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In our tech blog you can read about our challenging tasks around development, architecture, data science, machine learning and more.
Team JarvisDecember 17, 2025Learning to Rank is Rocket Science: How Clojure accelerates our Machine Learning with Deep Neural Networks
00Learn how OTTO uses 🖥️ Clojure to build robust machine learning pipelines for learning to rank 🚀 and improves the search experience.DevelopmentMachine learning- Team JarvisNovember 04, 2025
Learning to Rank – To the Moon and Back(-propagation): Deep Neural Networks That Learn to Rank What You Love
015Learn how OTTO optimizes search relevance using Learning to Rank – and the role Deep Learning plays for our Data Science team.Development 
MarcoJuly 30, 2025Open Source at OTTO: Transparency, Community & Innovation
05Find out how OTTO lives Open Source – for more transparency, developer satisfaction and digital sovereignty. Read more about our strategy now!Development
AashrikaJuly 22, 2025AWS & GCP – Two Summits, Countless Insights
011Our personal insights & highlights ☆ AWS Summit Hamburg & GCP Summit DüsseldorfDevelopmentEvents and cultureWorking methods
NinaJune 18, 2025What is an LLM? | Large Language Models explained
211Learn how large language models (LLM) like ChatGPT work. An overview of the structure, training & potential of modern language models.DevelopmentWorking methodsMachine learning
MarvinApril 29, 2025Visualizing Software Architecture with C4 Model
315Problems with architecture diagram creation using traditional methods – e.g. UML? Solution: C4 model ► Tips for implementation & useDevelopment- AndreasMarch 26, 2025
How UV Solves The Hard Problem of Python’s Package Management
017Package management in Python ✓ Master challenges with UV package manager ✓ Read more about organization & benefits now!Development 
AlexanderFebruary 19, 2025AI assistant: From Vector Databases to Multimodal Agents
011Optimization of our AI assistant ✓ Use of agent-based modeling ✓ Read more about reasons for optimization & the path now!Data scienceDevelopmentMachine learning- NinaJanuary 22, 2025
Terraform Tips: Scalable and Reliable Infrastructure-as-Code – Part 2
06Optimize directory structure & resource organization ✓ Handling of input & output values ✓ Read more about Terraform Best Practices now!DevelopmentWorking methods - NinaNovember 12, 2024
Terraform Tips: Scalable and Reliable Infrastructure-as-Code – Part 1
59Terraform Best Practices ✓ Define Infrastructure-as-Code ✓ Terraform Lifecycle & Terraform Modules ✓ Read more now!DevelopmentWorking methods 
COSTNovember 12, 2024How we used a simple trick to save USD 500,000 in data transfer costs
817Increased efficiency of cloud usage ✓ Cost reduction ✓ Migration to dual-stack IPv6 ✓ Find out more now!DevelopmentCloud
DominikSeptember 30, 2024Developer Hacks – Modern Command Line Tools and Advanced Git Commands
00In this article, you learn more about a modern development setup, state-of-the-art alternatives to classic shell programs, and advanced git commands.DevelopmentWorking methods
Team PITAugust 13, 2024About the development of genAI assistants AskARev and Searchbuddy
18Find out (in a very special way) how the PIT team at Otto Group data.works developed the generative AI-based products AskARev and Searchbuddy.ArchitectureDevelopmentOperations- NinaApril 17, 2024
Meet Nina – From Healthcare Management to Software Development
23Find out how Nina mastered her career change into software development with the help of her team and her great enthusiasm for IT!DevelopmentOperationsWorking methods 
FabianApril 17, 2024Confluent Helps Power a Diverse and Scalable Online Shopping Experience for OTTO
015Find out how OTTO is taking its 10-year-old data infrastructure into a new era with the event streaming platform powered by Confluent and making itself future-proof.DevelopmentOperationsWorking methods- JimMarch 14, 2024
Machine Learning Ops: What It's Like in Practice
07Get an insight into Jim's work as an MLOps-focused engineer! In this article, he explains how a machine learning product is developed and how you can get started in this discipline yourself.Data scienceDevelopmentMachine learning - MircoFebruary 21, 2024
Spanner's Distributed Nature
015At OTTO, Google Cloud Spanner is an integral part of several services. Mirco reveals the complexity of optimizing joins in Google Cloud Spanner and gives some helpful insider tips.Data scienceDevelopment 
Falk, KayJanuary 24, 2024Recap of the EuroRust 2023 conference in Brussels
013Kay and Falk were at the EuroRust conference in Brussels in mid-October. There are more and more enthusiasts of the Rust programming language at OTTO. The two of them tell you what went on at the conference and why Rust is a useful tool.DevelopmentEvents and culture
DanielNovember 27, 2023Securely managing sensitive data with HashiCorp Vault
09Almost every application is using sensitive data, such as passwords or other login credentials, to log in to databases, third-party systems and the like. Such data should not end up in plain text in the version control system, but rather be kept under lock and key. For the secure storage of data, the use of Hashicorp Vault has gained acceptance at OTTO.DevelopmentSecurity
Christian, Jürgen, Konstantinos, Tobias, TungNovember 15, 2023Dagster: Data Engineering Best Practice during Slack Time
011In the inc(AI) team, we are always trying out different tools and methods. Slack time has proven to be a good way of doing this, in which we learn alone or together. The motivation for such Slack time naturally comes from the challenges that we have to solve during our work. Our strategy is to always look to the open source community first to find suitable solutions for us. Some time ago, we also investigated a new tool called Dagster in our Slack time.DevelopmentWorking methods- StefanieSeptember 28, 2023
How to setup a Kanban board in Jira using sub columns
28In this blog post I want to share the evolution of our Kanban board in Jira and how we worked around the missing feature of sub columns.ArchitectureDevelopmentWorking methods - Christian, Jürgen, Konstantinos, TobiasAugust 17, 2023
