How we built BritBox in 9 months
When I was 15 years old my neighbour successfully applied for my house to be in Sixty Minute Makeover on behalf of my Mother. Whenever the subject comes up now, the question I’m always asked is “did it really only take 60 minutes?” Like many things in life the answer is yes and no!
Yes in the sense that there are two, 30 minute sessions where hoards of decorators pile into someone’s house and throw up wallpaper, feverishly paint walls, lay down carpet and chuck fancier furnishings around the place. And no, in the sense that weeks of planning and years of establishing supply chains and infrastructure make the show possible, but when did the truth get in the way of a good story!
Similarly in 2019 when ITV Technology & Operations colleagues returned from their Christmas break they knew they had an equally daunting task ahead of them. We were about to build and launch a new subscription video platform, BritBox, by November the same year.
Like the Sixty Minute Makeover crew, we had a plan and everyone knew what they had to do. We broke up the build into three distinct phases:
- Alpha: Make it work
- Beta: Make it legal
- Full Launch: Go to market
Which was further broken down into five key domains:
- Content Integration: Is there an App?
- Playback: Can you play any video in the App?
- Login & Registration: Does the app know who you are?
- Payments: Are you paying for the App?
- Merchandising & Editorial: Can ITV optimise the App?
The Strategy
We split the work into high level epics, and while we had some degree of agency in how it was delivered, we still had a project with a reasonably fixed scope, time and cost. The time-cost-scope dilemma is one countless product teams have tackled and countless more will face. Our strategy, to leverage as many of our agile best practices as possible, was to slice every domain into small, discrete phases and then iterate them until we were complete.
The important element to this approach was that it empowered the BritBox Consumer Product team to decide what slices made up Alpha, Beta and finally Launch phases. It also enabled the team to demonstrate our progress as quickly and as visibly as possible.
Our Platform principles were key to delivering quickly
We had long thought of the underlying services that power the ITV Hub to be a product in its own right. Inspired by the principals in Steve Yegge’s Google+ memo, where he outlines Amazon’s Platform mandate stating teams must expose their data through services and build as if you’re building externally for the wider web. The Hub was our only customer and we built what they needed, but we still architected our solution as if we were building for anyone.
The biggest enabler for this approach was our move to micro-services. It was a long (and at times painful) migration and definitely a story for another day but we’re now in a wonderful position that domains can be easily swapped out for replacements. It also enables a model whereby we can pursue a single Direct to Consumer Platform with only the need for business specific adapters at the edges.
This not only supports our Owned and Operated apps but also integrations with content partners whereby both ITV and BritBox can “share” adapters to known 3rd party interfaces.
So did we build BritBox in 9 months?
From a standing start in January, by the 8th April someone could register, pay for and watch Broadchurch Season 1 — Episode 4 using the full BritBox experience on a responsive Web app. At the 9 month point we had a full end to end experience working on both iOS and Dotcom that we successfully launched to a small, control group of Beta users and ultimately we launched BritBox on 7th November to the public.
After a thorough analysis using our internal QoS tools and the gathering of social media feedback all signs pointed that the launch was a huge success. The product was solid and worked as well as any of the competition. Quite a feat considering the logistics and communication required to coordinate across three departments, three offices and hundreds of people in such a short amount of time.
But ultimately, what’s been the added value to ITV in taking this approach? Hopefully the story I’ve told outlines the benefit that is business agility. By taking a Platform approach ITV can pivot and take advantage of whatever challenges or opportunities may present themselves in the future.
The reason people always ask if it really takes 60 minutes to makeover a house, is because it’s a challenge that seems impossible and anyone that’s done DIY themselves knows how unattainable redecorating a house is in an hour.
The reality is that although the main event can be done at speed, it’s the supply chains and agile, repeatable processes that enable the format of the show. They’re using Platform principles to create Sixty Minute Makeovers in the same way that ITV is using Platform principles to power our Direct to Consumer products.
