Donny Lee
I joined JD.COM in 2008 and witnessed the growth of JD. COM's technical team has grown from 30 to 4,000, which also witnessed how JD.COM changed from a business-oriented company to a technology-driven company. Now, let's talk about our experiences and feelings based on the specific things in JD.COM.
Organizational structure of JD.COM R&D
JD。 The technical team of COM currently has more than 4,000 employees and has five research institutes in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chengdu and Shenyang.
JD。 The system of COM is complex, covering the whole process and value chain of e-commerce, from front-end trading system to supply chain, to warehousing, distribution, customer service and after-sales. Almost all the systems except financial statements are developed by ourselves. JD.COM does all his business online. Liu, CEO of JD.COM, is only in China for one or two months every year, and spends most of his time abroad. Now he can see all the production conditions through the information system, and all the data are clear at a glance. For example, he knows that a link in the warehouse is congested.
JD。 The information system of COM has supported JD.COM to grow at a speed higher than the average growth rate of the industry for many years-the market turnover exceeded100 billion yuan in 2065438+03, reaching125.5 billion yuan. 10 annual growth rate 10000 times, and the information system is behind.
20 13 years, JD. COM's "Troika" strategy based on "e-commerce" has been basically improved, including e-commerce business, logistics platform, technology platform and internet finance business. Focusing on management improvement, organizational capacity and coordination, JD.COM is also making more beneficial explorations and attempts. JD.COM is transforming from a China-type e-commerce company to an industrial chain integrator. The core of JD. COM's strategy is still driven by technology.
Organizational structure adjustment: R&D system is divided into 9 modules and 4 platforms.
To manage a team of 4000 people, I think it is more important to optimize the organizational structure. Past, JD The technical team of COM has always been a functional structure: product department, R&D department, testing department and operation and maintenance department. When we have more product lines and projects, there will be more people, it will be very complicated to distinguish between priorities and communication, and it will be difficult for departments to cooperate.
JD.COM has adjusted its technical team this year, and its R&D system is divided into nine modules, which are basically divided according to the organizational forms of customers and business departments.
Among them, the cloud platform and the operation and maintenance department are mainly responsible for the underlying network services and solving the top-level technical architecture problems, and are platforms for providing technical support. At the same time, he is responsible for researching unified R&D tools, including logging, monitoring and process engine. Through these tools, the efficiency of other R&D departments can be improved, and they don't have to re-develop components. It can be seen that the functions of these two departments are to provide infrastructure and unified tools and platforms.
Marketing R&D department is facing the procurement and marketing system, mainly network marketing, which is the locomotive of our whole company. We have developed three systems for the purchase and sale system: one is the trading system, which ensures the stability of the trading system, while improving the conversion rate of the website and optimizing the user experience; The second is the supply chain system, which connects with suppliers and predicts the order quantity, and many related supply chain control means are also realized in this department; The third is to open the platform and open the entire supply chain system to third-party sellers.
The operation R&D department is aimed at the chief operating officer system, that is, the order production system. The storage system, distribution system and customer service system are all in charge of the operation R&D department.
The functional R&D department is mainly the internal information management department of the functional system, involving administrative, personnel, strategic and other functional systems, including our financial department.
Marketing R&D department, operation R&D department and functional R&D department support all our internal businesses. While other departments all serve these three R&D departments.
The Big Data Department provides a unified platform for big data technology. The data platform is based on Hadoop, on which unified data collection, extraction, storage, processing and mining are carried out, and some data value-added products are developed. Our search, recommendation system and open data service are all completed in this department.
The mobile department is responsible for customer building and mobile innovation, and it is a rapidly developing business department.
Research institute is a general term, and we have a special department responsible for the construction of national research institutes.
Finally, we also have a department, similar to the general management department, called the technology research and development management department, which is mainly responsible for the construction of the management system, including SQA, PMO, an IT service desk, and 24-hour monitoring and operation.
We have a 400 phone. When there is a problem in the system, both external and internal users can dial this number to enter the processing flow, and the operator will handle it first, and the problems that cannot be handled will be handed over to the R&D department. The reason why the R&D department is put back is because the R&D personnel are unwilling to deal with the problem directly, and they prefer to write code. Through the filtration of the operation department, 80% of the system problems were directly solved.
