In my last post I talked a bit about agile software development and how ChannelAdvisor uses an agile framework called scrum. Contrary to what many assume, “scrum” is not an acronym for anything. It is actually named after the scrum formation in rugby where everyone on the field is swarming together, focused and intent on their common goal of getting the ball.

In the same way, an entire scrum development team is very focused and aggressively attacks their shared goal together. Only there is a significantly smaller chance of getting a concussion (unless of course someone brings donuts into the office and there aren’t enough to go around - then it can get ugly!).

Scrum - along with most flavors of agile development - operates on short iterations. Each of these development “sprints” are several weeks long and has a specific goal that the team rallies around. At the end of each sprint you have completed software you can ship!

Take our StoreAdvisor Premium offering as an example. We started that project months before its triumphant release in August, but broke the development up into small chunks of activity. Every two weeks we completed new functionality. Every 6 or 7 weeks we rolled those features out. We started out being able to simply import orders from the store, but in subsequent iterations we were able provide a rich integration with MarketplaceAdvisor Premium.

By releasing code often - even though the entire product was not complete - we were able to get valuable feedback from our users about what worked well and what did not. Since we received that feedback as we were developing the product, we were able to adjust what we were doing as we were working. That frequent customer interaction made StoreAdvisor Premium much more solid than it would have been otherwise. The end result is we were able to launch stores like ProtoGolf and immediately increase their conversion rates by 300%.

To enhance their collaboration and intensity, scrum teams tend to abandon their individual desks and move into a “war room.” I’ll sign off by giving you a peek into one of our high performing scrum team rooms.

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This past weekend we released several enhancements to our ChannelAdvisor Complete platform to give our customers new + improved functionality for selling products across online channels such as eBay, Amazon, Google,  Shopping.com or Shopzilla (and we’ve added even more sites!).

Highlights include:

• New Marketplaces - ChannelAdvisor is proud to be the first multi-channel solution to support the new Pixmania (www.pixmania.com) and Trading Post (www.tradingpost.com.au) marketplaces. Pixmania is a fast-growing, pan-European shopping site owned by DSG International, one of Europe’s largest consumer electronics retailers, and offers online shoppers consumer electronics, home & garden, toys, jewelry and many other products. Trading Post is the leading classifieds site in Australia and now offers online retailers the opportunity to post auction-style listings on its site.

• eBay Fixed Price Relisting - We extended our relisting functionality to support the new eBay Multi-Quantity Fixed-Price listing format so that users in the US and UK can not only post with the new 30-Day Fixed-Price duration from MarketplaceAdvisor Premium but automatically relist to maximize sales history and Best Match ranking (if certain conditions are met).

• Search Account Synchronizer - We added options so that users have more control over how frequently we synchronize their SearchAdvisor account with Google, Yahoo, or MSN. We have also reduced the scheduled frequency of this synchronization and give you options to configure based on your needs.

• Search Bid Manager – We made some adjustments to our Bid Manager algorithm to account for some recent Google changes including last week’s rollout of its latest Quality Score improvement.  The result is that we will continue to focus on making bid changes that are designed to achieve profitability goals.

• PriceGrabber Marketing Cost - ShoppingAdvisor users now have the option to receive and integrate marketing cost data into performance reports for the comparison shopping site PriceGrabber in the UK and US.

• StoreAdvisor Premium - We continue to enhance our new, full featured online storefront integrated into MarketplaceAdvisor Premium and added functionality to expand inventory management and synchronization. StoreAdvisor Premium users also now have the option to use the Webloyalty affiliate program in their checkout.

Click here to view the full release notes and let us know what you think on our Strategy & Support Center forum.

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No, we aren’t trying to compete with Nastia Liukin - we just aren’t that flexible. I’m talking about something a lot more exciting than spinning through the air: software development!

After experimenting with it for a good while, last year the product development team here at ChannelAdvisor jumped wholeheartedly into agile software development. Specifically, a flavor of agile called scrum. This is a relatively new way of producing software that has gained a lot of popularity in recent years. It has proven effective for us on a number of fronts:

• Software is Delivered Incrementally
  Instead of spending tons of time planning and implementing huge projects, we bite off smaller chunks of functionality and get it in our customers’ hands as soon as we can. We then iterate on what we originally release to add on additional features and functionality.
• Software is Delivered More Often
  Those of you who have been with us for a while might recall that we used to have releases every 3 – 6 months. These days we release software every 6 or 7 weeks.
• The Customer is Directly Involved
  By getting smaller pieces of functionality in front of our customers more often, we are able to get valuable feedback as we go. Gone is the risk spending six months developing something only to find out it is not what our clients need or want.
• Change is Expected and Embraced
  In this fast-moving ecommerce world, priorities can change quickly. Since we aren’t working on big, monolithic projects we are much better able to change direction when we need to (and so be agile!). For instance, we don’t have to completely shelve a major project we are in the middle of just to respond to a new eBay requirement – we can just include it as a new priority in our next iteration of the software.

We believe in agile so strongly that we opened a specialized Agile Development Center at our corporate headquarters here in North Carolina. We have a set of small, focused teams dedicated to delivering real value to our customers, often and with high quality.

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll post a few more notes about why and how we do agile development here at ChannelAdvisor. After that, I really need to get out from in front of this computer and start training for the next Summer Olympics - I think Nastia has a bit of a head start on me.

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