ProductGPT – automating the creation of product texts with ChatGPT
05Although they've been around for a while, Large Language Models (LLMs) have taken the world by storm since ChatGPT was launched. ChatGPT currently dominates the AI landscape like no other model. Could it also be used for the creation of good product texts in the OTTO Webshop? This is precisely the question we wanted to tackle in the inc(AI) team in a 2-week sprint. The result is ProductGPT – a tool that can do exactly that!DevelopmentMachine learning - Tobias, TomAugust 01, 2023
User centricity beginning with the first keystroke
15The majority of user journeys in search starts with a click in a search box. How can you guide your users after this initial click? At otto.de we strive to show our users the best suggestions for their need, right after the first clickData scienceMachine learning 
BirgitJuly 28, 2023Why using API Guidelines is a good idea
03Working according to a standard... really? Come on – software developers know how to build APIs. Besides, they want to stay flexible and have neither the desire nor the time to plough their way through some endless set of rules. And even if you've read them, that doesn't mean you agree with them. Fair enough. Nevertheless, there are a few challenges to overcome in software development, especially when working in autonomous teams and when you're dealing with business growth. This post offers an insight into how we at OTTO came up with our own API Guidelines and implemented them successfully.ArchitectureDevelopmentWorking methods
Alexander, DavidJuly 10, 2023.Enterprise-scaled Self-Healing StackSets
03At OTTO, we need to manage several hundred AWS accounts for our product teams while balancing agility and control. That's why OTTO IT's Cloud Competence Center, also known as the Governance at Scale (GAS) team, worked with globaldatanet to develop a solution to run AWS CloudFormation StackSets at Scale, integrated into the OTTO tooling ecosystem with Confluence and Microsoft Teams.DevelopmentCloudSecurity- PhilippJune 05, 2023
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) – keeping Terraform configuration DRY with Terragrunt
08The key is to minimize, or even completely eliminate, code repetition by keeping the Terraform configuration DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself). This is why we migrated to Terragrunt. It's a small wrapper around Terraform promising reduced repetition, better remote-state configuration, and simpler work with Terraform modules. It can be a viable solution for better organizing configuration files and clearly stating differences between deployment environments.DevelopmentCloud 
AndreasMay 11, 2023YesWeHack and OTTO stage Live Bug Bounty Hunting event
03At this year's Nullcon Berlin, the international IT security conference that brings hundreds of top experts together, we staged a live Bug Bounty Hunt together with YesWeHack, a leading provider of bug bounty services. Around 40 crack security researchers pitched in to subject OTTO's infrastructure security to a hardcore test. This was a welcome chance for us to check our Web applications for security loopholes and learn from a personal exchange with leading-edge researchers at the same time.Data scienceDevelopmentWorking methods
Christian, KonstantinosApril 04, 2023Return-rate forecasting with survival analysis
01Especially in OTTO's retail business, accurately forecasting return rates and their fluctuations plays a major role in minimising unnecessary costs. In large-goods deliveries (fridges, sofas etc.) every single return results in very significant costs.Data scienceWorking methods
Michael, SergeyMarch 08, 2023'Real' real-time programmatic advertising with TensorFlow
22In collaboration with Online Marketing, Team Siggi at OTTO BI developed an in-house programmatic advertising solution in 2018. For this purpose, among other elements a separate SSP (Supply Side Platform) and DSP (Demand Side Platform) solution was developed, called Orbidder.Development
Team NautikJanuary 08, 2023A Machine Learning approach to real-time display advertising Click here – it’s not an ad, we promise ;-)
00Let’s be honest, display advertising usually makes people think of an aggressive e-tailers literally hunting them down. Many potential online customers therefore resort to all-or-nothing ad blockers to save themselves from visual overload. However, beyond these two extreme user experiences, in reality display advertising is simply a modern equivalent to a classic poster hanging at the bus stop.Development
ChristianJanuary 06, 2023Rethinking semantic product search: a new approach to queries with unusual spelling variations
01In recent years, semantic product search has been widely adopted in global e-commerce. However, many systems exhibit issues in understanding queries with unusual spelling variations. In this blogpost, we show you how Otto’s Team Turing has developed a new system that alleviates these problems. It is live and has lifted the Click-Through Rates (CTR) in the low-recall segments of otto.de by more than 25% and the Conversion Rate (CvR) in the low-hit segment by more than 90%.Development
GuidoDecember 01, 2022Scaling Agile @ OTTO
011Agile Development is definitely nothing new at OTTO – the term has long since reached Peak Hype. The first generation of Developers for whom 'Agile' is ancient history (or simply their regular working routine) are now almost Senior Devs. In brief, the term has lost its gloss and what we might now call 'Agile' is often a mix of Agile, Lean, XP and other working principles.Working methods
Andreas, PhilippNovember 01, 2022Kaggle: Machine Learning competition for the best Multi-Objective Recommender System
14Major online retailers such as OTTO offer their customers millions of products to explore and purchase. However, finding the right product from such a vast selection without a little guidance can be exhausting! So we work to guide our customers to those products that best match their interests and motivations using personalised recommendations. For this reason we want to enhance our ability to forecast in real time which products each customer will want to see, add to their cart and order at any given moment of their visit.Development