The whole structural adjustment, I think, is quite successful, which greatly improves customer satisfaction. In the past, customers communicated with many departments, but now they only need to communicate with one department, and the customers of each department are very clear, so the main responsibilities of each department can focus on improving customer satisfaction.
Although we have nine departments, we actually divide the whole R&D team into three levels and four platforms:
The first layer is the technology platform, which is mainly based on the cloud platform and the aforementioned operation and maintenance department to build a cloud-based technology architecture to support all its applications.
The second layer has two layers. The first layer is the big data platform. We separate the data and can't let every application process the data. If every application processes data, the data will be chaotic, and it may form an island, which is difficult to enjoy and circulate throughout the enterprise. Second, e-commerce opens the API platform. We establish the core platform of e-commerce and provide services in the form of API services, which is very important for companies with long value chain and complex processes and systems.
The third layer is the application platform. Because of the above two layers as support, it is very convenient to do specific applications on it. Therefore, our application platforms, including our own websites, mobile clients, internal ERP and external ISV development applications, can all call the e-commerce core API, and the corresponding data will enter the big data platform. Moreover, these applications can be implemented on the application platform.
In JD.COM, we have some good practices in enterprise architecture. We can refer to this model to compare the advantages of building our information system. In the past, we had to develop a demand, from the front-end website to the procurement and marketing system to the warehousing and distribution. Because the whole value chain is very long, it needs a lot of communication and cooperation. Now it is very simple to open API through e-commerce, which reduces the communication and coupling between various systems. Due to the rapid development of e-commerce business, this development and application model is more suitable for the rapidly changing needs of business departments.
Through these four platforms, we can see that there is a logic. The bottom layer is actually our technical architecture, which is used to solve architectural problems. The above data plays the role of data governance, and the API platform solves the problem of service governance. Development is based on SOA. When everyone is using a service, there will be confusion, which requires a governance platform to solve. Only by grasping these three keys can the applications on the application platform be colorful and our system logic be clearer.
IT management 123: 1 vision, 2 key points and 3 systems.
Both MBA and EMBA theories come from the production of front-line and front-line workers. These management theories are not mature for IT now, so we are exploring IT management.
First of all, we must have a vision. Teams of dozens of people rely on their own actions, teams of hundreds of people rely on systems, and teams of thousands of people rely on vision. With a vision, the team has a sense of mission, pride and accomplishment.
Two key tasks, one is culture. After the team grows, culture and atmosphere are the most important.
For the whole company, such as senior executives of Lao Liu and other business departments, whether they can respect technology and whether the company can form an atmosphere of respecting technology is something that the company's chief technology officer should consider. I want to create an environment that respects these experts.
In the R&D department, I mentioned three words, the first is trust, the second is sharing, and the third is growth.
Trust is authorization, trust can reduce the cost of communication, and an atmosphere of trust should be formed between superiors and subordinates and between subordinates and peers. For example, R&D personnel may have caused an accident. Do you think he did it on purpose or for innovation? Of course, you will be punished for violating the process and making mistakes. However, JD.COM made a rule, because innovation makes mistakes, we are tolerant, not punishing. Tolerance failure can form an atmosphere in the R&D system, which is also based on trust in employees.
Sharing means sharing best practices. There must be some people in the 4000-person team who are doing better in some aspects, and I will let them share them with others to learn. We also advocate tolerating failure, learning from mistakes and gaining experience. Learning from best practices and mistakes is to share experiences and make further improvements. Developers write code every day, and there will be some code to be proud of. Last year, we launched an activity to let them show it to others. These codes don't need to be a system, maybe it's just my own experience. This activity is very popular every Friday afternoon. In this way, programmers want to write good code when writing code, and want to imitate others' strengths when learning others' code. We have a software similar to GitHub that allows programmers to put shared code on it. Sharing is very important for R&D personnel, which can help them grow up quickly.
As for growth, because R&D employees are generally young and want to learn and grow, we will establish a growing culture internally, including training them. Technicians in JD.COM are graded according to T 1 ~ T6. T 1 has just left school, and T2 has graduated for two or three years, but the level is still insufficient. We let T3 and T4 teach them, train them and make them grow up every day. We also invited some teachers from outside to give us lectures. For example, I did a UML training one year, and the effect was very good. You have learned some structures and thinking methods and mastered some tools. We started training R&D managers again, and everyone actively participated. When they improve, our R&D efficiency increases and innovation increases.
