The document discusses how companies like Spotify, Netflix, and Supercell have organized work into squads or teams that combine skills from different roles like software development, quality assurance, and deployment. This cross-skilling allows teams to rapidly develop new products and services without delays from separate approval processes. Spotify in particular developed a matrix structure of squads organized into tribes and chapters to share knowledge across autonomous teams. While this structure improves agility, coordination challenges can arise, which Spotify addresses through guilds and agile coaches. The new team-based structures are enabled by software-defined infrastructure that allows firms to experiment and accelerate innovation.
Saba has received numerous awards and recognition from analysts for its enterprise social software platform. The platform combines online collaboration, social learning, business networking, and mobile delivery into a unified offering. Analysts praise Saba for having the most complete collaborative environment and for taking a structured approach to enterprise social networking. Saba's social software is said to replace outdated email platforms and allow workers to get work done faster through searchable information and multiple communication tools.
Beyond the spotify model - Team Topologies - Agile Yorkshire 2019-03-20 - Mat...Conflux
For effective, modern, cloud-connected software systems we need to organize our teams in certain ways. Taking account of Conway's Law, we look to match the team structures to the required software architecture, enabling or restricting communication and collaboration for the best outcomes.
This talk will cover the basics of organization design using Team Topologies, exploring a selection of key team types and how and when to use them in order to make the development and operation of your software systems as effective as possible. The talk is based on the forthcoming 2019 book Team Topologies and first-hand experience helping companies around the world with the design of their technology teams.
Key takeaways:
1. Why using the “Spotify Model” of team design is not enough
2. The four fundamental team topologies needed for modern software delivery
3. The three team interaction modes that enable fast flow and rapid learning
4. How to address Conway’s Law, cognitive load, and team evolution with Team Topologies
Bio: Matthew Skelton is the Founder and Head of Consulting at Conflux. He has been building, deploying, and operating commercial software systems since 1998. As Head of Consulting at Conflux, he specialises in Continuous Delivery, operability and organisation dynamics for software in manufacturing, ecommerce, and online services, including cloud, IoT, and embedded software.
Recognised by TechBeacon in 2018 as one of the top 100 people to follow in DevOps, Matthew curates the well-known DevOps team topologies patterns at devopstopologies.com and is co-author of the books Continuous Delivery with Windows and .NET (O’Reilly, 2016), Team Guide to Software Operability (Skelton Thatcher Publications, 2016), and Team Topologies (IT Revolution Press, 2019).
Matthew founded Conflux in 2017 to offer training and consulting to organisations building and running software systems.
Twitter: @matthewpskelton
LinkedIn: matthewskelton
Slideshare: matthewskelton
From a talk at Agile Yorkshire on 20 March 2019 http://www.agileyorkshire.org/event-announcements/wed20thmarch-andybutcherautonomyandchoreography-usingconwayslawtotacklethecompanyscalingproblem
Beyond the spotify model - Team Topologies - TechLeadsNW meetup 2019-02-27 - ...Matthew Skelton
For effective, modern, cloud-connected software systems we need to organize our teams in certain ways. Taking account of Conway's Law, we look to match the team structures to the required software architecture, enabling or restricting communication and collaboration for the best outcomes.
This talk will cover the basics of organization design using Team Topologies, exploring a selection of key team types and how and when to use them in order to make the development and operation of your software systems as effective as possible. The talk is based on the forthcoming 2019 book Team Topologies and first-hand experience helping companies around the world with the design of their technology teams.
Get Connected With Lotus Connections June 2008 V2Neil Burston
IBM Lotus Connections is a social software platform for businesses. [1] It provides five key services - Profiles, Communities, Blogs, Dogear, and Activities. [2] Lotus Connections Version 1 provided these services, while Version 2 improved upon them. [3] The presentation discusses how Lotus Connections helps businesses innovate through connecting employees, partners, and customers, and helps execute work more quickly through dynamic networks.
El documento proporciona un balotario para una práctica calificada con las siguientes instrucciones: complete su nombre, marque su preferencia numérica para 3 opciones de especialización médica (1 siendo su primera opción), y firme y feche el formulario.
1) Psychological interviews alone are not sufficient to accurately determine if a litigant is exaggerating or faking psychological symptoms, as demonstrated by a classic study where normal individuals were able to successfully fake symptoms and be diagnosed with mental illness.
2) While clinical interviews provide useful information, there is no evidence that mental health professionals can rely solely on interviews to identify exaggeration without using psychological tests as well.
3) Tests such as the MMPI-2 have shown promise in assisting clinicians in accurately assessing for exaggerated or faked psychological symptoms, unlike interviews which are not scientifically validated for this purpose alone.
Este documento presenta el plan curricular anual de Educación Física para el año lectivo 2016-2017 de una unidad educativa ecuatoriana. El plan describe la carga horaria semanal de 2 horas durante 40 semanas, los ejes transversales que incluyen la identidad institucional y la educación sexual, y 5 unidades de planificación con sus objetivos, destrezas, indicadores de evaluación y duración.
Saba has received numerous awards and recognition from analysts for its enterprise social software platform. The platform combines online collaboration, social learning, business networking, and mobile delivery into a unified offering. Analysts praise Saba for having the most complete collaborative environment and for taking a structured approach to enterprise social networking. Saba's social software is said to replace outdated email platforms and allow workers to get work done faster through searchable information and multiple communication tools.
Beyond the spotify model - Team Topologies - Agile Yorkshire 2019-03-20 - Mat...Conflux
For effective, modern, cloud-connected software systems we need to organize our teams in certain ways. Taking account of Conway's Law, we look to match the team structures to the required software architecture, enabling or restricting communication and collaboration for the best outcomes.
This talk will cover the basics of organization design using Team Topologies, exploring a selection of key team types and how and when to use them in order to make the development and operation of your software systems as effective as possible. The talk is based on the forthcoming 2019 book Team Topologies and first-hand experience helping companies around the world with the design of their technology teams.
Key takeaways:
1. Why using the “Spotify Model” of team design is not enough
2. The four fundamental team topologies needed for modern software delivery
3. The three team interaction modes that enable fast flow and rapid learning
4. How to address Conway’s Law, cognitive load, and team evolution with Team Topologies
Bio: Matthew Skelton is the Founder and Head of Consulting at Conflux. He has been building, deploying, and operating commercial software systems since 1998. As Head of Consulting at Conflux, he specialises in Continuous Delivery, operability and organisation dynamics for software in manufacturing, ecommerce, and online services, including cloud, IoT, and embedded software.