JosefineOctober 26, 2022How we work at data.works
00Are you interested in data and cloud technology? Would you like to understand more about different roles in development teams? Are you looking for a new job? This blog post series is about our way of working and our job profiles at Otto Group data.works.Working methods
SvenOctober 26, 2022How we work at data.works - Meet Sven
00Are you interested in data and cloud technology? Would you like to understand more about different roles in development teams? Are you looking for a new job? This blog post is about our way of working and our job profiles at Otto Group data.works.Working methods- ChristopherOctober 11, 2022
Dynamic Pricing for otto.de
07The article outlines the basic features of Otto’s Dynamic Pricing service, which is currently used to set prices for the majority of products on otto.de. It further describes how we successfully built the service as a robust and scalable cloud application able to deliver prices for millions of articles on a daily basis. It also explains how we benefited from working on our application in a cross-functional team setup and how we intend to secure the continuous improvement of our service.DevelopmentWorking methodsCloud - AlexanderSeptember 15, 2022
Fully-automated enterprise-scaled provisioning of AWS Accounts via Self-Service using Jira Service Desk
00In this article, we’ll demonstrate how to automate the provisioning of AWS Accounts via self-service using Jira Service Desk, potentially reducing the provisioning time of out AWS Accounts from 4 hours to 25 minutes.Project managementWorking methods - Andrea, YunusAugust 16, 2022
Offline Ranking Validation - Predicting A/B Test Results
00Implementing a machine learning model for ranking in an ecommerce search requires a well-designed approach to how the target metric is defined. In this talk we will share our approach to offline ranking validation and how it performed in practice.TestingEvents and culture 
MarcoJuly 04, 2022OTTO's future-ready Event Exchange Platform – with Apache Kafka
017When we launched our platform implementation back in 2018, we jointly committed to creating state-of-the-art software aligned with thoroughly modern and proven practices. First off, we deep-dived on modern software architectures including Event Driven, Microservices, Distributed Systems, Cloud Native and DevOps – which resulted in a couple of positive architecture decisions.ArchitectureWorking methodsCloud
KarolisJune 02, 2022Power BI: OTTO's reporting vehicle
00Following the official introduction of Power BI at OTTO in 2020, it’s quickly become a household name for many colleagues. Others have already taken their first practical steps in using this technology or have even become advanced and regular users - for good reason!DevelopmentWorking methodsCloud
OleApril 27, 2022The Open Source Private Cloud in the Otto Group
19The term ‘cloud’ has been much more than just a buzzword for a long time now. The cloud, or rather the clouds, have become an essential part of our daily business. But what if – even though the wheat has long since been separated from the chaff in terms of IT expertise – I still don't know much about the cloud?DevelopmentOperationsCloud
MarcelMarch 22, 2022Life in the mob
13While many of us are big fans of ‘mob’ (mafia) classics like ‘The Sopranos’ and ‘The Godfather’, in fact this article shows how mob (‘collective’) programming can help shape a new team and how great results can be achieved quickly through this collaborative working approach.DevelopmentWorking methods
RenéFebruary 28, 2022A brief guide to replacing legacy software
03Some see the task of ‘replacing outdated software’ as punishment. Well, I see it differently! In this article I’ll explain how we successfully introduced an extensive new system and resolved over 100 dependencies. Software, just like natural organisms, has a finite lifecycle. However, the end of its useful lifetime does not necessarily mean ‘The End’ – it can also be the beginning of something new. In this sense, there is something evolutionary about software replacement.ArchitectureProject management
Manfred, ReshmaJanuary 31, 2022How an agile organisation enables scaling
01The Business Intelligence Division is playing a decisive role on OTTO's journey towards becoming a connected company. It realigned and transformed itself in 2019 into an agile, adaptable organisational unit. Beyond data and algorithms, BI relies above all on its people and the continuous adaptation of the organisation through joint learning.Project management
Bartholomäus, MichaelOctober 26, 2021Scaling product development through collaboration
00Together with our Product Teams, we – namely our Agile Coach Bart and our Product Manager Michael – have taken on an exciting challenge and ventured into scaling our product development process based on our culture of agile collaboration.DevelopmentWorking methods- MarcoSeptember 01, 2021
OTTO's Tech Manifest
00OTTO is moving towards a tech-enabled company. Our software is business-related, not abstract. While complying with the requirements of our buying department, we have succeeded in becoming a great platform for customers, partners and suppliers.DevelopmentEvents and culture 
Michael,July 26, 2021Product Pioneers: Unbarcamp with John Cutler
01This time we were once again fortunate to land a top-class speaker – John Cutler, known to many as the author of the post: "12 Signs You’re Working in a Feature Factory". As Head of Product Education at Amplitude, a leading provider of product analytics solutions, he deals intensively with the topic of data-driven product development. John speaks at conferences such as Mind the Product, blogs passionately about product management, and reaches nearly 50,000 people via Twitter.Development- July 07, 2021
Cloud-native SAP operation in the Otto Group
