The document provides an overview of eBay's Product Management organization and how it functions as a service organization. Some key points:
- Product Management aims to deliver features and capabilities to improve the eBay site experience for buyers, sellers, and business partners.
- It follows an agile product development process involving requirements, design, development, testing, and rollout of new "features" bundled into regular "train" releases.
- The organization works closely with internal partners and the eBay community throughout the process to ensure products meet needs.
- It has helped scale the eBay platform significantly while maintaining high quality and availability as the site and business have grown enormously over the years.
1. Product Management as a Service
Organization
Judy Kirkpatrick
VP, Global Product Management
March 2004
2. Agenda
⢠What Does âService Organizationâ Mean at eBay?
⢠The PDA Organization
⢠Where Product âfitsâ at eBay
⢠The Product Development Process
⢠Product and Design Principles
⢠What Weâve Accomplished
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3. Definition of Service
Main Entry: ser¡vice
Pronunciation: 's&r-v&s
Function: noun
a : the work performed by one that serves <good service>
b : HELP, USE, BENEFIT <glad to be of service>
c : contribution to the welfare of others
ŠMeriam-Webster
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4. Whom Does PM âServiceâ at eBay?
⢠Product Strategy and Vision
⢠Our eBay Community
â Buyers
â Sellers
⢠Our eBay Business Partners
â U.S.
â International
â PayPal
⢠Our Cross-Functional Partners
â Trust and Safety
â Billing and Collections
â Customer Support
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5. The Four Types of Service Businesses
Service Task
Routinized Knowledge
Integrated
Service Service
Service Delivery
Factory Shop
Service Service
Decoupled
Store Complex
Business Horizons Š 1999 by Indiana University Kelley School of Business.
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6. eBay PM as a Service Complex
⢠We provide a broad range of customized, knowledge-based
services that are delivered by various team members
⢠We must be flexible and adaptable to respond to varying
business and community needs
⢠We add value through innovation and expertise, so
creativity and initiative are critical
⢠Interactions with our community and business partners are
close, very personal and very intense
⢠Our âclientsâ want to deal with specialists whom they know
and trust
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8. Delivering Excellent Service at eBay
⢠Base decisions based on what the customer wants and
expects.
⢠Think and act in terms of the entire customer experience.
⢠Continuously improve all parts of the customer experience.
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10. Delivering Excellent Service at eBay
⢠Base decisions based on what the customer wants and
expects.
⢠Think and act in terms of the entire customer experience.
⢠Continuously improve all parts of the customer experience.
⢠Avoid failing your customers twice.
⢠Empower members to âco-produceâ their own experiences.
⢠Create and sustain a strong mission and vision.
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11. Global PMâs Vision and Mission
Vision
â We enable eBayâs Global Economic Opportunity
â We empower eBayâs Community to reach higher levels of
success
â We provide a world-class core-competency to eBayâs business
Mission
We design and build the peopleâs most efficient and abundant
marketplace.
â We own and drive product vision and strategy and partner in
business strategy
â We translate business and Community needs to product
requirements, while providing thought leadership, community
advocacy and scalability to our global product platform
â We deliver innovative world-class products that grow eBayâs
global business, making significant daily contributions to our
Community and eBayâs success through our seamless
execution.
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12. PDA | Product Development Architecture
Product Development
& Architecture
Acquisition Advanced Architecture Global Process Eng Product
Integration Technology Product & Metrics Development
Planning
Product Product Program Systems User
Management Strategy Management Development Experience
& Design
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13. Global Product Management Areas
Global
Global
PRODUCT Product
Product
Management
Management
STRATEGY
Judy Kirkpatrick
Judy Kirkpatrick
Shri Mahesh
TnS/CS/
BUYING SELLING
COMMUNITY
Amy Smith Anne Raimondi BILLING
Vikram
Subramaniam
PLATFORM &
INTERNATIONAL
INFRASTRUCTURE
Michael Buhr Anette Auyang, AAA
Mark Inkster, China
Jim Ambach, Europe
MOTORS
Kirstin Hoefer
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14. Where the Product organization âfitsâ
Community
Help ensure our community is front and
center in everything we do.
The âBUsâ
The U.S. Business Unit
Grow the US business and
Product categories
Product Strategy International
Product Management Drive international business
and global expansion.
User Experience Design
Development & Architecture Marketing
Manage the eBay brand and
Advanced Technology
attract users to the site.
Project Management
Trust & Safety
Product Planning The Site Ensure a safe trading
Process Engineering environment.