Recognised by TechBeacon in 2018 as one of the top 100 people to follow in DevOps, Matthew curates the well-known DevOps team topologies patterns at devopstopologies.com and is co-author of the books Continuous Delivery with Windows and .NET (O’Reilly, 2016), Team Guide to Software Operability (Skelton Thatcher Publications, 2016), and Team Topologies (IT Revolution Press, 2019).
Matthew founded Conflux in 2017 to offer training and consulting to organisations building and running software systems.
Twitter: @matthewpskelton
LinkedIn: matthewskelton
Slideshare: matthewskelton
From a talk at Agile Yorkshire on 20 March 2019 http://www.agileyorkshire.org/event-announcements/wed20thmarch-andybutcherautonomyandchoreography-usingconwayslawtotacklethecompanyscalingproblem
Beyond the spotify model - Team Topologies - TechLeadsNW meetup 2019-02-27 - ...Matthew Skelton
For effective, modern, cloud-connected software systems we need to organize our teams in certain ways. Taking account of Conway's Law, we look to match the team structures to the required software architecture, enabling or restricting communication and collaboration for the best outcomes.
This talk will cover the basics of organization design using Team Topologies, exploring a selection of key team types and how and when to use them in order to make the development and operation of your software systems as effective as possible. The talk is based on the forthcoming 2019 book Team Topologies and first-hand experience helping companies around the world with the design of their technology teams.
Get Connected With Lotus Connections June 2008 V2Neil Burston
IBM Lotus Connections is a social software platform for businesses. [1] It provides five key services - Profiles, Communities, Blogs, Dogear, and Activities. [2] Lotus Connections Version 1 provided these services, while Version 2 improved upon them. [3] The presentation discusses how Lotus Connections helps businesses innovate through connecting employees, partners, and customers, and helps execute work more quickly through dynamic networks.
El documento proporciona un balotario para una práctica calificada con las siguientes instrucciones: complete su nombre, marque su preferencia numérica para 3 opciones de especialización médica (1 siendo su primera opción), y firme y feche el formulario.
1) Psychological interviews alone are not sufficient to accurately determine if a litigant is exaggerating or faking psychological symptoms, as demonstrated by a classic study where normal individuals were able to successfully fake symptoms and be diagnosed with mental illness.
2) While clinical interviews provide useful information, there is no evidence that mental health professionals can rely solely on interviews to identify exaggeration without using psychological tests as well.
3) Tests such as the MMPI-2 have shown promise in assisting clinicians in accurately assessing for exaggerated or faked psychological symptoms, unlike interviews which are not scientifically validated for this purpose alone.
Este documento presenta el plan curricular anual de Educación Física para el año lectivo 2016-2017 de una unidad educativa ecuatoriana. El plan describe la carga horaria semanal de 2 horas durante 40 semanas, los ejes transversales que incluyen la identidad institucional y la educación sexual, y 5 unidades de planificación con sus objetivos, destrezas, indicadores de evaluación y duración.
Talk at Festival of media , Singapore 2011. Asia Inside OutJayant Murty
I gave this talk in 2011
Building successful brands in Asia is not just about gigantic media budgets or smarter distribution of content but about giving you brand more purpose, solving problems of human scale, being generous & transparent and working on breakthrough partnerships in an open-source world
The document discusses how companies like Spotify, Netflix, and Supercell have organized work into squads or teams that combine skills from different roles like software development, quality assurance, and deployment. This cross-skilling allows teams to rapidly develop new products and services without delays from separate approval processes. Spotify in particular developed a matrix structure of squads organized into tribes and chapters to share knowledge across autonomous teams. While this structure improves agility, coordination challenges can arise, which Spotify addresses through guilds and agile coaches. The new team-based structures are enabled by software-defined infrastructure that allows breaking down traditional occupational silos.
An exploration of the hospitality design industry and a plan for how to cut its water and energy usage by more than half.
By Eric Corey Freed, organicARCHITECT
This document provides descriptions of 5 vowel sounds in English: /æ/, /а/, /Ͻ/, /Ɛ/, and /e/. For each vowel sound, it explains how to produce the sound in the mouth and provides example words and sentences containing that sound. It also contrasts the sounds /æ/ and /а/ and /Ɛ/ and /e/ to highlight the differences between similar vowel pairs.
This document discusses phonemes and phonemic awareness. It defines phonemes as the smallest sound units in words, represented by slashes. There are 44 phonemes in English made up of 5 vowels and 21 consonants. Knowing phonemes helps with reading, spelling, and distinguishing similar letter sounds. The document provides examples of voiced and unvoiced phonemes, and has learners identify the phonemes in sample words to practice phonemic awareness.
Building a Global Values Community with Alan WilliamsValuesCentre
2016 CTT International Conference:
Global Values Alliance, with Alan Williams, explores how to inspire greater authenticity all over the world by enabling connection, exploration, and action for our global values-driven community.
Beyond the Spotify Model - Team Topologies - Tech.rocks - 2020-12-10 - Matthe...Matthew Skelton
From a talk at Tech.Rocks 2020
For effective, modern, cloud-connected software systems we need to organize our teams in certain ways. Taking account of Conway’s Law, we look to match the team structures to the required software architecture, enabling or restricting communication and collaboration for the best outcomes.
This talk will cover the basics of organization design using Team Topologies, exploring a selection of key team types, and how and when to use them in order to make the development and operation of your software systems as effective as possible. The talk is based on the book Team Topologies by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais including first-hand experience helping companies around the world with the design of their technology teams.
Key takeaways:
1. Why using the “Spotify Model” of team design is not enough
2. The four fundamental team topologies needed for modern software delivery
3. The three team interaction modes that enable fast flow and rapid learning
4. How to address Conway’s Law, cognitive load, and team evolution with Team Topologies
Beyond the Spotify model - Team Topologies - OSWA Oslo - 2020-01-22 - Matthew...Matthew Skelton
A talk given at Oslo Software Architecture meetup
https://www.meetup.com/Oslo-Software-Architecture/events/267904102/
For effective, modern, cloud-connected software systems we need to organize our teams in certain ways. Taking account of Conway’s Law, we look to match the team structures to the required software architecture, enabling or restricting communication and collaboration for the best outcomes.
This talk will cover the basics of organization design using Team Topologies, exploring a selection of key team types and how and when to use them in order to make the development and operation of your software systems as effective as possible. The talk is based on the forthcoming 2019 book Team Topologies and first-hand experience helping companies around the world with the design of their technology teams.
Spotify scaling-agile by henrik kniberg & anders ivarsson 2012Christophe Monnier
Dealing with multiple teams in a product development organization is always a challenge!
One of the most impressive examples we’ve seen so far is Spotify, which has kept an agile mindset despite
having scaled to over 30 teams across 3 cities. Alistair Cockburn (one of the founding fathers of agile software development) visited Spotify and said “Nice
- I've been looking for someone to implement this matrix format since 1992 :) so it is really welcome to see.”
