In a series of posts this year, I plan to write on how I led a transformation of a technology platform and engineering team - and delivered results in scaling to 10X+ growth on KPIs such as user-and-device growth, user engagement, enhanced personalisation & content discovery, reduced platform instability by increasing availability from 97 to 99%; created a 20X+ reduction in core operating costs (saving R100m+) and simultaneously built a scalable leadership team to take over. All in 3.5 years.
This draws on my professional work experience from March 2017 - October 2020, when I spent my time as CTO (Chief Technology Officer) of an OVP (Online Video Platform) for Africa's largest VE (Video Entertainment) provider. In this short period my team delivered end-to-end transformation (not just software development) that set up the IT/Engineering to scale for future growth. I also left a scalable leadership pipeline in place which allowed me to comfortably transition to my next role outside of video systems by leaving a technology roadmap delivery plan & sustainable processes in place for at least another 2 years. Since my departure, I remain in contact with the team who continue not only to thank me for the roadmap but also for the opportunities I helped create to grow their own careers as leaders, who are themselves on track to become CTOs & CIOs as well.
Context
The business grew increasingly concerned about their online video platform's ability to scale to increased forecasted demand anticipated as more customers switched from traditional broadcast satellite-TV viewing to on-demand, on-the-go-viewing through streaming video over the internet. With incumbents like Netflix & Amazon Prime Video and others entering the African territory, we also needed a reliable internet-ready TV product that customers have come to take for granted. Until then, the video platform which was built largely in-house by a local engineering team, had an active user base that consisted mainly of early adopters, an internal start-up project, fledgling at best.
This platform and product was still in its infancy, not-yet-ready for exponential internet growth, which could happen at any time. As such, this team operated on a shoestring budget of a constrained start-up for a number of years. The engineering team was also spread quite thin, working on multiple, incoherent projects, product and services not specifically focused on internet video. Rather, we were the "online people" that did everything from hosting websites, various content management systems, wrote media apps and ran operations for digital marketing sites across African continent. In short, I owned a digital IT shop that was a multi-armed, multi-headed hydra that needed taming. Such constraints whilst bred out of necessity, unfortunately ignored the bigger picture, long-term strategic investments needed in the platform to scale for future growth were largely ignored because of budget constraints. The platform barely supported its early adopters in so far as providing consistent availability was never guaranteed or reliable. Customer satisfaction scores were very low, below 4 (<40%). Net Promoter Scores (NPS) almost non-existent. Outages due to platform stability was the norm, with on-call load on support engineers increasing as number of users began to increase.
The business, unawares of the true state of the platform, had nonetheless planned increased marketing and awareness campaigns for its internet streaming product. Large events like the FIFA Soccer World Cup (2018), Olympics (2018) Cricket World Cup (2019), Rugby World Cup (2019) sparked much concern about the platform's ability to scale for increased load. Other events like UEFA, Premiere League, Game of Thrones and other popular video content expected to bring increased traffic to the platform. Apart from primary content drivers, the fear of not making a noise on the streaming side was high - we needed to take this fledgling product & platform and make it mainstream. Marketing increased. Along came a decent technology budget assigned to me to help turnaround & deliver a recovery. I could not pass up this opportunity to test my skills in technology, engineering, strategy, delivery and leadership...what a journey it was!
The ask: build and scale an video streaming (live broadcast and video-on-demand like Amazon Prime Video or Hulu) platform to work across 50+ countries on the African continent, with localisation. Build, stabilize, replace, buy, partner - do what is necessary, but we don't have time-to-wait a year for new R&D or migration, as we're going to make a noise in marketing, so the platform better be available. At the same time, build complementary services for "internet connected set top boxes" in addition to pure online play.