00My last blog article "Pimp my SAP ERP" was about how to give old SAP systems a front-end based on modern Web technologies. This blog article will be about how to operate these monolithic SAP systems ourselves in a modern and agile way using the resources of the Google Cloud Platform.ArchitectureDevelopment 
Joscha,June 18, 2021Machine Learning Pipelines for Search: Learning to Rank
00In this article we will provide some insights into how we built the judgement pipeline, which is to serve as a basis for future LTR pipelines. What does a judgement pipeline do in the LTR context? It computes judgements based on user data for a certain timeframe. These judgements are to serve as the labels a ranking model will be trained on. Right now we also export these judgements for live validation on selected queries.Development- AndreaMay 14, 2021
Part 2: Data Collection for Learning to Rank
01In the last post we described what our goals in implementing learning to rank (LTR) are and how we intend to achieve them (methodically). But how do we actually get the data we need? How do we identify the ranking order that will create the greatest value for our customers? What exactly is “value”/relevance from a customer’s perspective? And how do we define features to correctly represent that data? We will try to answer some of these questions in this post. Subsequent posts will deal with how we measure search quality and how we realized technical implementation of an LTR pipeline.Development - AndreaApril 21, 2021
Part 1: Introduction in Learning to Rank for E-Commerce Search
04Enabling users to find the products they are looking for is the core job of the search team of otto.de. But not only finding the relevant articles, but also putting the most relevant products at the top of the list is one of the main challenges we are facing in our job. In this and the following posts we will show you how we implemented Learning to Rank to improve our ranking, how we meet the ecommerce specific challenges, measure search quality and how we realized the technical implementation.Development 
HeikoMarch 16, 2021Frontends with Microservices
30Over the past few years, microservices have grown into an established architectural approach. They are now so well established and tested that the hype is over, and enough experience is available on the benefits, limits, advantages and disadvantages. This article highlights the advantages or promises of microservice approaches that can be fulfilled when frontends are also considered.ArchitectureDevelopment- , JosefineFebruary 04, 2021
Personalizing product rankings for online retailers
20Clustering shop visitors based on profile attributes (e.g., based on shopping behavior) can be used to provide personalized product rankings, aiming at displaying more relevant products at the top positions in an online shop. While our approach allows for reusing most parts of our regression-based ranking model, we have encountered new challenges in the personalized setting on the way to actually provide the desired user segments and rankings.Development - February 04, 2021
SLIM: Hydrating cloud native CI/CD pipelines to securely access GCP projects
00Only too often generating and copying keys around is the way to go to talk to APIs for example from inside a container. This technique has many disadvantages from a security standpoint. The situation becomes especially crucial when privileged keys are involved, for example when used inside of CI/CD pipelines to roll out infrastructure as code. In this article our secret-less-identity-management system is introduce, an alternative approach to how we provide an identity to our CI/CD pipelines without sharing secrets but based on their context.ArchitectureDevelopment 
ChristianFebruary 04, 2021Switching from Jenkins to GitHub as a CI/CD system
02Christian's team is one of now 30 teams managing microservices behind the facade of otto.de. In the article, he describes the long road of switching from Jenkins to GitHub as a CI/CD system.DevelopmentOperations- January 08, 2021
‘How to quality’
00In our E-Commerce, Innovation & Platform Division, several hundred colleagues work together in over 25 teams. These cross-functional, agile software development teams comprise different roles – and one of these is the role of Quality Specialist.DevelopmentTesting - ChristianDecember 16, 2020
#3 Bid optimisation
01In our last post we looked at how we use a sequential algorithm to achieve optimal user-campaign assignment. But this only gets us halfway to good campaign performance; the key is the bidding strategy.Development - ChristianDecember 09, 2020
#2 KPI Forecasts & Assignment
01We want to address the following problem: an advertising partner wants to show its campaigns to the most suitable users possible, for instance to optimize click rates or increase reach.Since we have a large number of campaigns and advertising partners but can naturally fill an advertising space for a user just once. In the article, we'll provide solutions.Development - ChristianDecember 02, 2020
OTTO Display Network & COMPASS
02For some time now, OTTO has relied on an in-house developed programmatic stack, the OTTO Display Network (ODiN). Through the correct application of data science, the implementation of campaign selection and the bidding service can be automated to a high degree. The following blog post is intended to provide a small insight into this implementation – the product we call COMPASS.Development - MarcoNovember 01, 2020
OTTO and cloud computing – a wrap-up of my personal cloud strategy experience with OTTO
00OTTO's history of using data centers is long and full of anecdotes. When I myself joined OTTO in 2009, most cloud providers were still in their fledgling state and cloud computing was far from being state-of-the-art for running heavy workloads.ArchitectureDevelopment - October 30, 2020
Otto Group IT's Cloud Circle
02Back in 2019, the Otto Group IT launched the so-called Cloud Circle – a community that provides an open exchange on cloud technologies and projects within the Otto Group.Project management - October 16, 2020
Is this seat still free?