AKF Partners' presentation to NYC CTO Club on scaling organizations. The premise is that organizational scale is just as important as architectural scale.
Agile squads are most suited for software engineering projects that are cross-functional, require operational flexibility from experts in different technologies, and benefit from smaller, more frequent releases. The document analyzes three case studies and finds agile squads are well-suited for large organizations like Trademe with many teams working on complex, modular projects, while smaller organizations like Snapcomms may find traditional agile approaches like Scrum better suited to their needs. Key factors in determining an approach's suitability include project complexity, team size, and number of functional areas within an organization.
Beyond the spotify model - Team Topologies - Agile Scotland 2019-03-11 - Matt...Matthew Skelton
Beyond the Spotify Model: using team topologies for fast flow and organisation evolution
Key takeaways:
1. Why using the “Spotify Model” of team design is not enough
2. The four fundamental team topologies needed for modern software delivery
3. The three team interaction modes that enable fast flow and rapid learning
4. How to address Conway’s Law, cognitive load, and team evolution with Team Topologies
For effective, modern, cloud-connected software systems we need to organize our teams in certain ways. Taking account of Conway's Law, we look to match the team structures to the required software architecture, enabling or restricting communication and collaboration for the best outcomes.
This talk will cover the basics of organization design using Team Topologies, exploring a selection of key team types and how and when to use them in order to make the development and operation of your software systems as effective as possible. The talk is based on the forthcoming 2019 book Team Topologies and first-hand experience helping companies around the world with the design of their technology teams.
About Team Topologies
Team Topologies is a clear, easy-to-follow approach to modern software delivery with an emphasis on optimizing team interactions for flow. Four fundamental types of team - team topologies - and three core team interaction modes combine with awareness of Conway’s Law, team cognitive load, and responsive organization evolution to define a no-nonsense, team-friendly, humanistic approach to building and running software systems.
Devised by experienced IT consultants Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais, the Team Topologies approach is informed by the well-known DevOps Team Topologies patterns (also authored and curated by Matthew and Manuel). Matthew and Manuel have worked with many organizations around the world to help them shape their teams for modern software delivery, and Team Topologies is the result of that experience.
teamtopologies.com
From a talk given at Agile Scotland on 11 March 2019
Beyond the Spotify model - Team Topologies - Keynote at JAX DevOps 2019-05-16...Matthew Skelton
For effective, modern, cloud-connected software systems we need to organize our teams in certain ways. Taking account of Conway’s Law, we look to match the team structures to the required software architecture, enabling or restricting communication and collaboration for the best outcomes.
This talk will cover the basics of organization design using Team Topologies, exploring a selection of key team types, and how and when to use them in order to make the development and operation of your software systems as effective as possible. The talk is based on the forthcoming 2019 book Team Topologies and first-hand experience helping companies around the world with the design of their technology teams.
Key takeaways:
1. Why using the “Spotify Model” of team design is not enough
2. The four fundamental team topologies needed for modern software delivery
3. The three team interaction modes that enable fast flow and rapid learning
4. How to address Conway’s Law, cognitive load, and team evolution with Team Topologies
From a keynote talk at Jax DevOps 2019, London.
Beyond the Spotify model - Team Topologies - DevTestNorth - 2019-09-25 - Matt...Matthew Skelton
Key takeaways:
Why using the “Spotify Model” of team design is not enough
The four fundamental team topologies needed for modern software delivery
The three team interaction modes that enable fast flow and rapid learning
How to address Conway’s Law, cognitive load, and team evolution with Team Topologies
For effective, modern, cloud-connected software systems we need to organize our teams in certain ways. Taking account of Conway’s Law, we look to match the team structures to the required software architecture, enabling or restricting communication and collaboration for the best outcomes.
This talk will cover the basics of organization design using Team Topologies, exploring a selection of key team types and how and when to use them in order to make the development and operation of your software systems as effective as possible. The talk is based on the forthcoming 2019 book Team Topologies and first-hand experience helping companies around the world with the design of their technology teams.
About Team Topologies
Team Topologies is a clear, easy-to-follow approach to modern software delivery with an emphasis on optimizing team interactions for flow. Four fundamental types of team – team topologies – and three core team interaction modes combine with awareness of Conway’s Law, team cognitive load, and responsive organization evolution to define a no-nonsense, team-friendly, humanistic approach to building and running software systems.
Devised by experienced IT consultants Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais, the Team Topologies approach is informed by the well-known DevOps Team Topologies patterns (also authored and curated by Matthew and Manuel). Matthew and Manuel have worked with many organizations around the world to help them shape their teams for modern software delivery, and Team Topologies is the result of that experience.
teamtopologies.com
Beyond the Spotify model - Team Topologies - Leeds DevOps - 2019-09-16 - Matt...Matthew Skelton
This talk covers the basics of organization design using Team Topologies, exploring a selection of key team types and how and when to use them in order to make the development and operation of your software systems as effective as possible. The talk is based on the forthcoming 2019 book Team Topologies and first-hand experience helping companies around the world with the design of their technology teams.
From a talk given at Leeds DevOps meetup group: http://www.leedsdevops.org.uk/post/2019-09-08-monday-16th-september-2019-at-the-odi-node-in-leeds/
In this study Gafanomics by Fabernovel, you’ll discover what is, to us – FABERNOVEL is among Slack’s early adopters, using it since 2014 –, Slack’s secret sauce and what makes it so special.
Slack is surely an incredible company with tremendous growth perspectives. But what does it mean in terms of work ideology? How can a single application transform culture, work relationships and, ultimately, entire organizations?
There is a (work) life before Slack... and another one after it: let’s see how Slack has impacted the corporate world.
Spotify uses a scaled agile framework of Tribes, Squads, Chapters and Guilds to manage its over 30 agile teams across 3 cities. The basic unit is the Squad, which functions like a Scrum team and is fully autonomous. Squads are organized into Tribes of related teams. This framework allows Spotify to maintain an agile mindset while scaling significantly in size and geographic distribution.
Spotify scales agile by using Tribes, Squads, Chapters and Guilds. Squads of 7-10 people work on specific missions like building the Android app. Tribes are collections of related Squads that share an office. Chapters group people by skill within a Tribe. Guilds allow sharing across the company in areas like testing. This matrix structure balances autonomy and shared learning to help Spotify rapidly develop its music streaming product while growing to over 250 employees.
Overview of confluence with practical use case. Meant for use by the Atlassian community members, this information is provided free of cost by Atlassian
Presentation by Mark Collier & Jonathan Bryce April 2012 to industry Analysts in San Francisco covering OpenStack background & and an update on the Foundation plans.
