint!
• Lync !
• Email!
• Meetings!
• 50-page specs!
• 6 month dev cycles!
Communication Tools

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4. Over-Communicate
Lack of communication
with a new or remote team
leads to suspicion and
insecurity

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5. Win friends and influence people
!
• Entire team spent 2 weeks on campus
planning and socializing
• Important to identify yourself and
make friends at this stage
• As many people should have positive
interactions with you at this stage

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6. Beta test people
•See how long it takes to get a
tiny thing done
•Fix the process and then launch
the real thing
•Identify who actually does the
work

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Rule of 5
Work groups should be no larger than 5
when building new systems
• Groups of 5 or less can communicate
easily and get things done without
significant overhead
• Sample group: 5 different people

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Example: ArcGIS for
Developers
Developer Site never got built because it was
always done with 30 people in the room.
Once narrowed down to a team of 5 site was
built in 3 months.
Find the people that actually do something!

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When the storytelling is told by
people, not by traction or real
implementation, then whoever tells
the best story wins
— Blaine Cook
7. Show, don’t tell

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8. Develop Trust
• Build something
people need
• Make people’s lives
easier, not harder
• Making people
happy will reduce
feelings of
resentment and
uncertainty

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III: Long Term

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1. Build Lego
Blocks
Reusable
elements that
can help
everyone at
the larger
company

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2. Find the Competent ‘Jerks’
* Casciaro,Tiziana and Miguel Sousa Lobo. Competent Jerks,
Lovable Fools, and the Formation of Social Networks. Harvard Business Review June 2005
Competent Jerk
mostly avoided
Loveable Fool
mildly wanted
Competence
high
low
Incompetent Jerk
desperately avoided
Lovable Star
desperately wanted

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Translate!
Competent Jerk
mostly avoided
Lovable Star
desperately wanted
Translator
* Casciaro,Tiziana and Miguel Sousa Lobo. Competent Jerks,
Lovable Fools, and the Formation of Social Networks. Harvard Business Review June 2005

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3. Cross-
Compromise

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“Go where you’re loved.”
-@fgarofalo, UX designer at Esri
4. Find your Champions

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5. Raise all boats
1. Github
2. Deploy process
3. !done reports
4. Developer Site

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IV: Team Management

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Internal Tools
and Projects!
Bots
GitHub
!done Reports
CoffeeScoreboard

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IRC Bots
ZenIRC Bot!
Great framework for building bots!
github.com/zenirc
!
Benefits
• Modular – service oriented
• Can write in any language and run under the same bot
• Uses Redis PubSub to pass message between the
different frameworks

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IRC Bots
ZenIRC Bot!
Great framework for building bots!
github.com/zenirc
!
Benefits
• Modular – service oriented
• Can write in any language and run under the same bot
• Uses Redis PubSub to pass message between the
different frameworks

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Bot Architecture
Services
IRC
Server
ZenIRC
Bot
Redis
!done
!doing
!block
!todo
!weather
!meme
geoloqi status

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IRC Commands
> !done pushed to production
!
> !todo send out notification emails
!
> !hero aaronpk for bringing
Legos!
!
> !share github.com/es-analysis/plato

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Daily Email
9pm

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Grow your
Family
• Hire slowly
• Litmus test

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V: Final Thoughts

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1. Change from the side
See what works in your
team, and apply it across
the organization

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2. Respect what’s already
there
Flash?!
Coldfusion!?

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3. Give the company
something it needs first
• Trivial for your team but difficult for the
parent company
• Builds trust that you are on their side
and have the parent company’s
interests in mind

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4. Small Revolutions are
Best
Make the smallest thing
and it can turn into the
largest thing

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5. Distribute the Stress
•Don’t think you need to do
the entire thing
!
•Distribute the stress:
•Handed a team of 30?
•Match with a team of 5!

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6. Don’t Overdo It!
20% rule
If you can make 20% change per
year you’ve done a lot

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Thank you!
caseorganic.com
Craft Conf '14
Amber Case
caseorganic.com
@caseorganic