Acquisition Integration Customer Support
Support end users
Deliver features and new PayPal
capabilities to the site. Provide a seamless payment
Operations option for eBay and become
Site Operations the dominant player in e-
Quality Assurance commerce payments.
IT Run the business side
of the site.
Support the site â make sure its
operational for users.
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15. eBay product principles
⢠Itâs about buying and ⢠Deliver world class quality,
selling quickly and efficiently
⢠Growth is essential ⢠Follow all design principles
⢠Level playing field ⢠Enable open and safe
⢠Think globally, solve locally trading
⢠Create the âoperating ⢠Stay true to the brand
systemâ for global e- ⢠Evolution not revolution
commerce
⢠Data driven decisions
⢠Satisfy the business, the
user and the Community
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18. UED | Roles and Responsibilities
UI Design Creative Design Usability Engineering
⢠Design User Interaction ⢠Create visual style guide ⢠Champion the user
⢠Design Information ⢠Design visual interface ⢠Inform user-centered
Architecture design
⢠Concept and design creative
⢠Design Information Flow solutions for marketing ⢠Provide holistic site
material assessment
Content Management Prototyping
⢠Champion usability through ⢠Build high-fidelity prototypes
content ⢠Develop UED productivity
⢠Provide editorial guidelines tools
⢠Establish content processes ⢠Provide technical
consultation
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19. eBay design principles
⢠It's about buying and ⢠Make it personal
selling ⢠Help should be helpful
⢠Know your customer ⢠Think globally
⢠Keep things simple ⢠Evolution not revolution
⢠Don't make the user ⢠Build trust
work ⢠Stay true to the brand
⢠Be consistent ⢠Design for the future
⢠Provide a well lit path ⢠See the forest and the
⢠Do not divert users trees
⢠Performance by design ⢠The user has the last
⢠Optimize for the 80% word
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22. The Product Development Process
The Product Development Process
The Product Development Process
Business Needs Features âTrainsâ The Site (Our Product)
We look at the site as a product. We are constantly enhancing it to make it
better. We call these enhancements âfeaturesâ.
Multiple features get bundled together into software releases that are rolled to
the site each week. We call these releases âtrainsâ.
After features launch, we assess their success by tracking their affect on key
metrics.
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23. Community Involvement
Planning
Planning
Scoping QA
Concept Scoping Requirements Development QA Rollout
Concept NPV
NPV Requirements Development Testing Rollout
Booking Testing
Booking
⢠Member Suggestions ⢠Announcement Post-Launch Support
(emails) ⢠Moderated Boards Boards ⢠CS events (emails)
⢠Online Panels ⢠Voices ⢠Boards
⢠Onsite Previews
⢠Moderated Boards ⢠Usability Studies ⢠Voices
⢠Onsite Education ⢠Answer Center
⢠eBay University
⢠Prototyping ⢠Workshops ⢠eBay University
⢠Voices
⢠Comps and ⢠Email ⢠Online surveys
⢠Usability Studies Mockups ⢠Usability Studies
⢠US/Intl Surveys ⢠Global
⢠Online surveys ⢠Product Exit Polls
Communication
⢠US/Intl Field Studies ⢠Help
We also engage our Community throughout our product lifecycle.
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25. Thousands of features & functionsâŚ
Major Site Functions
Registration
Buying
Search
Browsing/Categories
Selling
My eBay
Stores
Checkout/Payment
Muli-Item Payment
Feedback
Merchandising
Formats: Bid, BIN, Ad
Other Tools
Selling Manager
Turbo Lister
TnS & CS Tools
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26. How The Process Works
Planning
Planning
Scoping QA
Concept Scoping Requirements Development QA Rollout
Concept NPV
NPV Requirements Development Testing Rollout
Booking Testing
Booking
The BUs have a business objective to meet:
BUs discuss idea with PM, they vet the idea and the BU writes a Business Requirements Document (BRD).
PM translates the BRD into a scope request with high level requirements outlined
Technology scopes the project
BUs develop the business justification (NPV) and priority of the project, and work with the
Product Council to get it approved based on company priorities.
Product Planning works with development to ensure development resources are available to
work on the project. After this is confirmed the project (feature) is âbookedâ.
PM writes a Product Requirements Document (PRD) detailing product
functionality
User Experience Design (UED) creates user interface prototypes, graphics, and
conducts usability testing.
Development and architecture create the technical design and
code the feature.
