It will be almost impossible to talk about Indonesian e-commerce scene without mentioning Bukalapak at some point.

With the market’s status as a mobile-first market, it is not surprising that 70 to 80 per cent of the platform’s transaction is contributed by its mobile app.

As one of the leading online marketplaces in the country, the Bukalapak mobile app has secured 13 million total installs with two million daily active users for Android, with 700,000 total installs and 300,000 daily active users for iOS.

Both customers and sellers are using a single mobile app to shop and manage their business. This is a decision that the company made after a period of research in its users’ behaviour; it has previously considered launching two different apps for sellers and customers.

Apart from preparing the launch of its train ticket booking service in the mobile app, Bukalapak is getting ready to include its newly launched fintech features (such as a marketplace for mutual funds and gold) in the mobile app.

“When it comes to developing new features, we try to not take it easily. Let’s say that there is a new feature on our desktop [platform], you might notice that it will be a while until it shows up on [mobile] app. This is because we would like to maintain the quality of the app,” explains Bukalapak VP Engineering Ibrahim Arief.

Also Read: Alibaba reportedly in partnership talks with Emtek Group, opens possibility of Bukalapak investment

Out of the startup’s 800 employees, 200 are working in its engineering team, which are being divided into seven division: back-end, front-end, system engineer, mobile developer, site reliability engineer (SRE), quality assurance (QA) engineer, and data engineer.

The mobile development team is the biggest with almost 40 developers on board.

Mobile Apps Product Manager Bayu Surya revealed that within the last quarter, almost 10,000 engineers applied to join the company, but only 35 applicants were accepted.

To search for talents, Bukalapak also hosts hackathon events, with many participants ending up showing their interests in joining the company.

So what are the secrets to building and maintaining a team of high-performing mobile app developer?

Let Arief and Surya take you through the journey:

Sharing is caring

For the Bukalapak engineering team, knowledge sharing process plays an important role in helping the company produces a high-performance mobile app.

When asked about the criteria that the company is looking for in potential candidates, apart from technical skills, a Bukalapak engineers also need to be eager to learn, share knowledge, and help their peers.

“Senior level engineers at Bukalapak are defined not only through their skills, but also through how they share their knowledge to less-experienced engineers … It’s part of the responsibilities we set up for senior-level engineers,” Arief says.

“We are looking for engineers with a passion to help their peers grow,” he adds.

Apart from a bi-weekly internal event, the startup also regularly hosts talk shows for fellow industry players, to share the best practices in mobile development that it has acquired.

Also Read: Indonesian e-commerce startup Bukalapak offers scholarship for students

No punishments for mistakes

For many startups, making a mistake is seen as a crucial part of learning and experimentation, and Bukalapak is not exempted.

The company stresses that it does not believe in penalising mistakes made by its engineers; this is the reason why they put emphasis in having the passion to learn for their engineers.

“Mistakes happen, but we consider that as a learning experience, even though the journey might be difficult. We try not to finger-point at people,” Arief says.

Work with the flow

Bukalapak likens the process of introducing new features into the mobile app to adding a new passenger carriage in a railway train; in fact, the process itself is aptly named “release train.”

“We can compare the app to a moving railway train that keeps on moving as it is adding new passenger carriages. Let’s just say that the new carriage is a new idea. Once the new carriage is ready to be deployed, you just have to add it into the train,” Arief says.

When developing a new feature, Bukalapak is going to assign a small team to research and build a new idea. The idea will only be implemented into the mobile app when it is fully ready.

Before it is being released, a new feature needs to go through different stages of automated testings with over hundreds of test case. Once it passes all the tests, the feature will then be rolled out gradually to some users.

The team will then look forward to any report about bugs; once all the reported bugs are fixed, the feature will then be launched to all users of Bukalapak app.

“Within the mobile app development team itself, we have a core team for research and development. These are the best people working in the company, and they are the one determining how the best practices should be like,” Arief says.

Also Read: Bukalapak CEO receives prestigious award from Indonesian President Joko Widodo

Ready when it is

While many startups live by the principle of “Don’t ask for permission but ask for forgiveness,” Bukalapak believes that a product or feature is ready to be released — when it is ready.

As briefly explained in the previous point, there is no such thing as an arbitrary deadline which dictates when a product has to be launched, whether it is ready or not.

“Feature development might take a longer time, but when it is finally released, the result is as expected. It is much better than being in a hurry to release it, but it ends up having many bugs and disappointing our users, which will cost us a lot,” Arief says.

Battle preparation

The high season for online shopping in Indonesia tends to happen during religious holidays such as Ramadan or shopping holidays such as Harbolnas.

To anticipate a sharp increase of traffic and its possible impact to the mobile app’s performance, Bukalapak team starts its preparation months before the actual event.

Apart from intensifying testing on both mobile app and back-end, the team will also perform deployment froze, which is the decision to not launch any new features around Harbolnas to ensure the stability of the system.

“We will focus only on bug fixing … and this method has been proven to help maintain stability during Harbolnas,” Surya says.

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Image Credit: Bukalapak

This article was first published on August 15, 2017

The post Bukalapak spills the secrets on building a high-performing mobile development team appeared first on e27.