00The DOQ* took place on 08 and 09 September 2020. While this conference has essentially already existed for 5 years, every year is exciting and different. This year we not only changed the name, but also carried it out remotely.DevelopmentOperationsTesting - October 01, 2020
Continuous Delivery with Feature-Toggles
00‘Continuous Delivery’ has been on everyone's lips for some time now. At OTTO, we moved our focus away from repetitive manual activities some years ago already, in order to focus on topics that deliver greater benefit to the customer.Development - ,September 21, 2020
Writing an AWS Lambda using Micronaut
01In this article, we will look at one option to write a Java AWS Lambda using the still rather new microframework Micronaut and we’re going to deploy our code to production by means of Serverless.Development - July 21, 2020
Robotic Process Automation in der Otto Group
00This article is about the WHAT, WHO and HOW of Robotic Process Automation in the Otto Group and it should give an impression of what the status quo is and what goals are being pursued.DevelopmentProject managementTesting - July 11, 2020
Cooperation in Software development from otto.com
00Hanno is a software developer from the "FIND" team at otto.de. He reports on his experiences in his new job and gives tips on how agile collaboration can also work remotely.DevelopmentProject management - June 22, 2020
A Data Mapping DSL
00This post is going to revolve around a domain specific language (DSL) which is part of one of our services. But instead of a detailed introduction to the language itself, I’m going to talk about the process we established around operating it and touch a bit on how parsing the DSL works.DevelopmentOperations - March 06, 2020
Product Pioneers Barcamp bei OTTO
00This year it was finally time again - 90 participants* took part in the third Product Pioneers Barcamp with Markus Andrazek at Collabor8 on the OTTO campus.Events and culture - November 05, 2019
How we use Computer Generated Imagery(CGI)
00More articles, more product images, but less photography: On its way to becoming a platform, OTTO is increasingly relying on 3D product images created using Computer Generated Imagery (CGI).Events and culture 
ChristianSeptember 02, 2019Developing for the OTTO platform: What have we achieved so far?
00OTTO is transforming its business model from retailer to platform. Our colleague Christian is developing for the OTTO platform in Hamburg and provides insights into pre-planning, agile project management and the technical architecture.ArchitectureProject management- Rainer VolkJuly 02, 2019
OTTO develops its own Real Time Advertising technologies
00OTTO has been playing out real-time advertising on the Internet for some time now. The problem, however, is that numerous service providers stand between the marketers and OTTO. In order to make the majority of service providers obsolete in this process, OTTO has built the Orbidder, a service that is directly linked to the advertising spaces to be auctioned.Development - June 07, 2019
Pimp my SAP ERP
10ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning and is the main product of the German software manufacturer SAP. With the various ERP installations, we mainly map business processes from finance and human capital management (HCM).ArchitectureDevelopment - May 28, 2019
CDCs for otto.de
03For several years, we have been building otto.de in independent teams that continuously put their changes live without having to coordinate with each other. A wide range of different tests help us to deploy these changes quickly and without fear of errors. However, one class of tests has not yet gained the traction it deserves in the industry: consumer driven contracts, or CDCs. So I'd like to use our recent findings to write about it here.ArchitectureDevelopmentTesting - Marco GewekeApril 26, 2019
Automated Visual Regression Tests with JLineup
02In this article, I would like to put a spotlight on one of our open source tools that makes deployment automation much easier for us: JLineup.DevelopmentTesting - Johannes LudwigApril 25, 2019
Hackathon of the Otto Group IT & Microsoft Azure
00Under the claim "Turn your ideas into cloud solutions in 2 days!", the participants of the first Otto Group IT Hackathon at the beginning of April had the goal of developing prototypes with a relevant business case for Otto Group companies.DevelopmentEvents and culture - Frederik MarsJanuary 25, 2019
Mob Programming: Stateful Streaming
00On 9/29/18, a Never Code Alone event was held at the Otto Campus where over 30 Scala enthusiasts gathered to code together in interactive Mob Programming sessions.Development - Florian TorklerJanuary 18, 2019
From Database to Memory
80The OTTO marketplace grows by around 10,000 products every week - and the trend is rising. It is therefore a particular challenge to deal with such large volumes of data and to enrich all systems with the data in a timely manner and keep it up to date at all times.ArchitectureDevelopment - Sebastian AberleDecember 03, 2018
OTTO goes AWS - Part 2
493The cloud stands for scalability, cost efficiency and short time to market for new features. otto.de also wants to benefit from this and therefore started the migration to AWS last summer.ArchitectureOperations - Jan KlečkaNovember 02, 2018
BeansJam Mobile
00In addition to a lot of fun, very little sleep and finished games, we were also able to take away some exciting insights from the weekend. Agile (development) methods that we know and use from our daily work at OTTO also work under the extreme conditions of a game jam.Development - Stefanie SchönebeinOctober 17, 2018
Retrospective: Remote Retro with Trello
50While looking for a format that could be used well for a remote retro, I had the idea that the desired functions could also be mapped via a Trello board.Project management - Fabian HoffmannOctober 04, 2018
OTTO goes AWS - Part 1
50The cloud stands for scalability, cost efficiency and short time to market for new features. otto.de also wants to benefit from this and therefore started the migration to AWS last summer.ArchitectureProject management - Stefanie SchönebeinJune 15, 2018
Retrospective: Team Radar
20The Team Radar is a well-suited format for comparing the individual assessments of team members with regard to certain categories. In this way, different expectations of the team also become easily visible.Project management - ChristianMay 03, 2018
OTTO's journey to become a platform
10OTTO wants to open up to partners even more than before and become a platform. The change in the business model naturally also requires a change in the IT landscape.ArchitectureProject management - February 25, 2018
Wir holen uns den Pokal!
