Spotify is a music streaming service that has had massive success in the past decade. What is the key to their success?
Many people attribute it to their people-driven, autonomous approach for scaling agile. This approach emphasizes the importance of culture and network. Let’s take a look at how Spotify implements this model and the benefits it has seen.
Key elements of the Spotify model
The Spotify model for scaling agile is based on three key elements: people, culture, and network.
First and foremost, the model emphasizes the importance of the people in the organization. The Spotify team believes that “the best way to scale agility is to start with good people and let them drive the change.”
Second, culture is essential to success in any organization, and it must be cultivated early on and consistently reinforced.
Finally, the Spotify model relies on networking to spread ideas and best practices throughout the organization.
By leveraging their culture and network, the Spotify team has been able to scale agility successfully across their organization.
Matrix management solved the wrong problem
The Spotify matrix management model solved the wrong problem.
Matrix management is intended to address the challenge of maintaining clear lines of communication between different business functions (marketing, engineering, sales, etc.), while also allowing individual teams to remain autonomous and move quickly.
However, in Spotify’s case, matrix management actually created more communication challenges by splitting team members between multiple projects and managers.
What Spotify found was that their people-driven, autonomous approach was a better way to scale agile and maintain a strong culture and network.
Spotify fixated on team autonomy
Spotify’s model has a few agile tenets at its core: people over process, continuous delivery, and team autonomy.
But the focus on team autonomy is what makes their model so interesting. This means that teams are self-sufficient and largely responsible for their own success (or failure). They’re also allowed to make their own decisions about how they work, which can lead to a more flexible and responsive organization.
The autonomous nature of the teams also helps to foster a strong sense of ownership and responsibility—everyone feels invested in the success of the company as a whole.
Collaboration was an assumed competency
Collaboration is one of the key tenets of the Spotify model. It’s assumed that team members can and will work together to figure out the best way to solve problems and get things done.
This is a stark contrast to the traditional top-down approach, where decisions are made by managers who are removed from the day-to-day operations of the team.
By empowering team members to make decisions, the Spotify model ensures that everyone is invested in the success of the project. The focus on collaboration also helps to build a strong sense of community within the team, which can lead to better teamwork and productivity.
Mythology is difficult to change
One of the biggest challenges when it comes to scaling agile is culture. It’s often said that culture is difficult to change, but we believe that’s only true if you don’t have the right tools in place.
At Spotify, we put a lot of emphasis on our people-driven, autonomous approach. This model emphasizes the importance of culture and network, both of which are essential for any organization looking to scale its agile practices.
To create a more sustainable change, it’s important to build a foundation of trust and common understanding. By creating a strong network and culture, you’re setting your team up for success and paving the way for long-term agility.
The Spotify model for scaling agile has become very popular in the past few years, and for good reason. It solves many of the problems that other models have, and it places an emphasis on culture and network.
However, as with any model, there are downsides. In particular, the Spotify model can be difficult to change once it has been implemented.