Over the past year, I've talked with companies of all types – retail, media, travel, software, and more – and all sizes – from SMBs to huge enterprises. I was inspired to see how different organizations approach creating a robust performance culture. The one thing they all have in common is agreeing that performance culture is the single greatest success variable. Having a strong culture of performance can help: • Prevent regression • Reduce gatekeeping • Increase investment from the business In this talk at the performance.now() conference in Amsterdam, I shared tips and best practices gleaned from scores of conversations with people and companies who are leading the way down the path to performance.

1. The 7 Habits
of Highly Effective
Performance Teams
@tameverts
#perfnow

2. @tameverts
WPOstats.com

4. “The largest hurdle to creating and
maintaining stellar site performance
is the culture
of your organization.
Lara Hogan
designingforperformance.com

5. “No matter the size or type of team,
it can be a challenge to educate, incentivize, and
empower those around you.
“Performance more often comes down to a cultural
challenge, rather than simply a technical one.”
Lara Hogan
designingforperformance.com

6. Educate
Incentivize
Empower

7. @tameverts #perfnow

9. 2009 Improved average load time from 6s  1.2s
7-12% increase in conversion rate + 25% increase in PVs
Average load time degraded to 5s
User feedback: “I will not come back to this site again.”
Re-focused on performance
0.4% increase in conversion rate
2010
2011
@tameverts #perfnow

10. 1. No front-end measurement
2. Constant feature development
3. Badly implemented third-parties
4. Waiting too long to tackle
performance problems
5. Relying on performance sprints

11. 1. Performance is
a marathon, not a sprint

15.  Having a plan
 Setting clear goals
 Rigorous tracking (and fun tools)
 Building community spirit
 Celebrating milestones
Marathon training involves…
@tameverts #perfnow

16. 2. Have a champion
higher up

17. 3. Then build a
cross-disciplinary team

18. Awesome tools
≠Enough

22. Everyone who touches
a page should care
about the performance
of that page.

23. Embrace performance from the ground up.
Embed engineers into other teams.
Enlist performance ambassadors.
Teach people how to use (or at least understand)
the monitoring tools you use.
#perfnow@tameverts

24. It’s perilously easy
to accidentally become a
gatekeeper.

25. 4. Set shared goals

26. We first went to the engineering
leaders,
and then we went to
our product leader.
Our pitch was
totally different...
Reefath Rajali // PayPal
chasingwaterfalls.io/episodes/episode-two-with-reefath-rajali/

27. “When we went to our product leaders,
we spoke more about the business numbers
and the business benefits.
“When we spoke to our engineering leaders,
it was more about our consumer delight.”
Reefath Rajali // PayPal
chasingwaterfalls.io/episodes/episode-two-with-reefath-rajali/

28. Find out what people
care about

29. ❑ bounce rate
❑ cart size
❑ conversions
❑ revenue
❑ time on site
❑ page views
❑ SEO
❑ user happiness
❑ user retention
❑ competitors
@tameverts #perfnow

30. If they care about business
metrics…

35. If they care about
user engagement…

39. If they care about
SEO…

41. If they care about
third parties…

44. Who they are What they care about What to show them
Executives
Competition
Business impact
Benchmarks (filmstrips and videos)
Correlation charts (perf + KPIs)
Marketing
Third parties
Traffic + engagement
SEO
Content
Third-party performance
Correlation charts (perf + bounce rate)
Lighthouse SEO audits
Image size
Devs / engineers Well, lots of stuff, probably Consult with perf team
@tameverts #perfnow

45. 5. Make everyone accountable

46. Performance budgets
addyosmani.com/blog/performance-budgets/
Milestone timings (e.g. start render)
Quantity-based (e.g. image weight)
Rules-based (e.g. Lighthouse scores)

47. A good performance budget
should show you…
What your budget is
When you go out of bounds
How long you’re out of bounds
When you’re back within budget
@tameverts #perfnow

48. https://www.zillow.com/tech/bigger-faster-more-engaging-budget/

49. https://www.zillow.com/tech/bigger-faster-more-engaging-budget/

50. Who What Metric
Ops Back-end issues TTFB
Marketing
Most important content
Third parties
SEO
Hero rendering times, LCP
Blocking CPU time
Lighthouse SEO score
Devs / engineers
How well pages are built
Performance issues
Start Render, Speed Index
Lighthouse Performance score
@tameverts #perfnow

51. Give people ownership

52. “One of the original directives of the
performance team
was we weren’t going
to set ourselves up
to be performance cops.”
Dan Chilton, Vox Media
responsivewebdesign.com/podcast/vox-media-performance/

53. “We weren’t going to go around slapping people on the
wrist, saying, ‘You built an article that broke the page
size budget! You have to take that down or change that
immediately!’
“Our goal setting out was to set up best practices, make
recommendations, and be a resource within the
company that people can turn to when they have to
make performance-related decisions.”
Dan Chilton, Vox Media
responsivewebdesign.com/podcast/vox-media-performance/

54. 6. Communicate

55. “We, as engineers,
should learn how
to show the impact on
anything we do.”
Malek Hakim // Priceline
chasingwaterfalls.io/episodes/episode-one-with-malek-hakim/

62. How often is often enough?
Wall monitors and dashboards 24/7
Alerts in realtime (to people who can make fixes)
Reports no more than 1X week
Meetups, hackathons, etc. monthly (if possible)
@tameverts #perfnow

63. 7. Don’t forget to celebrate!

67. !!!

68. medium.com/the-telegraph-engineering

69. Score some easy wins

70. “The dull boring stuff”
~Andy Davies
Scripts (especially third parties)
Images
Extraneous code
Defer assets where possible

71. Shaved 15KB off logo
Ran A/B test
Increased bookings
chasingwaterfalls.io/episodes/episode-one-with-malek-hakim/

72. In summary…

73. 1. Know that performance is a marathon,
not a sprint
2. Have a higher-up champion
3. Build cross-disciplinary teams
4. Set shared goals
5. Make everyone accountable
6. Communicate
7. Celebrate!
@tameverts #perfnow

74. There’s no magic.
Show up with a plan.
Do the work.
(Be patient.)

75. Thanks!
@tameverts
speedcurve.com/blog