How to Maximize Effectiveness of Developers Contributing to Free SoftwareStefano Maffulli
The document discusses how corporations can maximize the effectiveness of their developers contributing to open source software. It recommends that corporations tweak their new product development and customer service processes to align with open source release cycles. Corporations also need to think outside their boundaries and allow developers more freedom to interact and contribute upstream to open source communities. Long term engagement and collaboration with open source communities can help corporations gain benefits like fixes to issues and code improvements.
Talk at Festival of media , Singapore 2011. Asia Inside OutJayant Murty
I gave this talk in 2011
Building successful brands in Asia is not just about gigantic media budgets or smarter distribution of content but about giving you brand more purpose, solving problems of human scale, being generous & transparent and working on breakthrough partnerships in an open-source world
The document discusses how companies like Spotify, Netflix, and Supercell have organized work into squads or teams that combine skills from different roles like software development, quality assurance, and deployment. This cross-skilling allows teams to rapidly develop new products and services without delays from separate approval processes. Spotify in particular developed a matrix structure of squads organized into tribes and chapters to share knowledge across autonomous teams. While this structure improves agility, coordination challenges can arise, which Spotify addresses through guilds and agile coaches. The new team-based structures are enabled by software-defined infrastructure that allows breaking down traditional occupational silos.
An exploration of the hospitality design industry and a plan for how to cut its water and energy usage by more than half.
By Eric Corey Freed, organicARCHITECT
This document provides descriptions of 5 vowel sounds in English: /æ/, /а/, /Ͻ/, /Ɛ/, and /e/. For each vowel sound, it explains how to produce the sound in the mouth and provides example words and sentences containing that sound. It also contrasts the sounds /æ/ and /а/ and /Ɛ/ and /e/ to highlight the differences between similar vowel pairs.
This document discusses phonemes and phonemic awareness. It defines phonemes as the smallest sound units in words, represented by slashes. There are 44 phonemes in English made up of 5 vowels and 21 consonants. Knowing phonemes helps with reading, spelling, and distinguishing similar letter sounds. The document provides examples of voiced and unvoiced phonemes, and has learners identify the phonemes in sample words to practice phonemic awareness.
Building a Global Values Community with Alan WilliamsValuesCentre
2016 CTT International Conference:
Global Values Alliance, with Alan Williams, explores how to inspire greater authenticity all over the world by enabling connection, exploration, and action for our global values-driven community.
Beyond the Spotify Model - Team Topologies - Tech.rocks - 2020-12-10 - Matthe...Matthew Skelton
From a talk at Tech.Rocks 2020
For effective, modern, cloud-connected software systems we need to organize our teams in certain ways. Taking account of Conway’s Law, we look to match the team structures to the required software architecture, enabling or restricting communication and collaboration for the best outcomes.
This talk will cover the basics of organization design using Team Topologies, exploring a selection of key team types, and how and when to use them in order to make the development and operation of your software systems as effective as possible. The talk is based on the book Team Topologies by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais including first-hand experience helping companies around the world with the design of their technology teams.
Key takeaways:
1. Why using the “Spotify Model” of team design is not enough
2. The four fundamental team topologies needed for modern software delivery
3. The three team interaction modes that enable fast flow and rapid learning
4. How to address Conway’s Law, cognitive load, and team evolution with Team Topologies
Beyond the Spotify model - Team Topologies - OSWA Oslo - 2020-01-22 - Matthew...Matthew Skelton
A talk given at Oslo Software Architecture meetup
https://www.meetup.com/Oslo-Software-Architecture/events/267904102/
For effective, modern, cloud-connected software systems we need to organize our teams in certain ways. Taking account of Conway’s Law, we look to match the team structures to the required software architecture, enabling or restricting communication and collaboration for the best outcomes.
This talk will cover the basics of organization design using Team Topologies, exploring a selection of key team types and how and when to use them in order to make the development and operation of your software systems as effective as possible. The talk is based on the forthcoming 2019 book Team Topologies and first-hand experience helping companies around the world with the design of their technology teams.
Spotify scaling-agile by henrik kniberg & anders ivarsson 2012Christophe Monnier
Dealing with multiple teams in a product development organization is always a challenge!
One of the most impressive examples we’ve seen so far is Spotify, which has kept an agile mindset despite
having scaled to over 30 teams across 3 cities. Alistair Cockburn (one of the founding fathers of agile software development) visited Spotify and said “Nice
- I've been looking for someone to implement this matrix format since 1992 :) so it is really welcome to see.”
AKF Partners' presentation to NYC CTO Club on scaling organizations. The premise is that organizational scale is just as important as architectural scale.
Agile squads are most suited for software engineering projects that are cross-functional, require operational flexibility from experts in different technologies, and benefit from smaller, more frequent releases. The document analyzes three case studies and finds agile squads are well-suited for large organizations like Trademe with many teams working on complex, modular projects, while smaller organizations like Snapcomms may find traditional agile approaches like Scrum better suited to their needs. Key factors in determining an approach's suitability include project complexity, team size, and number of functional areas within an organization.
Beyond the spotify model - Team Topologies - Agile Scotland 2019-03-11 - Matt...Matthew Skelton
Beyond the Spotify Model: using team topologies for fast flow and organisation evolution
Key takeaways:
1. Why using the “Spotify Model” of team design is not enough
2. The four fundamental team topologies needed for modern software delivery
3. The three team interaction modes that enable fast flow and rapid learning
4. How to address Conway’s Law, cognitive load, and team evolution with Team Topologies
For effective, modern, cloud-connected software systems we need to organize our teams in certain ways. Taking account of Conway's Law, we look to match the team structures to the required software architecture, enabling or restricting communication and collaboration for the best outcomes.
This talk will cover the basics of organization design using Team Topologies, exploring a selection of key team types and how and when to use them in order to make the development and operation of your software systems as effective as possible. The talk is based on the forthcoming 2019 book Team Topologies and first-hand experience helping companies around the world with the design of their technology teams.
About Team Topologies
Team Topologies is a clear, easy-to-follow approach to modern software delivery with an emphasis on optimizing team interactions for flow. Four fundamental types of team - team topologies - and three core team interaction modes combine with awareness of Conway’s Law, team cognitive load, and responsive organization evolution to define a no-nonsense, team-friendly, humanistic approach to building and running software systems.