The other of the two focuses is structure. Many problems in R&D management are structural.
Pay special attention to the structure when the team reaches several thousand people. Just now I talked about the talent structure, which is the problem of echelon. The talent echelon is very important. In the past, there were many junior talents, but there were too few T3, T4 and T5. So I got a job in Weibo and received hundreds of resumes. We have also done one thing in the talent structure, separating management from technology. In the past, technicians had to transfer to management to a certain extent in order to improve their treatment. Now we classify technicians separately and solve many structural problems. Another structure is our organizational structure. As mentioned above, it is also very successful to divide it according to the direction of customers.
Finally, talk about three systems.
The first is the product system. The experience of our company, whether it is the experience of consumers, the experience of third-party sellers, the experience of suppliers or the experience of internal business departments, is product-driven. We build a culture in which product managers have the final say. In the past, everything the product did was kidnapped by the business department first. The business department said that you want to do this thing, the product manager wrote it down, and then let R&D do it directly. This is problematic. In addition, our manager wants to make a good product and subjectively directs the product according to personal likes and dislikes, which also kidnapped the product manager. Then, the developer said that this design was too troublesome, so it was better to do that and kidnapped it again. Three kidnappings, like three mountains, destroyed the product manager. We suggest that the product manager has the final say, not the manager or the business department. For example, every purchasing and marketing department wants to formulate the rules of search ranking, but we have an iron discipline inside-the rules of search are only responsible for the conversion rate. What the business department tells you is only suggestions, and the product manager has his own space to be responsible for the final user experience, which is good. After building the product system, we also set up a product committee, and then elected a standing committee member.
The second is the architecture system. Architecture lets architects decide, not managers. Managers often think that they are very professional, but in fact they also have ceilings. In order to let the architects have the final say, we set up a building committee, which, like the product committee, decides what the architecture in JD.COM is like. Planning, implementation and evaluation of JD. The technical framework of COM is the work of the framework committee.
The third is the management system. Management system has two aspects. The first aspect is project management, which is to increase the power of the project manager and implement the project manager responsibility system. Once the project is established, the project manager has great power and is directly responsible for the project, including the progress, quality, input and output. The project department has a bonus to drive the project. The project manager has the right to decide how to distribute the bonus, which is very powerful. When R&D personnel enter the project, the project manager also has the final decision. We have a project management platform on which all projects can be seen at a glance. Moreover, everyone and every job in the project can be listed by people and departments, and can be counted by people, projects and departments, with distinct human effects. Therefore, large teams should be managed by the system.
The second aspect of management system is leadership system. The team of 4,000 people in JD.COM has 12 departments, and each department has more than 300 people. It is very difficult to manage 300 people. The difficulty mainly comes from the manager. /kloc-I can't manage people over 0/4. I can't control any more. Managers must have influence and leadership. Our leadership ability is weak, because many technical managers are transferred by experts, so the language used is computer language and professional language. Emotional intelligence is generally not high, but the leadership system requires high emotional intelligence, especially when communicating with business departments.
"Management 123" is my experience and something promoted by our R&D system, and the effect is good.
Give the team a vision: to be the most influential technical team in China.
JD。 The vision of COM was originally "make shopping simple and happy", but this year it was adjusted to "make life simple and happy". For the technical R&D team of 4,000 people, under the premise of obeying the company's vision, we put forward a vision that is more in line with JD.COM R&D personnel: "To be the most influential technical team in China". After this slogan was put forward, our R&D staff were very happy, with a sense of pride, accomplishment and mission, which was more in line with the wishes of our engineers. JD。 COM's investment in R&D is increasing every year. We have invested a lot in the R&D team of China enterprises. If we continue to invest in this way, our R&D personnel are confident to do a better job in technology. Our technicians will have a strong sense of pride when they see their systems growing in the development of the company.
In a team of 30 people, managers may lead by example, because everyone is watching you, and everyone will follow you whatever you do, so you should pay attention to the details. It is very important to build a system when there are 300 people. At least there must be project management, otherwise it is difficult to manage 300 people. But when it comes to 4000 people, I think we still have to have a vision. Without a vision, these 4,000 people have different goals and it is difficult to unite. Re-emphasize the vision of JD.COM R&D people: "To be the most influential technical team in China"!