Nat Natarajan, CTO and SVP of Product & Techology in the Consumer Tax Group at Intuit, gave this presentation on software delivery for breakthrough development at the CTO Forum.
1. Software Delivery - Environments, Tools and
Methodologies for Breakthrough Development
RETHINK ENGINEERING
2. Leading Transformation in the Agile Age
Nat Natarajan, CTO/SVP Product & Engineering
Intuit Consumer Tax Group
3. Intuit: A Premiere Innovative Growth Company
Employees
8,000+
Customers
45M
Global Offices
US, UK, India,
Canada, Australia
Revenue
4.2B
Founded
1983
Public 1993
INTU
6. Big, Bold Vision
• Grounded in deep customer
insights
• Profoundly changes how
you work
7. Changing How We Build: Our Agile journey
Yesterday Tomorrow
Once a year Daily
Months Days
Build from
scratch
Platforms
Product
Releases
Accelerating
rate of
innovation
Customer
insight to
experience
changes
8. … fueled by small innovative teams,
delivering big vision in small bites
Deliver awesome products through …
Hygiene
quality
(always on,
secure,
refreshed,
efficient,
first use)
Network Effects: durable advantage
(commerce network)
Developer Platform: speed
(public cloud, services composition,
shared developer tools)
Data Platform: personalization
(customer profile, internal data sharing,
external data acquisition, analytic cloud)
Win Online
Globally
(global ready,
mobile
design,
migrate
online)
New Technology Strategy
9. Journey from a Monolithic Architecture
TY13TY11 TY14TY12
Oracle
TT
O
Oracle
TTO
Data
Platform
Cass-
andra
Gluster Oracle
TT
O
Data
Platform
Cass-
andra
Gluster
Service
Platform
Other Clients TT
O
Data
Platform
Cass-
andra
Gluster
Service
Platform
10. Intuit Architecture Going ForwardCore
Product
Experience
Hosting Infrastructure
Context
Services
Manage
My People
Grow My
Business
Manage My
Business
Grow
My Clients
Manage
My Firm
Manage
My Work
Pay (QBO) Tax (QBOA)
Make My
Money
Go Further
Get Every
Penny
I Deserve
Help Me
Predict My
Finances
Get More
Clients
Make More
Money Per
Client
Offer More
Tax
Services
Do-It-MyselfServe Delegators
Runtime Management
Service & Data Fabric
Tools
Small Business Ecosystem Tax Ecosystem
Consumer
Ecosystem
Intuit Core
Services
Intuit Utility Services
Semantic Tech &
Search
Commerce Network
Financial Data
Platform
Intuit Analytics
Cloud
Contribution
Platforms
Payments
Platform
Reference &
Master Data
Identity
Product Event
Collection
Logging &
Monitoring
Security
Document &
Content Mgmt.
Communication
& Notifications
Data Platform
CRM.
Billing &
Revenue Mgmt.
Enterprise
Resource Mgmt.
Customer Care
Product Lifecycle
Mgmt.
Order &
Fulfillment
Sales &
Marketing
Source Code
Management
Continuous
Integration
Continuous
Deployment
Test Execution
Platform
11. Product Reviews: How we inspect
• Small team focused on
customer problem
• Weekly reviews to align,
remove barriers
• Decision makers in the room
13. Winning hearts & minds
• Bold vision to inspire
• Relentless focus and time
• Communicate
• Points on the board
14. Lessons Learned
Declare a bold vision
Engage respected leaders
Go deep on end-to-end
experience
Have the hard conversations
Inspire employees
Continuous re-invention
From desktop to web to mobile …more than 70% of TurboTax customers Online, millions on mobile device
When you’re a start-up, focus is on new features
As a 30 year old company, Intuit has transformed …built iconic brands
Declare a big, bold vision:
To align and galvanize the organization
Profoundly changes the work we do on behalf of customers
Use assets we have – data, etc. to rethink what’s possible
At Intuit…
A year ago, declared vision & strategy
Shut down the business for a day
Got outside our 4 walls – talked with real people
Deep customer empathy & insights
Commitment to changing how we work
Hygiene
Flexibility for network effects, global
Speed
… to power innovation.
TY11
Classic TurboTax Online was a monolithic app
Data was hidden inside of app, services were available only to TTO
TY12
Core Tax data replicated to Data Platform and stored in Cassandra/Gluster
Data format changed (TaXML) to queryable format
TY13
Classic TurboTax uses Data Platform as source of truth
Services strategy begins as data now available, new experiences use these services
TY14
Legacy datastore eliminated, lots of new services, awesome experiences unleashed
Weekly product reviews – how we inspect and align
Small team focused on customer problem
Weekly rhythm
Get right decision makers in the room – help to remove road block
Decision making meeting
Team and leader in service to customers
Discovery Innovation
Future looking to transform customer experience
3 key roles on discovery team: Visionary, Hacker & Hustler
Think outside the box
Rapidly move ideas to market… 2 ideas to market within 12 months
Winning hearts & minds:
Biggest challenging in transformation
Must have big, bold vision to inspire
Galvanize the organization around that vision
Takes time – reshaping culture & behaviors
Requires relentless focus and time…marathon, not a sprint
Communicate, communicate, communicate
Put points on the board in short period of time