Devised by experienced IT consultants Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais, the Team Topologies approach is informed by the well-known DevOps Team Topologies patterns (also authored and curated by Matthew and Manuel). Matthew and Manuel have worked with many organizations around the world to help them shape their teams for modern software delivery, and Team Topologies is the result of that experience.
teamtopologies.com
From a talk given at Agile Scotland on 11 March 2019
Beyond the Spotify model - Team Topologies - Keynote at JAX DevOps 2019-05-16...Matthew Skelton
For effective, modern, cloud-connected software systems we need to organize our teams in certain ways. Taking account of Conway’s Law, we look to match the team structures to the required software architecture, enabling or restricting communication and collaboration for the best outcomes.
This talk will cover the basics of organization design using Team Topologies, exploring a selection of key team types, and how and when to use them in order to make the development and operation of your software systems as effective as possible. The talk is based on the forthcoming 2019 book Team Topologies and first-hand experience helping companies around the world with the design of their technology teams.
Key takeaways:
1. Why using the “Spotify Model” of team design is not enough
2. The four fundamental team topologies needed for modern software delivery
3. The three team interaction modes that enable fast flow and rapid learning
4. How to address Conway’s Law, cognitive load, and team evolution with Team Topologies
From a keynote talk at Jax DevOps 2019, London.
Beyond the Spotify model - Team Topologies - DevTestNorth - 2019-09-25 - Matt...Matthew Skelton
Key takeaways:
Why using the “Spotify Model” of team design is not enough
The four fundamental team topologies needed for modern software delivery
The three team interaction modes that enable fast flow and rapid learning
How to address Conway’s Law, cognitive load, and team evolution with Team Topologies
For effective, modern, cloud-connected software systems we need to organize our teams in certain ways. Taking account of Conway’s Law, we look to match the team structures to the required software architecture, enabling or restricting communication and collaboration for the best outcomes.
This talk will cover the basics of organization design using Team Topologies, exploring a selection of key team types and how and when to use them in order to make the development and operation of your software systems as effective as possible. The talk is based on the forthcoming 2019 book Team Topologies and first-hand experience helping companies around the world with the design of their technology teams.
About Team Topologies
Team Topologies is a clear, easy-to-follow approach to modern software delivery with an emphasis on optimizing team interactions for flow. Four fundamental types of team – team topologies – and three core team interaction modes combine with awareness of Conway’s Law, team cognitive load, and responsive organization evolution to define a no-nonsense, team-friendly, humanistic approach to building and running software systems.
Devised by experienced IT consultants Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais, the Team Topologies approach is informed by the well-known DevOps Team Topologies patterns (also authored and curated by Matthew and Manuel). Matthew and Manuel have worked with many organizations around the world to help them shape their teams for modern software delivery, and Team Topologies is the result of that experience.
teamtopologies.com
Beyond the Spotify model - Team Topologies - Leeds DevOps - 2019-09-16 - Matt...Matthew Skelton
This talk covers the basics of organization design using Team Topologies, exploring a selection of key team types and how and when to use them in order to make the development and operation of your software systems as effective as possible. The talk is based on the forthcoming 2019 book Team Topologies and first-hand experience helping companies around the world with the design of their technology teams.
From a talk given at Leeds DevOps meetup group: http://www.leedsdevops.org.uk/post/2019-09-08-monday-16th-september-2019-at-the-odi-node-in-leeds/
In this study Gafanomics by Fabernovel, you’ll discover what is, to us – FABERNOVEL is among Slack’s early adopters, using it since 2014 –, Slack’s secret sauce and what makes it so special.
Slack is surely an incredible company with tremendous growth perspectives. But what does it mean in terms of work ideology? How can a single application transform culture, work relationships and, ultimately, entire organizations?
There is a (work) life before Slack... and another one after it: let’s see how Slack has impacted the corporate world.
Spotify uses a scaled agile framework of Tribes, Squads, Chapters and Guilds to manage its over 30 agile teams across 3 cities. The basic unit is the Squad, which functions like a Scrum team and is fully autonomous. Squads are organized into Tribes of related teams. This framework allows Spotify to maintain an agile mindset while scaling significantly in size and geographic distribution.
Spotify scales agile by using Tribes, Squads, Chapters and Guilds. Squads of 7-10 people work on specific missions like building the Android app. Tribes are collections of related Squads that share an office. Chapters group people by skill within a Tribe. Guilds allow sharing across the company in areas like testing. This matrix structure balances autonomy and shared learning to help Spotify rapidly develop its music streaming product while growing to over 250 employees.
Overview of confluence with practical use case. Meant for use by the Atlassian community members, this information is provided free of cost by Atlassian
Presentation by Mark Collier & Jonathan Bryce April 2012 to industry Analysts in San Francisco covering OpenStack background & and an update on the Foundation plans.
How to Maximize Effectiveness of Developers Contributing to Free SoftwareStefano Maffulli
The document discusses how corporations can maximize the effectiveness of their developers contributing to open source software. It recommends that corporations tweak their new product development and customer service processes to align with open source release cycles. Corporations also need to think outside their boundaries and allow developers more freedom to interact and contribute upstream to open source communities. Long term engagement and collaboration with open source communities can help corporations gain benefits like fixes to issues and code improvements.
Spotify adopted a model of autonomous Squads and Chapters to encourage innovation at scale. Squads are small, cross-functional teams that self-organize delivery of features end-to-end. Chapters are competency-based communities that provide coaching. This align-autonomy model balances independence with consistent direction. Spotify also emphasizes a fail-friendly culture, continuous experimentation, and frequent releases through automation and a microservices architecture.
This document provides an overview of scaled agile frameworks including SAFe, Nexus, and LeSS. It discusses why scaling is needed, challenges with lack of structure in scaling, and benefits of scaling such as tracking initiatives, aligning teams, and leveraging multiple skillsets. It then summarizes each of the frameworks - Nexus uses integration teams and Scrum teams, LeSS is for multiple teams working on one product with shared backlogs and sprints, and SAFe is the most popular with different configurations and is built on lean principles. The document emphasizes that SAFe 5.0 focuses on achieving business agility through technical agility and lean-agile leadership at all levels of the organization.
Dan Craig is an experienced IT professional with over 20 years of experience leading technical and business project teams using agile methodologies. He has worked as the Director of Agile Services at Steel Thread Software and as the founder of Ailsa Software, providing agile consulting. His experience includes roles managing programs, coaching teams in agile practices, and developing tools to support continuous delivery. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Economics and certifications in Scrum and holding a US Department of Defense security clearance.
Whitepaper_ State of Platform Engineering Report.pdfjuancarlos747007
This document provides an overview of platform engineering including its origins from DevOps practices, definitions, principles and best practices. Platform engineering emerged as organizations invested in building internal developer platforms to provide self-service capabilities for engineering teams and minimize cognitive load. It is defined as designing toolchains and workflows that enable self-service for application development. Key principles for platform teams include having a clear mission focused on improving developer experience, treating the internal platform as a product, and focusing on common problems across engineering organizations.
