In early March, New York City began experiencing a surge in COVID-19 cases and most New York Times employees transitioned to working from home.
Amidst the frenzy of sorting out our personal lives—setting up a workspace in a tiny apartment, overseeing the kids’ remote schooling, or returning home to be with family—we juggled a launch with a hard deadline: Sign In with Apple.
We held our breath as we launched across web and three iOS apps (News, Cooking, Crossword), and sighed with relief when the day came and went without a hitch.
How did we do it? With a lot of hard work!
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We started early. We suspected that we didn’t know what we didn’t know. To combat this, the product requirements were shared far in advance. This gave Engineering ample time to complete a “proof of concept” and publish an internal “Request for Comment” (RFC) document. The proof of concept enabled us to uncover nuances very early on and the RFC enabled us to collect feedback before any implementation work began.
We leveraged platforms and shared services wherever possible. We were thoughtful in making improvements to shared services first. We knew that at least three client applications would reap the benefits of a well-timed improvement to our shared iOS library and we prioritized the work accordingly. When it came time for the client teams to integrate, the feature went from “Ready for Development” to “Dev Complete” in record timing.
We had a detailed implementation plan. We did not underestimate the value of hashing out the minute details of the implementation plan. We looked to the future and set key dates for important milestones: 1) product requirements, 2) final designs, 3) dev complete, 4) QA, 5) App Store submission and production release, 6) AB test ramp up for each variant. As key dates approached, the broader group was kept informed of overall status (on track or at risk) and each team adjusted accordingly.
We held a retrospective. “Sign In with Apple” won’t be the last feature we launch in 2020. As such, we leveraged this cross-team initiative to reflect on key opportunities for improvement. Without fail, we uncovered a need to standardize our design resources for native apps and a need to better support QA testing when running an AB test with multiple variants. Pro-tip: make it a practice to hold a retrospective after each major initiative. Good habits die hard!
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Looking back on our early planning conversations in October 2019, no one could have foreseen that we would be implementing a new feature in the midst of a global crisis.
But when the times became difficult, we adapted swiftly and did our part to deliver a small but bright improvement to the world.