Tips For On-Demand Innovation From eBayTips For On-Demand Innovation From eBay

Real-time, on-demand innovation is the goal of every forward-thinking organization--and should be for every IT department. EBay has an advantage because its online business demands such innovative thinking from IT and business. Here are a few lessons every organization can benefit from:

• Automate as much of the application development life cycle as possible. EBay started with automating app deployment, then layered on top a quality assurance system that tracks bottlenecks and inconsistencies.

• Integrate technology and business teams, and involve IT in the requirements process early on. That allows "more opportunities to introduce new technologies or identify changes to existing ones," says James Barrese, VP of systems development.

• Work closely with a select group of vendors to customize their products. EBay even invites certain vendors into its development lab to work alongside its team in developing their products.

• Look for tools that allow application scalability. If an experiment with a new business process proves successful, it's important to be able to role out that application to the widest possible audience. Right now, eBay uses the Web application framework Ruby on Rails for rapid prototyping, but it's building an "innovation platform" to support quick and efficient scalability.

• Plan to integrate Web 2.0 technologies, such as Ajax and Flash. In the most recent version of its IT architecture, eBay has created "presentation tier technology" that will let it plug in Web 2.0 tools.

• Implement a scalable hardware architecture. EBay has embraced grid computing for 24/7 availability, and it's supported by "a rapidly evolving set of management tools."

Return to the story:
The eBay Way