The document discusses how a UX team at AstraZeneca, a large biopharmaceutical company, used Lean UX principles to drive digital transformation. Over the past year, they built internal search and user experience competency centers, developed mobile apps, and ran usability labs. This helped them accelerate the adoption of new technologies, improve existing products, and establish modern design practices across the organization.
Similar to Cross Skilling Jobs and Move to SDN (20)
Organizational change is closely tied to digitization. Economists have not appreciated how firms are employing AI besides employing it to deploy robots. In fact, many firms have innovated by creating intelligent analytic systems that change their ability to create new products and manage processes and production.
In these firms, AI helps firms understand complex operations, connect with customers on a personalized level, and obtain a far more sophisticated analysis of processes and services. The result is that AI and ML are creating many new economic advantages at the firm level and for customers.artifici
This essay presents a new framework to analyze the impact of AI and ML on work. Its premise is that AI and ML have already been adopted in many firms. Now, efforts are underway to simplify the next stage of adoption by removing the complex requirement to create well-formulated algorithms.
This innovation is automating the deployment of ML ecosystems. Early adopters report substantial gains in new revenues, additional efficiencies in operations and a changed mindset for employees. One example of the latter is LinkedIn’s efforts to establish a “culture of data,” where data serves as the foundation for corporate strategy and data analytics-based operations. This essay contends that by lifting earlier roadblocks to adoption, growth of ML and AI systems will increase, greater attention will be paid to obtaining and structuring data resources, and more ML systems can be applied to evaluating strategic and financial decisions.
This essay contends that rather than a future of “Models will Run the World,” the route to AI software creates a focus on intelligent data. To move towards the latter, humans will need to contribute their judgement to how data is organized for machine learning to train algorithms. They will decide what biases may be included in the training data and check for any issues that might arise from these biases once algorithms are run in production.
To achieve success in this “intelligent data” world, humans will play a very different role in the workforce. Jobs will shift to those that support, conserve and evaluate the results that algorithms provide. They may also expand in “domain expertise” areas, as where knowledge of regulatory requirements for finance needs to be incorporated in new models that financial institutions want to create and the algorithms they need to run.
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Data analysis is becoming the most significant core for the digital corporation. This talk provides information about how time to develop software and deploy apps in data centers has declined by orders of magnitude. It focuses on cases from Adidas, BlackRock, and BristolMyersSquibb to illustrate data -driven digital firms. It highlights how the growth of AutoML will speed the move to data analysis and faster creation of algorithms. It also explores the impact of these changes on jobs.
This document discusses how data refineries use machine learning and artificial intelligence to create jobs. It provides examples of how data refineries analyze large datasets using algorithms and tools like TensorFlow. This requires jobs in data engineering, data analysis, and data wrangling to gather, clean, transform, and interpret the data. Specifically, Descartes Labs is highlighted as using satellite imagery data and tools like Kubernetes to advance scientific understanding and open new fields for analysis related to agriculture and volcanology.
This paper illustrates the dramatic innovations in software development that have taken place over the past decade. It is a rebuttal to Robert Gordon's argument in the Rise and Fall of the American Economy that the digital revolution has been anemic since about 2005.
This is a discussion of how firms that build strong skills in software development and data analytics, especially intelligent analytics, will dominate their industries in the next few years.
Collaboration using Open Source Software has resulted in fascinating broad-industry bases to support applications in the auto industry. Might we see similar efforts in healthcare?
How is Marc Andreesen's dictum that "software is eating the world" having real impacts? This report explores the many categories of software innovation and includes estimates of economic impacts.
These charts compare Moore's Law speed changes with several changes due to software innovation, including the decoding of the human genome, time to commit new software and time to stand up new apps in data centers (reduced thanks to software-defined data centers)
5 cases of firms that have deployed the Internet of Things. With economic comments on Return on Investment, contribution to productivity, and new business models.
An analysis of software innovations and how they are affecting GDP, productivity, and jobs. A critique of economists' arguments that Internet related innovation is dead and that innovation in ITC industries is cumbersome and difficult.
In depth cases of mature companies using IoT to transform their operations. Includes John Deere, Boeing. Economic estimates of the benefits to companies are included.
This talk explores the efficiencies that organizations achieve when they deploy IoT. It draws upon a series of case studies across different industries including autos, aircraft, farm equipment and farming, logistics, aircraft engines, and healthcare.
Economic benefits of using IoT at Enterprise Level. How IoT improves optimization of supply chains. Boeing, major automaker, Healthcare system included in case studies.
This document discusses key Internet-related innovations driving changes in computing, software development, data usage, and networking. These innovations include continuous service delivery and microservices speeding up software creation; federating and commercializing data to increase value of analytics-based services; blockchains creating a secure distributed cloud; containerization allowing flexible sharing of resources; and fog computing distributing computing to network edges. Adopting companies benefit from faster software deployment, improved customer knowledge, and reduced costs. Emerging jobs focus on engineering, research, and operations to support these technical changes.
The document discusses the economic and business impact of new technologies like virtualization, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things. It finds that these technologies have become critical for many enterprises and are beginning to drive corporate profits and revenue growth. As these technologies are more widely adopted, the document predicts:
1. Higher US economic growth, estimated at 2.5% annually or more over the next 5 years, as digital technologies transform industries like healthcare and government.
2. Substantial cost savings for companies, estimated at $39-163 billion annually for Fortune 500 firms adopting these technologies.
3. A significant improvement in US productivity growth, which could reach 2.5% annually compared to the current 1.5
A summary of the initial findings of a study on the economics and business impacts of the New IP -- defined as the broad cloud ecosystem of cloud computing, containers, open architectures, software defined networking, storage and computing, related tools such as Hadoop, data analytics -- as well as the Internet of Things. The project is based at the Economic Strategy Institute and sponsored by Brocade Communications, the EM Kauffman Foundation, and OECD.
The document discusses several key internet-related innovations that are driving changes in computing, software development, data usage, and networking. These include continuous service delivery and microservices, which allow faster software creation; federating and commercializing data through linking different data sources; blockchains for securely managing distributed systems like IoT; containerization through tools like Docker; and fog computing which distributes computing to network edges. These innovations are being adopted by many large companies and are creating more jobs in engineering, research, and operations while reducing roles in administration and support. Overall, the innovations emphasize modularity, security, and using data and edge devices to create new networked systems and services.
1. The document discusses how the Internet of Things (IoT) will impact productivity, employment, and infrastructure.
2. It notes that IoT will enable operational efficiencies and productivity gains through applications like smart healthcare networks. However, managing billions of connected devices will require highly automated network management.