00Wir haben bei uns intern die Aktion "Wir holen uns den Pokal!" gestartet mit dem Ziel, beim Deutschen Project Excellence Award der GPM teilzunehmen.Project management 
ChristianDecember 03, 2017Is naming things one of the hardest problems in Computer science?
00Is naming things a hard problem in Computer Science? Those of you familiar with Betteridge's law of headlines may already have guessed the answer.Development- ChristianMay 29, 2017
With Clojure we get a whole lot of stuff done. Seriously.
90In this post I want to emphasize another not less important aspect: Productivity. With Clojure we get a whole lot of stuff done. Seriously.Development - Matthias RöhlMay 25, 2017
31.572 Lego bricks - 1 Target
00We worked in 24 groups at 12 stations across locations, teams and hierarchies, which had just as positive an impact on getting to know each other as the social and evening program.Project management - Stefanie SchönebeinApril 17, 2017
Wie nutzen wir JIRA?
20In unserem Bereich “E-Commerce, Innovation & Plattform” arbeiten viele cross-funktionale Teams für die Backlog-Planung mit Jira. Hier beantworten wir Fragen rund um die Story-Vorbereitung.Project management - Mario HienenFebruary 20, 2017
OTTO-Pathfinder
00In a cross-departmental project, OTTO wanted to generate insights on the topic of the customer journey and use them as a basis for measures (e.g., improving the customer experience). The aim was to create an analysis basis that makes potential visible and offers added value for OTTO.Development - November 30, 2016
#QConf2016 - Software Quality
00We Quality Specialists not only look beyond the team's own horizons by exchanging ideas on the topic of quality in division-wide formats such as QS OpenSpace, QS Conventions and focus groups. We also put out feelers across the Group and beyond.Testing - November 26, 2016
Learning goal-oriented control with Napoleon
10Startups are often associated with the terms "speed" and "agility". It seems that they are able to act much faster than large companies. This also applies to the speed of decision-making. Why is this so?Project management - September 26, 2016
Was haben StartUps mit Test & Learn bei OTTO zu tun?
00Bei OTTO versuchen wir, das “Test & Learn”-Vorgehen der StartUps anzuwenden. Dies liest sich sehr einfach. In der Realität erfordert es viel Kreativität, Mut, Planung und Geschick diesem Vorgehen treu zu bleiben.Project management - Jan Henning BeckerSeptember 23, 2016
Use of a domain-specific language
00The software that handles transformation and data delivery at OTTO is called ProPHET (Product Data Partner Feed Handling & Export Tool). This article shows the advantages of switching to a domain-specific language (DSL) to describe the transformation of this data.Development - August 15, 2016
Full Disclosure: Securing Internal Communication
40Current e-commerce systems often consist of several servers that communicate with users' browsers via SSL-secured lines. However, the customers' computers are not the only ones with which a store must exchange data: it is almost always necessary for the system's individual servers to communicate with each other as well. It does not matter whether the architecture is microservice or vertical. Even the aging monoliths are happy to use multiple servers in a multi-tier approach.Development - Peter Wolter und Stephan KrausJuly 14, 2016
New article in OBJEKTspektrum: Scaling Agile @ OTTO - Learning at Scale
10What is actually the goal behind agility? Speed and the ability to change! The basis for this are appropriate structures and framework conditions in the company and the ability of the organization to learn: Small, autonomous, interdisciplinary teams that work independently and with a high degree of responsibility toward the corporate goals, that decide what is done. - , ,June 08, 2016
Are we really just test managers?
80Until now, the term "test manager" was a very wooden, bureaucratic-sounding title. In the meantime, even managing tests is only a small part of the added value we provide as a team.Testing - Tech-BloggerJune 02, 2016
Tesla, Edison und Turing
00Unser E-Commerce-Entwicklungsbereich bei OTTO ist in verschiedene kleine agile Teams aufgeteilt, die jeweils mehrere Anwendungen entwickeln. Dabei bestimmt jedes Team seinen Technologiestack selbst und kann pro Anwendung die passende Technologie wählen.ArchitectureDevelopment - GuidoMarch 20, 2016
Why Microservices?
