For people who haven't
heard about Spotify, Spotify is popular music streaming company based
out of Stockholm Sweden. Spotify was founded in year 2006 and its
closest competitor is Apple Music. Spotify had 180 million active users
as on June 2018 and it provides 40+ million songs to its users and their
services are available across 65 countries/markets.
Moving ahead, the reason for sharing their Agile journey/story is for the fact that it indeed reflects value creation using Agile principles in positive sense and have worked well so for a continuously scaling organization. Spotify can be seen as a successful Scaled Agile Framework which is and can be possibly applied organization wide and its value is not just limited to small groups or business unit. Spotify is basically a people-driven, autonomous framework for scaled Agile.For the people who are new to Scaled Agile topic, its good to list down some of popular Scaled Agile frameworks , SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework ) , DaD(Disciplined Agile Delivery ), LeSS (Large Scale Scrum ) are widely accepted and deployed Scaled Agile frameworks.
Let’s take a step further and understand the details of how stuff works at Spotify. Squads ,Tribes, Chapters, and Guilds are the key drivers to run the Scaled Agile Machinery at Spotify.
Squad is the core foundation of the Agile framework
at Spotify and is very similar to a Scrum team. The Squad like Scrum or
Agile teams is self-organizing,it defines and decides the preferred
execution model from Scrum to Kanban to any hybrid model. The Squad is
single-product, single-project focused. A Squad can be related to a mini
start-up and it essentially means it can operate reasonably
autonomously. As a team it has all the knowledge and tools to design,
build, test and put into production a product.
Since its self-organizing it therefore does not have a formally appointed Squad Leader or a Scrum Master but to prioritize the work to be done, each Squad has a Product Owner. In line with Scrum, the Product Owner maintains the Team Backlog. Agile coach works with team to accelerate agile transformation.This essentially means enough emphasis is given to the Agile coach role and value it brings.
Tribe is group of Squads that is working in a common area. The Tribe is co-located with the Squad and is typically limited to ~100 people.
The Chapters are part of a Squad and are a group of team members working together. The Chapter Leader, can be related with the Engineering manager and is responsible for personnel aspects such as hiring, compensation, career development, and guidance. In addition to these tasks, the Chapter Leader also acts as a specialist in a Squad.
Guild is a group of people with shared interests. Guilds are typically not tied to the boundaries of a Tribe, but rather walk right through the organization. Every Guild has its Coordinator who facilitates Guild meetings and to motivates the participants. The Guild Coordinator has, in contrast to the Chapter Leader, no hierarchical powers.
On the face of it the concept of Squad, Chapter and Tribes looks like a typical matrix organization but the principle differentiator are the driving values and the inherent autonomy in the Spotify model.
Moving on, one might think this all is fine but what but what makes things work ??? for that it’s important to look into some of the core values practiced @Spotify:
As closing remarks, just to be fair and pragmatic, there are no magical ways which can be applied as standard prescription for one and all. The model and organization under discussion will for sure have its own set of challenges and they might still be continually evolving and things might shape up differently when they scale further and dynamics change dramatically .Every organization have its own culture build slowly and firmly out of exhaustive factors like organization evolution, size, locations, product or business complexity to name a few, choose or tailor what works best for your team/organization .
Idea here was to share an Agile success story, in case it ignites you to deep dive and seek possible synergies or learning, you can find enough content available over web to explore further on the topic or please write down and we can collaborate.
Moving ahead, the reason for sharing their Agile journey/story is for the fact that it indeed reflects value creation using Agile principles in positive sense and have worked well so for a continuously scaling organization. Spotify can be seen as a successful Scaled Agile Framework which is and can be possibly applied organization wide and its value is not just limited to small groups or business unit. Spotify is basically a people-driven, autonomous framework for scaled Agile.For the people who are new to Scaled Agile topic, its good to list down some of popular Scaled Agile frameworks , SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework ) , DaD(Disciplined Agile Delivery ), LeSS (Large Scale Scrum ) are widely accepted and deployed Scaled Agile frameworks.
Let’s take a step further and understand the details of how stuff works at Spotify. Squads ,Tribes, Chapters, and Guilds are the key drivers to run the Scaled Agile Machinery at Spotify.
Since its self-organizing it therefore does not have a formally appointed Squad Leader or a Scrum Master but to prioritize the work to be done, each Squad has a Product Owner. In line with Scrum, the Product Owner maintains the Team Backlog. Agile coach works with team to accelerate agile transformation.This essentially means enough emphasis is given to the Agile coach role and value it brings.
Tribe is group of Squads that is working in a common area. The Tribe is co-located with the Squad and is typically limited to ~100 people.
The Chapters are part of a Squad and are a group of team members working together. The Chapter Leader, can be related with the Engineering manager and is responsible for personnel aspects such as hiring, compensation, career development, and guidance. In addition to these tasks, the Chapter Leader also acts as a specialist in a Squad.
Guild is a group of people with shared interests. Guilds are typically not tied to the boundaries of a Tribe, but rather walk right through the organization. Every Guild has its Coordinator who facilitates Guild meetings and to motivates the participants. The Guild Coordinator has, in contrast to the Chapter Leader, no hierarchical powers.
On the face of it the concept of Squad, Chapter and Tribes looks like a typical matrix organization but the principle differentiator are the driving values and the inherent autonomy in the Spotify model.
Moving on, one might think this all is fine but what but what makes things work ??? for that it’s important to look into some of the core values practiced @Spotify:
- Agile mindset over Scrum or a specific methodology
- Agile Coach over Scrum Master
- Cross-Pollination across organization over Standardization prescribed to teams
- Fast Failure Recovery over Failure avoidance
- Impact over Velocity
- Trust over Control
- Innovation over Predictability ( 100% Predictability means 0% Innovation)
- Value creation over Plan fulfillment
As closing remarks, just to be fair and pragmatic, there are no magical ways which can be applied as standard prescription for one and all. The model and organization under discussion will for sure have its own set of challenges and they might still be continually evolving and things might shape up differently when they scale further and dynamics change dramatically .Every organization have its own culture build slowly and firmly out of exhaustive factors like organization evolution, size, locations, product or business complexity to name a few, choose or tailor what works best for your team/organization .
Idea here was to share an Agile success story, in case it ignites you to deep dive and seek possible synergies or learning, you can find enough content available over web to explore further on the topic or please write down and we can collaborate.
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