Meet BOB & FOB 👋🏻
meinestadt.de’s secret weapon against technical debt
meinestadt.de is a local classifieds portal for the German market, built in Cologne, Germany. As a part of the Axel Springer Family, the developers at meinestadt.de are also members of the Global Axel Springer Developer Community.
“Just a word of warning — these meetings can get pretty intense”, Felix says right before breaking out his wide signature grin. Felix, frontend developer at meinestadt.de, is talking about FOB — the Frontend Optimization Board. FOB is a regular meeting of all frontend developers at meinestadt.de — an impressively effective way of collaboratively reducing technical debt and learning about new technical trends — together and across teams.
Felix, 30, has been a developer at meinestadt.de for 4 years now. He joined the ranks as a college student and a year later he “proactively” hired himself into meinestadt.de as a full-time developer. Seeing Felix in action, his seemingly boundless energy makes it easy to imagine how he had no problem convincing his boss to hire him right out of college.
Felix is joined in this interview by Joel, 31 — also a frontend developer. He started at meinestadt.de 2.5 years ago and is another driving force at the FOB meetings happening every Monday.
In these unusual times I’m conducting this interview remotely — and Joel is the perfect example of the challenges and the charme of working from home: During the interview his daughter, Emma, who turned one at the end of May, is crying in the background. It adds this incredibly personal note to the interview that I would have missed out on, had we done the interview at an office — but it’s also a reminder that many colleagues are currently missing out on the clear separation of roles between work and home, spreading their energy thin.
FOB — and it’s sister-event BOB (Backend Optimization Board) are regular meetings at meinestadt.de, religiously held once every sprint, with the explicit goal to tackle technical debt and learning about new tech, by allowing all of its members to bring items up for discussion onto the open agenda.
Once a member adds an item to the shared Confluence agenda, that member of the FOB / BOB is expected to come to the meeting prepared — but in a way that feels very light weight. Owners of agenda items are not required to hold a presentation in the classic sense — they just have to bring something concrete to discuss and enough knowledge about a possible solution to bring everybody up to speed.
“Being prepared” can also mean just bringing a line of code to discuss, and being able to verbally explain the alternative.
Joel explains it with the example of introducing CSS Grid to the discussion himself a few years ago: When he put CSS Grid on the agenda, it was a fairly new thing. So during the FOB meeting he actually held a short presentation, getting his colleagues up to speed on the topic, and introducing ways to ensure IE11 compatibility (which is a requirement at meinestadt.de). After a quick discussion among its members it was adopted by the Frontend Optimization Board, and Joel introduced a ticket to his own upcoming sprint, implementing an auto-prefixer into their website, making sure CSS Grid could be used going forward.
FOB — Fostering a positive kind of group-think
What’s interesting is the shared sense of responsibility the FOB instills on the roughly 15 Frontend Developers, working across 7 separate teams.
As Felix explains it, it forces its members to think as a group versus just as a single developer. Whenever a decision of the FOB is implemented, the original owners of that agenda item (who are also expected to see it through to completion) will let everybody else know that a previous decision has been implemented, through a message in the FOB group chat. Felix points out another example: Whenever somebody introduces a new library to the frontend codebase, they will first quickly announce it in the FOB channel, followed by a Pull Request that all FOB members can give their feedback on. Like that the constructive group-think is part of their daily workflow and not limited to their Frontend Optimization Board meetings.
Empathy & Consistency make it work
Talking to Felix & Joel, what sticks out to me is the level of empathy that the members of the FOB seem to bring to the table.
Even though Felix “warns” me in the beginning that FOB meetings can be “intense” — both agree that in the years that they have been a part of the regularly happening meetings, even heated discussions never turned personal. Part of the reason might be that some Frontend Optimization Board members — like Joel — take it upon themselves to moderate the discussions. But that’s not the only reason why the discussions have worked so well.
When the FOB noticed that voting on decisions during FOB meetings repeatedly didn’t have much engagement from the members who were present, they switched the voting procedure: Instead of hand-signs during the FOB meetings, collective decisions are now made with the help of anonymized surveys which can be submitted in the days after the FOB meeting.
The anonymized surveys greatly improved participation, and as Joel puts it, “everyone feels heard” now. At the same time they make it clear that the structure of the meeting has changed over the years — the collective seems to invest time & effort into continuously improving how their FOB-board meetings are run.
Another thing that seems to make the FOB & BOB meetings work, is the consistency with which they happen. Participation is expected by their boss — the head of Frontend Development at meinestadt.de — and Felix & Joel don’t remember many instances where the meetings didn’t take place over the years. The only exception: When nobody puts any items on the agenda — when they have nothing to discuss, they won’t meet.
Implementing your own FOB & BOB
If you’re reading this article and you would like to introduce a similar format at your company — here’s what I learned from talking to Felix & Joel about starting your own FOB / BOB:
Find a predictable, regular schedule — What seems to make the FOB & BOB meetings work is that they meet regularly & in a predictable way — at meinestadt.de they meet once a sprint for FOB & BOB sessions.
Create an open agenda — The key point is the open agenda. Everyone can contribute a topic that they want to discuss, and it’s clear upfront through the open agenda what items will be discussed at the next meeting. Like that, everybody who wants to take part in the discussion that day can prepare beforehand.
Get buy-in from your boss & POs — At meinestadt.de the FOB & BOB meetings are strongly supported by their management. Participation is even expected by their management. Get buy-in from your management, and have them encourage everybody to comet to the meetings. Don’t forget to get support from your product-owners (PO). Members of FOB at meinestadt.de will generally spend 20% of their sprint implementing FOB decisions, effectively reducing technical debt. If your PO winces at the word “technical-debt” and isn’t too happy about giving up parts of their sprint, gently involve management in convincing them to invest into continuous improvement.
Listen to each other & Evolve — Finally what makes FOB & BOB meetings work at meinestadt.de is the level of listening to each other that they display. Discussions are fair and constructive, decisions made by the board are accepted & supported, even if personal opinions differ from it. Over the years BOB & FOB meetings at meinestadt.de evolved, as their members optimized the meetings — yet the format stayed lightweight and transparent, a balance that’s not easy to strike, which everybody working at meinestadt.de can be proud of.
Connect to Joel & Felix:
Felix on LinkedIn, Xing
Joel on LinkedIn, Xing
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Hi, I’m Jonas and I’m currently building up a Global Axel Springer Developer Community. If you work for an Axel Springer Company, subscribe to our Weekly (internal) Tech Newsletter to get a fresh story like this every Monday and to receive details on how you can join our global developer community ✌🏻
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