Cameron Grice - Notes

Autonomy and Leadership at Spotify

22 June 2015

Notes from Anders Ivarsson's talk at Agile Australia 2015.

Anders Ivarsson's, Agile Coach @ Spotify @anders_ivarsson

Spotify is known for the way they work, see Tribes, Squads, Chapters and Guilds. This happened to be the third time I've heard from Spotify staff and they all caveat that it looks perfect on paper but its not that tidy in reality. It also wasn't supposed to be a "model" for others. Anders briefly overviewed the model but I didn't take notes on this, it's all available online already.

Why

It all begins with why, what is Spotify about? Everyone in the company needs to know how to answer that.

When leadership is clear about the company priorities staff rally around it and change what they doing. They will ask themselves is what we are doing supporting the company the most?

If you need to know who makes the decision you are probably in the wrong place.

Leadership

Leadership is all about supporting a team. Leadership is a behaviour not a role.

Spotify Leadership

POTLAC

The leadership team is comprised of 3 roles: Product Owner, Chapter/Tribe Lead, Agile Coach.

Agile Coach, the role is to challenge teams to become better.

A dysfunctional leadership team is greater than a single bad manager. Strong leadership teams are greater than a single good manager.

Autonomy is the goal

Alignment vs Autonomy, a false dichotomy.

Alignment vs Autonomy

Autonomy means we need you to do exactly the right and we trust you you to make that decision. Why are we doing this and what is the vision for my small team.

Deliver Value Early and Often

Squads are formed around key product areas e.g. search

  • Squads have core metrics - How do you know what metrics tell us if we have good search?

  • Continuous delivery - Mobile has to be released every 2 weeks because the app store review process is slow. However nightly builds go to staff phones. Website, every check-in goes to production.

  • Prototyping - the new running feature came out of a prototype, staff were interviewing runners in the park.

Always be Improving

  • Team dynamics
  • Environment
  • Failure is culturally okay but the goal is to improve
  • Automate everything
  • Collective code ownership
  • 'Platformise'