00When we started 'Lhotse', the project to replace the old, monolithic e-commerce platform of otto.de a few years ago, we chose self-contained systems (SCS) to implement the new shop.ArchitectureDevelopment - Tech-BloggerNovember 24, 2015
Process Automation and Continuous Delivery at OTTO.de
140Let us guide you through our way of working. Let us show you what processes we have (and which ones we do not have) and give you a hint on how to increase productivity and quality at the same timeOperationsTesting - Peter WolterNovember 16, 2015
The role of management in developing self-conscious and agile organisations
50Looking at the role of management in developing self-conscious and agile organisations - GuidoSeptember 30, 2015
On Monoliths and Microservices
440When we began the development of our new Online Shop otto.de, we chose a distributed, vertical-style architecture at an early stage of the process. Growing volumes of data, increasing loads and the need to scale the organization, all of these forced us to rethink our approach.ArchitectureDevelopment - Jürgen HoltschmidtSeptember 08, 2015
The Do's and Dont's of bringing Commercial E-Commerce Software to Otto.de
20In this blog you will find a lot of information on how we implement code for our shop in the best way. But in some cases we also buy commercial standard software, for instance for components which give us a faster time to market or which cannot be implemented by us in a better or more cost effective way. - Simon MoneckeJuly 23, 2015
Microservices: CI with LambdaCD - Current architecture and vision for the future (3/3)
00In the last two months, we started our journey towards a new microservices architecture. Among other things, we found that our existing CD tools were not ready to scale with new requirements. So we tried a new approach, defining our pipelines in code using LambdaCD. In combination with a Mesos cluster we can deploy new applications after a few minutes to see how they fit into our architecture by running tests against existing services.ArchitectureDevelopmentOperations - ChristianJune 23, 2015
A tale of two lambdas: The joys of working in a polyglot team.
40As for the issue of the monolithic software, a lot has changed in quite a short period of time. We moved from rather big vertically decomposed systems to micro-verticals and microservices. See for example Guido Steinacker's post on thatArchitectureDevelopment - GuidoJune 03, 2015
Von Monolithen und Microservices
00Als wir 2011 mit der Neuentwicklung unseres Online-Shops otto.de starteten, wählten wir frühzeitig eine verteilte, vertikal geschnittene Architektur. Erfahrungen mit unserem Altsystem zeigten uns, dass eine monolithische Architektur den stetig wachsenden Anforderungen nicht gewachsen ist: Steigendes Datenvolumen, immer höhere Last und die Notwendigkeit, auch organisatorisch skalieren zu können, erforderten ein Umdenken.Architecture - Simon MoneckeJune 01, 2015
The underlying infrastructure (1/3)
70In the last two months, we started our journey towards a new microservices architecture. Among other things, we found that our existing CD tools were not ready to scale with those new requirements. So we tried a new approach, defining our pipelines in code using LambdaCD. In combination with a Mesos cluster we can deploy new applications after a few minutes to see how they fit into our architecture by running tests against existing services.ArchitectureOperations - Dev-BloggerMay 21, 2015
The OTTO IT Bootcamp: A fight against a lack of vocational education
00For four weeks, the new IT trainees go through talks and sessions on various IT topics. During this time, they are not only provided with OTTO-specific content, but also with IT basics and thus gain an advance insight into departments, tasks and their future training. - March 19, 2015
Varnish Developer Day
00On March 6th, we hosted the Varnish Developer Day VDD at our Loft 6. We are proud to give the community a place to meet and to support the open source project Varnish.Operations - timhillmerMarch 04, 2015
Tutorial - Mario Kart
00The "Lego Mindstorms: Mario Kart" project was launched in October 2014. The idea behind this is that the IT trainees at OTTO come together every Friday, every two weeks for a joint project in order to exploit synergies and also to specifically compensate for content that the vocational school cannot provide.Development - Tech-BloggerFebruary 20, 2015
Vortrag auf der MicroXchg 2015
60In diesem Beitrag werde ich anhand der neuen E-Commerce Plattform von OTTO aufzeigen, wie wir den Monolithen Otto.de in vertikale Systeme aufgeteilt und dadurch ein agiles Arbeitsumfeld ermöglicht haben.ArchitectureDevelopment - Tech-BloggerDecember 16, 2014
Reaching the Summit of Web Performance with otto.de - Part 2
10In Part 1 of the interview, Uwe Beßle and Nils Kuhn of iteratec gave us an overview of the OpenSpeedMonitor, a tool for measuring the performance of websites. In this second part, we have a look at how the OpenSpeedMonitor/WebPagetest environment is used at OTTO.Testing - Tech-BloggerNovember 14, 2014
Reaching the Summit of Web Performance with otto.de
20Performance has become critical to the success of websites, and of e-commerce sites in particular. With customers expecting web pages to load increasingly faster, they will often lose patience, especially in a purchase process, if they have to wait for too long. The key question is figuring out how long each of the various pages can be allowed to take – at maximum – to load and present relevant content in the browser.DevelopmentTesting - Guido SteinackerJuly 29, 2014
Scaling with Microservices and Vertical Decomposition
160The architecture of otto.de is based on the concept of vertical decomposition: the whole system is vertically split into several loosely coupled applications.Architecture - ChristianJuly 24, 2014
The adventure continues.
