IMVU engineering and development is being featured at some upcoming conferences. These are great opportunities to learn more about IMVU and our development processes and scaling a Lean Startup.
SCALING WITH CONTINUOUS DEPLOYMENT
Web 2.0 Expo, New York, NY, September 29, 2010
http://www.web2expo.com/webexny2010/public/schedule/detail/15825
Continuous Deployment takes continuous integration one step further, where every commit goes live to production servers. When this process is described it is frequently met with skepticism around site reliability and the ability to scale a business this way, but at IMVU it works, it scales (with challenges) and it is embraced by the entire organization. Continuous Deployment offers a substantial advantage, providing the ability to quickly react to new business opportunities. At IMVU the time from an engineer committing code to it being live on the production cluster is approximately 20 minutes. Every commit is pushed live with no interim staging or QA deployment. Success with this system requires both a sophisticated automated testing system and a fail-safe monitoring system that can detect a regression and revert it before it has material customer impact. IMVU adopted this continuous deployment system well after launch, requiring changes to processes, systems and culture. Examples are provided for all components of this system, how IMVU succeeded in the transition and the new challenges faced as the system scales with the organization.
SCALING PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT AT A LEAN STARTUP: AGILE AT IMVU
GDC Online, Austin, TX, October 6, 2010
http://schedule.gdconline.com/session/11330
IMVU is sometimes referred to as the original ‘Lean Startup’, having successfully blended Agile methodologies with Customer Development methodologies. This lecture focuses on IMVUs product development process, and the hard won learning which has allowed it to evolve and scale with company growth. Topics include foundations for successful Scrum implementation in the organization, specific Agile methodologies used and why, detailed description of the Scrum team calendar and planning process, and how IMVU uses retrospectives, post-mortems, and ‘5 Whys’ to continuously evolve the product development process and ensure Engineering delivers successfully for customers and the Product Management organization.
BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS AFTER LAUNCH THROUGH RAPID ITERATION
GDC Online, Austin, TX, October 7, 2010
http://schedule.gdconline.com/session/11329
Online games, social applications and virtual worlds don’t stop development after launch. Understanding customer behavior and iterating on your product is critical to growing your business, so achieving a process that decreases this iteration time greatly improves your chance of success. By creating systems that utilize A/B testing, instant customer metrics and a sophisticated deployment process IMVU is able to shorten this iteration loop and deploy new software to production up to 50 times per day. This session demonstrates real-world examples of these systems and explains a process for deploying them, even after launch.
MAKING MONEY ON VIRTUAL GOODS: THE IMVU EXPERIENCE
GDC Online, Austin, TX, October 6, 2010
http://schedule.gdconline.com/session/11552
During this presentation, IMVUs Lee Clancy, SVP of Product Management and GM of Direct Revenue will demonstrate how MMO developers can leverage the company’s expertise to create a successful virtual goods business. By providing insight into the strategy IMVU used to grow its user base to more than 40 million registered users and its digital catalog (the worlds largest) to more than four million virtual goods, MMO developers will learn how they too can develop a virtual goods business that will help them further monetize their user base. The presentation will also help the audience understand the similarities between social entertainment networks and MMOs so they can see how applying IMVUs business strategies can help grow their businesses.