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

Spotify
Passion for music

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.

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

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

What are you
interested to
know more
about?

An “agile”
organization

- 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”

Bets
“Go big or go
home”

Erik’s presentation
Bets history

“Give it all you’ve got”
Purpose

Complexity?

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

Hire the right people - and support them deeply
Mastery

1:1

Put the right people together - and trust
them.
Autonomy

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

Autonomy Mastery Purpose
Growth Speed People

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

Scaling
mastery

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

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

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

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

Leadership work together
Help team
Lead team
Potlac
PO TL AC

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

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

Mastery
Q&A

Scaling
purpose

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”

Alignment through shared mission

Vision

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

More fluid org

From Tech
to TPD

PO is part of
the squad

TPD Trio

TPD Trio

TPD Trio

TPD Trio

Tribe
leadership
TPD Trio

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

OKR
(Objective
Key Result)

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

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

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?

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

Purpose
Q&A

Collaboration
Talk to the one who can do it

Decision making

Network Organization

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

User
A new why

Putting the user in focus

GLUE
(Global Language, Unified Experience)

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

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

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

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?

User Q&A

Strong
Mission
Containers

Autonomy enables
Emergence towards
Shared purpose

Purpose
People
Autonomy
Mastery
Speed
Growth
Collaboration
Users
♬

We are hiring

Q&A

The END

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

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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