Spotify is known for its agile organization. But how did we end up with it, what are the founding principles and how has it evolved? Speech held at the Bay Area Agile Leadership Network 3/15 2016.

1. Growing up with
Agile
How the Spotify “model” has evolved
Peter Antman
@peterantman
Erik Hartwig
@fnork

2. Spotify
Passion for music

3. Spotify by
numbers
❏ Started 2006 in Sweden.
❏ Now in 58 markets.
❏ ~2000 employees. 60+ offices.
❏ 75M+ active users, 30M paying.
❏ 30M+ songs, 1.5B playlists.

4. Peter Antman
Agile coach @ Spotify 2014 & 2016
Partner 2012 -
@peterantman
peter.antman@crisp.se

6. Erik Hartwig
Been at Spotify for 8+ years
Worked in both Tech and Product as Manager and IC
Moved to SF to start up the Spotify office here

7. What are you
interested to
know more
about?

10. An “agile”
organization

11. - The Spotify “model” presented
- Snapshot of how we worked in 2012
- Gotten a lot of attention
- “We want to implement the Spotify
model”
- Not intended as a “model”
- Interpreted as something
static
Spotify 2012
“This is the way it looks and works
in Spotify – right now, in some
places”

12. Bets
“Go big or go
home”

14. Erik’s presentation
Bets history

15. “Give it all you’ve got”
Purpose

16. Complexity?

18. Daniel Ek, founder.
“We aim to make
mistakes faster
than anyone else”

19. Hire the right people - and support them deeply
Mastery

20. 1:1

21. Put the right people together - and trust
them.
Autonomy

22. The Spotify atom: The squad
“The most important
feature of the
organization is the
autonomous squad. All
other features are
designed to support that
mini-startup-like squad.”
Autonomy

25. Autonomy Mastery Purpose
Growth Speed People

26. Structure added on demand to support - not to
govern.
Minimum
Viable
Bureaucracy

27. Scaling
mastery

28. Chapters
Competence
Chapter lead
No team leads
Flexibility
1:1
Squad Squad Squad
Chapter
Chapter

29. Tribes
A way to divide a large tech
organization
Working on the “same” things
Tribe lead
Squad Squad Squad
Chapter
Chapter

30. Guilds
Grow your interest
Learn from each other
Open space conferences
Law of two feet
Shared code
Code reviews
Guild

31. Economy of scale
Support feature team
Feature team still own their
data & operations
Feature team on call duty
Platform
IO & Container
Feature

32. Leadership work together
Help team
Lead team
Potlac
PO TL AC

33. Helps translate (agile) values &
principles to organizational
operations & structures
People operations (POPS)
Acquire and
retain the
best talent in
the world
Agile coaches
POPS

34. Help people do awesome work
across Spotify, by
- Alignment: Frameworks
helping people understand
how their work fits into the
company mission, vision &
goals
- Alleviate friction
Company operations
Drive
organizational
effectiveness
COPS

35. Mastery
Q&A

36. Scaling
purpose

37. Squad mission
Motivating
Work together
Mission
“Create the best and most unique running
experience that will attract runners to Spotify
and keep them coming back”

38. Alignment through shared mission

39. Vision

41. Tribe mission
Aligning squads
Align Tech & Product
Mission
“Enable Spotify to iterate as
fast as possible on product”

43. More fluid org

44. From Tech
to TPD

46. PO is part of
the squad

47. TPD Trio

48. TPD Trio

49. TPD Trio

50. TPD Trio

51. Tribe
leadership
TPD Trio

52. Fractal pattern
Shared leadership and responsibility
- squad
- tribe
- alliance
- TPD

53. OKR
(Objective
Key Result)

54. Drive lots of work
Stress
OKR:s to heavy weight
Priorities &
achivements

55. Spotify strategy framework
Spotify Rhythm
2 years goal
Company
beliefs
North star
Company Bet
Beliefs
Insights
Data

56. Data: Qualitative or quantitative
information that informs a
perspective. This should not be
interpretation.
Data Insights Beliefs Bets (DIBB)
Beliefs: Based on that
interpretation, which beliefs have
you formed about the problem
space you are working in?
Metric: What does success look
like?
XYZ
Insights: What is your
interpretation of the data? What
have you learned?
Bets: Based on your beliefs,
what are the bets you believe we
should make?

58. Tactic to reach strategy
TAP: Tactic2strategic
alignment
Tribe & Squad bets
Company bet
Functional/TPD bet
Tribe bet
Squad epic/bet
TAP
Check-in
1 w
6 w

59. Purpose
Q&A

60. Collaboration
Talk to the one who can do it

61. Decision making

62. Network Organization

63. Power to collaborate
!
Help?
Advice?
Sure!
Lets a
bet!

64. User
A new why

67. Putting the user in focus

68. GLUE
(Global Language, Unified Experience)

69. Product Areas - PAL
“You can see our org chart in
the client.”
Social
Playback

70. Alliances - who's at the end of the value
chain?
Alliance Mission

71. Verticals - a business unit
Mission
iOS dev
Web dev
Backend dev
PO
QA TA
Design Analytics
BD Marketing
Android dev
User research

72. Verticals - a business unit
Mission
iOS dev
Web dev
Backend dev
PO
QA TA
Design Analytics
BD Marketing
Android dev
User research
Still a squad?

73. User Q&A

74. Strong
Mission
Containers

75. Autonomy enables
Emergence towards
Shared purpose

76. Purpose
People
Autonomy
Mastery
Speed
Growth
Collaboration
Users
♬

77. We are hiring

78. Q&A

79. The END

80. Thank you for the
slides!Anders Ivarsson
Cliff Hazell
Henrik Kniberg
Joakim Sundén

81. Feedback/TODO
● “Many of the concepts were similar to Hoshin X planning. I did hear a lot of comments regarding
being to actually "see" many of the concepts such as tribes, squads in action - perhaps some
videos to help reinforce the concepts.”
● “not enough time - I think we should invite Spotify again - and have another talk focused more
around performance/compensation/bonuses/self-evaluation - that is all extremely interesting”
● “Perhaps they could come back and we could drill down a little deeper and
analyze/discuss/debate some actual scenarios.”
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