3. New "cross-skilled" jobs will combine expertise from multiple fields like software development, networking, and data analytics to develop and manage complex IoT systems and infrastructure.
THE INTERNET OF THINGS, PRODUCTIVITY AND EMPLOYMENT Boston 0915
Cross Skilling Jobs and Move to SDN
1. Cross-Skilling Jobs as Part of New Organizational Structures Linked to the Emergence of Software-Defined
Infrastructure
By Dr. Robert B. Cohen, Senior Fellow, Economic Strategy Institute, November 9, 2015
Companies are overwhelmed by the number of transactions they must manage and the constant demand
for new applications and services due to the glut of mobile communications and a rapid rise in data flows.
To respond, some firms have developed rapid action teams to make their firms more productive and
responsive.
This appears to permit such firms not only to derive important advantages from the new software-defined
infrastructure that supports accelerating product and service development but also to create work teams
or groups that meld skills that had formerly been isolated to perform specific tasks. So these firms are
terminating jobs such as software developers or quality assurance employees. The new positions they are
filling in teams or squads have superseded the old occupations. The new occupational designation for
these employees is not clear, nor are the tasks clearly defined. Team and squad members may be called
platform team engineers but this is not true of all cases where such positions exist.
These changes in the workforce are part of an experiment in agility that has begun over the past five years.
As the use of virtualized infrastructure with software defined networking, cloud computing and containers
becomes more widespread, it is providing firms with a chance not only to speed the creation of new
products and services, but also to emphasize creativity and teamwork above task work.
This summary reviews the main organizational changes that are being tried at several companies and the
upside and downside for these changes.
The main focus here is on three firms, Spotify, Supercell and Netflix. We are also exploring whether firms
that are using containers/Docker and continuous service delivery are making similar organizational
changes.
Spotify, Netflix, Supercell and the move to Team-Like Structures within Organizations
Spotify, “Swedish music streaming service offering digitally restricted streaming of selected music from a
range of major and independent record labels”1
began life in 2011. It introduced a type of matrix
organization built on a scaling model that included what it named “Squads, Tribes, Chapters, and Guilds”
in 2011.
The structure works in the following way. There are various groups built on squads, work teams or scrums
that work together. At a higher level, the squads are joined into tribes, chapters and guilds in a type of
matrix structure. The matrix makes it possible for individuals in different squads and tribes to collaborate
with each other because they work on similar types of tasks. This provides a way to connect employees
across the different Spotify structures.
1
Henrik Kniberg & Anders Ivarsson, “Scaling Agile @ Spotify with Tribes, Squads, Chapters & Guilds,” Oct 2012.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1018963/Articles/SpotifyScaling.pdf p.36
2. At the most basic level, Spotify has created squads that behave like small startup firms. A squad is like a
scrum team with the “skills and tools needed to design, develop, test, and release to production.”2
They
follow lean principles to design, build, test and tweak, and ship new products and services. Instead of
being an anarchistic scrum, the squad has product owner who prioritizes the work of the squad.
Functionally, squads have a “long--term mission such as building and improving the Android client,
creating the Spotify radio experience, scaling the backend systems, or providing payment solutions.”
“Each squad must be empowered to make [its] own decisions, not only on features, but also on
development model, infrastructure, and implementation. Every decision that has to be approved outside
the team means a delay that slows development. Each dictated implementation or infrastructure decision
means that a technology that doesn’t fit to the way the team works or something new that must be
learned before the team can build.”3
A squad “is responsible for a single feature or component. For example, there is a squad that is responsible
for search, a squad responsible for the AB test infrastructure, etc. As each tribe is set up to be as
autonomous as possible, each squad is also set up to be autonomous. In the context of a feature
development team, this means that each team is a full-stack team. A full-stack team is responsible for
both backend implementation as well as the user interface implementation, on all platforms.”
“A typical feature squad would have web service engineers, iOS, Android, web and desktop engineers as
well as testers, an agile coach, a product owner and UX designer. With this staffing, the squad has
everything they need to implement anything related to their feature. They don’t have to wait on another
team to implement the pieces they need. They also have autonomy and local decision-making ability, so
there are few impediments on their speed of execution.”4
Supercell’s cells are very similar to Spotify’s squads. Supercell is a Finnish gaming firm that now has offices
around the world. Softbank is its main investor. Supercell’s biggest success is Clash of Clans, “a strategy
game where players can construct and expand one's village, unlock successively more powerful warriors
and defenses, raid and pillage resources from other villages, create and join Clans.”5
At Supercell,6
each cell has five people and creates a single game. The CEO focuses on not micromanaging
the cells, although the combination of cells is called a “supercell.” Supercell hires people with broad
experience in gaming and gives them the freedom to create games. Individual cell members take
responsibility for their own work.
Spotify’s squads are also very similar to the team structure that Netflix developed. At Netflix (see the
figure below), the need to complete software projects rapidly resulted in the creation of teams that
2
Henrik Kniberg & Anders Ivarsson, “Scaling Agile @ Spotify with Tribes, Squads, Chapters & Guilds,” Oct 2012.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1018963/Articles/SpotifyScaling.pdf
3
Kevin Goldsmith, “Puppies, Flowers, Rainbows and Kittens,” posted March 14, 2014.
http://blog.kevingoldsmith.com/2014/03/14/thoughts-on-emulating-spotifys-matrix-organization-in-other-
companies/?utm_content=buffer8f1a9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_campaign=buffer
4
Kevin Goldsmith, “Puppies, Flowers, Rainbows and Kittens,” posted March 14, 2014.
http://blog.kevingoldsmith.com/2014/03/14/thoughts-on-emulating-spotifys-matrix-organization-in-other-
companies/?utm_content=buffer8f1a9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_campaign=buffer
5
Clash of Clans Wiki. http://clashofclans.wikia.com/wiki/Clash_of_Clans_Wiki
6
Kim-Mai Cutler, “Why Culture Matters: Supercell’s Calculated Path to the Top of the App Store,” posted Nov 21,
2012. http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/21/supercell/
3. include individuals with different skills who collaborate to complete projects rapidly. The team structure
avoids previous delays in the product creation process because there is no leader of a specific group, such
as quality assurance, who must approve work before it moves ahead. In previous structures where
occupational tasks were separated from each other, the approval process added a significant delay to the
completion of new services and products.
Netflix created two types of teams. One, teams that use microservices, combine project management,
software development, quality assurance, and the deployment of new services in a single team. In the
other type of teams Netflix combines microservices development skills with networking skills in what it
calls project teams that use monolithic delivery.
