eBay's secret to innovation

Just how do you maintain a competitive edge, stimulate innovation and align IT with key business objectives? James Barrese, VP of systems and architecture at eBay tackles some of these issues in a think piece for InformationWeek. His credentials for offering some prescriptions are impressive. eBay serves 233 million users and is growing at a rate of 130,000 users per day. It hosts 100 million concurrent listings, which are updated at a rate of 500 times per second and are searched 3,800 times per second.

So, how do they do it? The key is to establish global, automated and interdisciplinary solution development teams. The company has moved away from the more traditional "waterfall" solution development cycle in which you start with a business concept, create a list of requirements, and hand them off to engineers for implementation.

The technology group at eBay has been restructured into global, cross-functional teams, which include business-unit representatives, a product management group, technology staff, and customer service representatives. In addition, these teams are physically integrated. Barrese writes that the company rolled out the new process and organizations in the first quarter of this year with positive feedback from both the technical and business teams.

For all the details on eBay and innovation:
- learn more in the InformationWeek article