QA tests the feature
The feature is rolled out to the site
Receive user feedback and react
Assess success to original metrics
and NPV
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27. Some Key Statistics of Our Process
Feature Regression
Regression
Requirements Design Development Feature Rollout
Requirements Design Development Testing
Testing Testing
Testing
Rollout e221
Feature Regression
Regression
Requirements
Requirements
Design
Design
Development
Development
Feature
Testing Testing
Rollout
Rollout e221_Intl
Testing Testing
Feature Regression
Regression
Feature
Requirements
Requirements
Design
Design
Development
Development Testing
Testing Testing
Testing
Rollout
Rollout e223
Trains release every week -- alternating between US and international every other week.
Our average train is 60,000 lines of code.
With ~7 US (core) trains releasing per quarter, our throughput is roughly a half million
lines of code per quarter (not including international).
The total site is about 5 million lines of code. (In comparison, Microsoft Windows NT 3.1
was 4 million lines of code.)
This code supports over 90 million registered users from more than 200 countries, doing
business on 20+ internationalized sites. On a daily basis, we support 700 million page
views and $70 million in business transactions (Gross Merchandise Sales, GMS).
Even with this significant volume, our quality statistics are quite good: open production
bugs are only a few hundred (>5 sigma), our site availability is 99.93%, and our
customer support emails due to system issues is about 2% of our total volume.
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28. Another Key Metric: Train Seats
Business Technical QA
Business Technical Development QA Rollout
Requirements Design Development Testing Rollout
Requirements Design Testing
Total Development Cost = Development Effort (Train Seats) + % of all supporting activities
Creative QA
Train Seat = Development Effort
UI/Usability Project Mgmt Release Mgmt
Product Mgmt (1 Train Seat = 15 Developer Days) Operations
⢠Each âTrainâ at eBay has a specific amount of capacity on it â train seats. Train seats
reflect the amount of development effort associated with each train.
⢠Train seats also help communicate the quarterly development capacity of the Product
organization.
⢠Train seats are a commitment to the business â they are not just effort spent, but rather
effort âearnedâ.
⢠To determine the cost of a train seat, eBay bundles in the effort required by non-
development resources such as product management, usability testing, QA and project
management.
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29. What weâve accomplished
In a typical day⌠June 1999 Dec 2003 Growth
Outbound e-mails 1.0+ M 21 M 21x 1. Scalability
Searches 6.5 M 120 M 18x 2. Availability
Peak Network utilization 268 Mbps 7.8 Gbps 17x 3. Productivity
Total Registered Users* 6M 93 M 15x
4. Capacity
Page views 54 M 700 M 13x
Net Revenue Per Day $532 K $6.4 M 12x 5. Platform
GMS Per Day $6.5 M $70 M 10x
Bids 0.9 M 6.3 M 7x
Listings 532 K 3M 6x
Availability ~97% 99.93% 3%
Developers 40 300 8x
Train Seats Per Quarter 40 1,120 28x
Web Service API calls 0 13 M NA
* Total registered uses is the cumulative total, not per day or quarter.
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30. Yet, Still Early Stage of eBayâs Growth
eBay is a young, exciting company. It has infinite opportunities which create an
unpredictable, rapidly changing environment. eBayâs employees are driven and
excited about changing the world. They work hard and strive to capitalize on the
many opportunities the company has to grow.
P&G
Pepsi
Gap
Mature / Slow
Maintainers
growth Microsoft ⢠Solid execution of known strategy
⢠Guardians of legacy
Implementers ⢠Low to no hiring
⢠Savvy competitors ⢠Internal mgt development
⢠High execution of proven strategy
⢠Protectors of growing legacy
⢠Moderate hiring needs
Stage of
Entrepreneurs
Company ⢠Bold entrepreneurs to go after white space
⢠High risk/high reward/high output
eBay ⢠Fast to deliver, fast to respond
⢠Strategy under rapid change
⢠Experienced at building to last
⢠Rapid hiring ramp -- exec bench building
PayPal Explorers
thru â02 ⢠Survivalists
Early / High ⢠Extremely high risk/high reward
growth ⢠Can deal with no infrastructure
⢠Lean staff
High risk / Lower risk
High reward lower reward
Employee
Profile
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31. Relative gross merchandise sales â US
Q303 Annualized GMS
Billions
$14
Auction
Fixed
Price
Next leading
online retailer
Source: eBay Inc. estimate
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32. Outpacing Leading Growth Companies
2002 MM$
(log scale)
1,000,000
100,000
GMS
10,000
1,000
100
10
1
1 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Years from incorporation
(1) Sales and GMS adjusted to 2002
(2) Source: eBay; Company Filings; US Department of Commerce Deflators
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