Netflix executives, including former Cloud Architect Adrian Cockcroft, explain that the new structure was
needed to accelerate product development and also provided support for data analytics. The latter
enabled Netflix to experiment with different offerings to keep customers pleased about the services they
were receiving. So there was an acceleration in the creation process as well as greater sophistication in
analytics. Comcast also recently underscored the fact that the goal of customer retention is a prime reason
it adopted more software–defined infrastructure.7
Spotify is the main firm that has moved the new team structure up to a well-defined series of higher levels.
The next level up in the Spotify hierarchy is a Tribe, or a “collection of squads that work in related areas –
such as the music player, or backend infrastructure.” So in Spotify’s engineering and product organization,
the “Tribe is responsible for a set of related features or engineering functions.” One of the largest Tribes
is the Infrastructure and Operations Tribe. Other Tribes include the Music Player Tribe that handles
7
Comcast talk at Cloud Expo, New York.
4. “importing audio from our label and distribution partners, storing and streaming the music, search,
collection and playlists, artist pages, music metadata and the music knowledge graph that supports things
like the above, but also ads, discover, radio and the like.”8
The next level up in Spotify’s hierarchy begins to create a matrix over the previous organization. That is,
the vertical part of Spotify’s matrix is that “people are grouped into stable co-located squads, where
people with different skill sets collaborate and self-organize to deliver a great product.” The horizontal
part of the matrix is “sharing knowledge, tools, and code.”9
Chapters are part of the horizontal structure and act as “reporting and functional groupings” that cross a
number of tribes. There are several types of chapters, i.e., people with the same skills who work within a
Tribe, such as “the testing chapter, the web developer chapter or the backend chapter.”10
The chapter
lead “is line manager for his chapter members, with all the traditional responsibilities such as developing
people, setting salaries, etc.”11
The different chapters meet to discuss their areas of expertise and the
challenges they face. In 2014, there were “three backend (services) development chapters, two front-end
development chapters (including all the UI developers), a core library chapter, and a test chapter. These
seven Chapters span eight different squads. Almost every chapter lead has reports in 2 squads, and a few
of them have reports in three squads. Almost all chapter leads work within a squad in some capacity as
well, either as developer or technical lead, and not necessarily within a squad that has members of their
chapter.”12
In reality, Chapter members are not evenly distributed across the squads; “some squads have
lots of web developers, some have none.”13
Another part of the Spotify matrix is the Guild. The guild provides a way for Spotify to coordinate the
efforts of its autonomous teams. It is a virtual “cross-tribe organization” focused on “different technical
or interest areas and their membership is voluntary. The guilds serve as ways to promote cross-tribe
collaboration and communication, especially around things like best practices.” There are “guilds for Web
Development, Agile Practices, Leadership, Test Automation, etc. The guilds foster developer-to-developer
communication.”14
The “Guild is a more organic and wide-reaching “community of interest”, a group of
people that want to share knowledge, tools, code, and practices. Chapters are always local to a Tribe,
while a guild usually cuts across the whole organization.”15
8
Kevin Goldsmith, “Puppies, Flowers, Rainbows and Kittens,” posted March 14, 2014.
http://blog.kevingoldsmith.com/2014/03/14/thoughts-on-emulating-spotifys-matrix-organization-in-other-
companies/?utm_content=buffer8f1a9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_campaign=buffer
9
Vlad Mysla, “Scaling Agile @ Spotify,” p. 88.
10
Vlad Mysla, “Scaling Agile @ Spotify,” p. 79.
11
Vlad Mysla, “Scaling Agile @ Spotify,” p. 80.
12
Kevin Goldsmith, “Puppies, Flowers, Rainbows and Kittens,” posted March 14, 2014.
http://blog.kevingoldsmith.com/2014/03/14/thoughts-on-emulating-spotifys-matrix-organization-in-other-
companies/?utm_content=buffer8f1a9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_campaign=buffer
13
Vlad Mysla, “Scaling Agile @ Spotify,” p. 81.
14
Kevin Goldsmith, “Puppies, Flowers, Rainbows and Kittens,” posted March 14, 2014.
http://blog.kevingoldsmith.com/2014/03/14/thoughts-on-emulating-spotifys-matrix-organization-in-other-
companies/?utm_content=buffer8f1a9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_campaign=buffer
15
Vlad Mysla, “Scaling Agile @ Spotify,” p. 83.
5. Issues in using the matrix structure. There are a number of challenges in using such a matrix structure.
The key one is coordination among the different functional groups within the firm, such as the Tribes, the
chapters and the Guilds. There is also a separation of groups such as legal and marketing from the
6. employees in the matrix structure. So coordination with these groups and the employees in the Tribes
and the legal and marketing teams is critical. If coordination is lacking, legal and marketing can negate
other efforts to instill agility in the firm.
In the matrix structure, improvements depend upon actions by team members. If there is no follow-
through, changes may not occur rapidly or may not be communicated from one team to another. “Best
practices and technologies do spread from team to team through avenues like guilds. Teams adopt these
practices and technologies on their own schedule or pioneer new ways of working if it makes it easier for
them to deliver value to our customers and then spread their learnings to the other teams.”16
Spotify has a number of processes and structures to improve coordination. Guilds hold unconferences
where all the web developers at Spotify meet and “discuss challenges and solutions within their field.”17
There is also an agile coach guild with coaches are spread throughout Spotify. These coaches are
continuously sharing knowledge. They also meet “continuously and … regularly to collaborate on the high
level organizational improvement areas, which [Spotify] tracks on an improvement board.”18
Thoughts about how cross skilling jobs are linked to the new software defined architectures. This
discussion identifies how firms have employed new software defined architectures to create teams that
break down previously tightly defined occupational categories, such as software developers, to create
team members that collaborate to develop new products and services.
While there is not a specific occupational designation for these team members, team work may become
more common in the future because it produces final products and services more efficiently than the
previous job structure. It also offers a better outlet for creativity and for team members to learn skills that
are beyond their area of expertise. Here, we are using the term cross skilling to describe such jobs. This
accurately describes the need for employees to broaden their technical skills and not remain in a specific,
more isolate profession largely based upon the original job skills they possessed. Collaboration is an
additional skill that is often the key to success in new team structures.
16
Kevin Goldsmith, “Puppies, Flowers, Rainbows and Kittens,” posted March 14, 2014.
http://blog.kevingoldsmith.com/2014/03/14/thoughts-on-emulating-spotifys-matrix-organization-in-other-
companies/?utm_content=buffer8f1a9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_campaign=buffer
17
Vlad Mysla, “Scaling Agile @ Spotify,” p. 85.
18
Vlad Mysla, “Scaling Agile @ Spotify,” p. 86.