00This is part two of my roundup of EuroClojure 2014.Development - Bjoern K.July 18, 2014
#bonded2014
00With the great variety of talks as well as the great variety of visitors (we had guests from 11 different companies of the Otto Group) the whole event turned out to be what we had hoped for an interactive and inspiring day for tech guys in the Otto Group.Project management - ChristianJuly 02, 2014
My Kraków adventure
20Last week I attended the EuroClojure conference 2014. It was a truly fantastic conference in the beautiful city of Kraków.Development - Robert Breetzmann, Stephan Kraus und Christian StammJune 30, 2014
Zero tolerance for errors - New article in OBJEKTspektrum about quality at otto.de
00How do you manage dozens of live deployments per week on one of the largest e-commerce platforms in Europe? To be able to permanently deliver new features and fixes, one essential ingredient is needed: automated quality. With our story of a bug, we follow a concrete bug fix on otto.de in this article and give practical tips for quality in agile software development.DevelopmentTesting - Tech-BloggerMay 20, 2014
Hybrid Apps - The Best of Web and Native Code
30There has already been much discussion about the pros and cons of mobile web and native apps. OTTO itself has developed the iPad app hybrid. In this post we will talk more about the advantages of both technologies and give examples how to combine them elegantly.ArchitectureDevelopment - Marco HutzschApril 24, 2014
BedCon 2014 - we were there
10I was present at the BED-CON in Berlin on 03 & 04.04.2014 with a talk about our experiences in the LHOTSE project from an operations perspective. - ChristianMarch 05, 2014
BDD at the University in Kiel
00An exciting and challenging project. I am very curious about the results and of course I hope that I could make a small contribution to an agile specification and implementation.Development - Tech-BloggerFebruary 26, 2014
The magical # [ˈɑːktoʊθɔːrp]
10Octothorpe is the technical term for the hash which introduces the optional fragment of an url. The fragment usually tells the browser where to position the page if an anchor tag with the name of the fragment is on that page.Development - Jürgen HoltschmidtJanuary 13, 2014
How to make good recommendations
10Today, most online shop systems offer product recommendations. In addition to the page navigation and the onsite search, recommendations are another good possibility to lead customers to suitable products. If recommendations are based on click streams and purchases of customers, usually an external standard software is used for generating these recommendations. Otto.de uses the prudsys Realtime Decisioning Engine (prudsys RDE).Architecture - Tech-BloggerDecember 09, 2013
Successful Mountaineering
60LHOTSE is the internal code name for our project to re-develop www.otto.de in-house, based on open source software and using agile methodologies such as Scrum and XP.ArchitectureDevelopment - ChristianNovember 14, 2013
Continuous Everything: Fast Feedback Driven Development
60Fast feedback is a cornerstone of agile software development. When developing the LHOTSE project at Otto, we tried to be as agile as possible and many of our means and methods revolve around fast feedback.DevelopmentTesting - ChristianOctober 14, 2013
The three harms of ceremonial commitment in scrum. A rant.
70The term Commitment was removed from The Scrum Guide (pdf) and replaced by the term Forecast back in 2011. Here is my rant against the concept of commitment as it is still used by many otherwise agile teams.Development - Robert BreetzmannSeptember 23, 2013
14 Friends of Pair Programming
80The coaching ended together with the end of the sprint. This also gave us a good topic for the retrospective to evaluate the coaching. What did it do for us as a team? What did it bring to me personallyDevelopment - GuidoSeptember 09, 2013
Continuous Delivery with Feature Toggles
20Combined with BDD, TDD, build pipelines, non-disruptive deployments and a rollback capable application, we are well on our way towards Continuous Delivery with Feature Toggles.Development - Christian StammAugust 23, 2013
BDD part 1
00It offers the developer with the test pyramid a method to develop a minimal test suite that covers all functionalities of the software. This will be the subject of the third part. - Stephan Kraus, Guido Steinacker, Oliver WegnerAugust 23, 2013
Divide and rule
20In the September/October 2013 issue of OBJEKTspektrum magazine, we wrote an article about our new e-commerce platform LHOTSE on the main topic of "lightweight architectures".Architecture - Guido SteinackerAugust 06, 2013
Continuous Delivery with Blue-Green Deployments
162The ability to immediately switch back to the previous release makes it easier to deploy during a hot phase.DevelopmentOperations - Jürgen HoltschmidtJuly 29, 2013
A new shop with old product data supply - isn't there something more...?
00When the goals for a new online shop OTTO.de were discussed in our area, it was clear that the existing systems of product data supply, the lifeline of the store so to speak, would not be able to fulfill the non-functional goals for the store "out-of-the-box". Why?Architecture - Bjoern K.June 10, 2013
The easiest way to crash your site
00With all the latest trends in the web such as “Social Sharing”, “Distributed marketing campaigns” or just simple website trackings, people tend to forget about one tiny simple fact: Dependency on 3rd party vendors stability.ArchitectureDevelopment - Tech-BloggerMay 07, 2013
Pair Programming for Non-Developers
00Here at Otto, we use Pair Programming in software development and I am often asked why we do this - especially by non-developers. That's why I've come up with a session in which I make Pair Programming tangible and tangible for people who don't come from software development.Development - Guido SteinackerApril 15, 2013
Architecture principles
122"If there is code that teams want to share, develop it as an open source project, publish it on GitHub and treat it like a 3rd party dependency."ArchitectureDevelopment
