In a few years Spotify has grown from a small startup in Sweden to a pretty big company with more than 30 engineering teams in four different development offices on two different continents. And we have no intention of slowing down. Such rapid growth carries big challenges. How can we continue to improve our product at great speed, while growing the number of users, employees and supported platforms and devices? How do we stay lean and agile when we grow from a small startup to a big corporation? In this talk we will present how Spotify is addressing these challenges. We will talk about autonomous squads, tribes, guilds, hack weeks, road managers, and a lot of other ideas we’re experimenting with.

1. staying lean from small start-up
through rapid growth

2. 2
The right music for every moment

3. 3
24M active users.
6M paying subscribers.
20M songs.

4. 4
32 countries

5. Growing fast
30
3 years ago

6. Growing fast
10
100
30
250
Now

7. Development speed
that scales

8. Autonomy

9. Squad
• Feel like a mini-startup
• Self-organizing
• Cross-functional
• 5-7 engineers, less than 10
C
P

10. Example squads

11. Pics of squad rooms

14. Process that fits
Process
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Scrum
Kanbanesque
Kanban
Other

15. Autonomous squad
• Dedicated product owner
• Agile coach
• Influencing work
• Easy to release
• A process that fits the team
C
P
• A mission
• Organizational support

16. Autonomous squad
surveys
C
P

17. Are we there yet?

18. Structure and alignment
Chapter
Chapter
P
P
P
P
Squad Squad Squad Squad

19. Chapters
Chapter
Chapter
P
P
P
P
Squad Squad Squad Squad

20. Chapter Lead

21. Personal development

22. Training and
knowledge sharing

23. Boot camp

24. Provide fast and
reliable access to all
the world's music
Tribes
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Enable high product
development speed
while maintaining a
highly available service
Chapter
P
P
P
P
Squad Squad Squad Squad
P
P
P
P
Squad Squad Squad Squad

26. Network organization
Tribe
Tribe

27. Dependencies
Tribe
Tribe

28. Structure happens!

30. Guilds
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Guild
P
P
P
P
Squad Squad Squad Squad
P
P
P
P
Squad Squad Squad Squad

32. Autonomy vs. Alignment
Autonomy
Alignment

33. Autonomy vs. Alignment
Innovative
organization
Collaborative
culture
Alignment
Authoritative
organization
Conformist
culture
Micromanaging
organization
Indifferent
culture
Entrepreneurial
organization
Chaotic
culture
Autonomy
Source: Stephen Bungay

34. Vision

35. Product
Product
P
P
P
P
Squad Squad Squad Squad

36. OKR
Objectives &
Key Results

37. Projects
Project
tinyurl.com/HowSpotifyBuilds

38. Big retrospectives &
post-mortems

39. Improvement and definition of
awesome

40. Happy employees
% of employees that would
recommend this company to a friend
Source: glassdoor.com

41. Trust

42. Internal blog:
Celebrate failure
How we shot
ourselves
in the foot
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WTF?
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Internal blog:
Celebrate
failure!
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sdfkjh sdfkjhasdflkj dk dj wi dm chsdfjh
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44. Joakim Sundén
@joakimsunden
joakim.sunden@spotify.com
www.joakimsunden.com
http://tinyurl.com/KanbanInAction