On the TechTO stage ×1
First seen on the TechTO stage in 2019. Every talk is searchable — ask the archive about Michael ↗
In their words
I went down to check out the site the night before my first interview, and this is what I got — hey, we're gonna be back up in seven hours because we're doing an upgrade.
I became obsessed with the idea of disrupting a major brand. What if we could take the principles that we've learned in the startup world, or from Silicon Valley, and actually apply them to a legacy brand?
We wanted to move from two releases a year, so we invested heavily in a CI/CD pipeline that would enable our engineers to push code on demand. Last year we did several thousand deployments.
Quick answers
What is Michael Lysaght known for?
Running the digital rebuild of WW, the former Weight Watchers, and now leading technology and engineering at Instructure, the company behind Canvas.
What did he describe at TechTO?
Turning a 2001-era platform into a modern one: re-platforming the member experience onto new iOS, Android and microservice backends, moving off Oracle, running about 40 scrum teams, and going from two releases a year to several thousand deployments.
Does he have a Toronto connection?
Yes. He opened the 2019 talk by announcing that WW had established an engineering and product footprint in Toronto that year, and said the company planned to keep investing in the area.