Have you watched those Spotify engineering culture videos? They were trendy and influential in the agile community but that was around nine years ago. What might we say about effective product development culture today? In this keynote, Jason Yip will share a summary of 2023-era effective product development culture based on his eight years at Spotify and 14 years at ThoughtWorks. This will include core beliefs, guiding principles, and core practices. Which ones will align with what you see at your workplace? Which ones will highlight opportunities for improvement? This keynote is not to encourage copying something that will become obsolete in another nine years, but instead to share an example of reflecting on effective product development culture to hopefully encourage your own ongoing reflection and improvement.

1. “We’re in it together” and
other perspectives on
effective product
development culture (2023)
A presentation by Jason Yip
Senior Manager Product Engineering, Grainger
Former Staff Agile Coach, Spotify
Former Principal Consultant, ThoughtWorks

2. Expressions of culture I’ve
found interesting over the
years

3. Original (2009) 2nd edition (2009) Current
Netflix culture deck (2009)

4. Zappos culture books (2008 - 2019) Mostly collections of
employee and
customer stories

5. Spotify engineering culture (2013 - 2014)
How Spotify builds Products (2013)
Spotify Engineering Culture - Part 1 (2014)
Spotify Engineering Culture - Part 2 (2014)
(I worked at Spotify from 2015 - 2022
so I’m most familiar with this one)

6. What might we say about effective
product development culture today?
Why bother?

9. TL;DR

10. TL;DR
● 3 core beliefs
○ We’re in it together;
○ People are trustworthy;
○ Performance comes from playfulness
● 8 guiding principles
○ Consent over consensus;
○ The basic unit is the team, not the individual;
○ Enable autonomy with clear intent and technical
excellence;
○ Cross-pollination over imposed standards;
○ Develop products by developing people;
○ Think big, work small;
○ Use quality to generate speed;
○ Limit the “blast radius”
● 10 key practices
○ Aligned, autonomous cross-disciplinary teams;
○ Test Driven Development;
○ Evolutionary design;
○ Pairing / Whole team programming;
○ Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery
○ Release Trains (when synchronisation is
required);
○ Heartbeat retrospectives and blameless
postmortems;
○ T-shaped people;
○ Decoupled architecture and gradual rollout;
○ Continuous Research, Continuous Design,
Continuous Delivery
Jason’s perspective on effective product development culture (circa 2023) | by Jason Yip | Medium

11. Effective product
development cultures have
particular “core beliefs”

13. 3 core beliefs
1. We’re in it together
2. People are trustworthy
3. Performance comes
from playfulness

14. Core Belief: We’re in it
together

15. Let’s imagine a team is blocked, delaying the
overall delivery. What’s the reflex?

16. Coworker

18. Core Belief: People are
trustworthy

19. What’s the reflex on
transparency?

22. Theory X and Theory Y - Wikipedia

23. Core Belief: Performance
comes from playfulness

26. 3 core beliefs
1. We’re in it together
2. People are trustworthy
3. Performance comes
from playfulness

27. Meanwhile, on the flight to Las Vegas…

28. Effective product
development cultures
follow particular “guiding
principles”

30. 8 guiding
principles
1. Consent over consensus;
2. The basic unit is the team, not
the individual;
3. Enable autonomy with clear
intent and technical
excellence;
4. Cross-pollination over imposed
standards;
5. Develop products by developing
people;
6. Think big, work small;
7. Use quality to generate speed;
8. Limit the “blast radius”

31. Guiding principle: Consent
over consensus

33. Unilateral decisions lead to false progress

34. Consensus leads to slow decision-making

36. Guiding principle: Enable
autonomy with clear intent
and technical excellence

38. MindSpring Presents: "Greatness" by David Marquet - YouTube
Enable
autonomy
Technical
excellence
Clear
intent
Focus on
these

39. Guiding principle: Think Big
Work Small

41. TBM 4/52: Think Big, Work Small (Part 2) - by John Cutler (substack.com)

42. 8 guiding
principles
1. Consent over consensus;
2. The basic unit is the team, not
the individual;
3. Enable autonomy with clear
intent and technical
excellence;
4. Cross-pollination over imposed
standards;
5. Develop products by developing
people;
6. Think big, work small;
7. Use quality to generate speed;
8. Limit the “blast radius”

43. Effective product
development cultures use
particular key practices

45. 10 key practices
1. Aligned, autonomous cross-disciplinary
teams;
2. Test Driven Development;
3. Evolutionary design;
4. Pairing / Whole team programming;
5. Continuous Integration / Continuous
Delivery
6. Release Trains (when synchronisation is
required);
7. Heartbeat retrospectives and blameless
postmortems;
8. T-shaped people;
9. Decoupled architecture and gradual
rollout;
10. Continuous Research, Continuous
Design, Continuous Delivery

46. Key practice: Aligned,
autonomous,
cross-disciplinary teams

49. Key practice: T-shaped
people

52. T-shaping adapts to varying demand

53. T-shaping means less people needed

54. T-shaping helps with communication

55. Key practice: Continuous
Research, Continuous
Discovery, Continuous
Delivery

59. 10 key practices
1. Aligned, autonomous cross-disciplinary
teams;
2. Test Driven Development;
3. Evolutionary design;
4. Pairing / Whole team programming;
5. Continuous Integration / Continuous
Delivery
6. Release Trains (when synchronisation is
required);
7. Heartbeat retrospectives and blameless
postmortems;
8. T-shaped people;
9. Decoupled architecture and gradual
rollout;
10. Continuous Research, Continuous
Design, Continuous Delivery

61. A thought I had listening to
John Jenkins’ talk today…

62. The shift to isolated testing from black box
end-to-end testing requires a detailed
understanding of how systems, dependencies,
and data, behave and interact.
It’s not just the tools and techniques but a
deliberate intention to understand and design.

63. The shift to effective product development
culture requires a detailed understanding of
how beliefs, principles, and practices interact.
It’s not just the tools and techniques but a
deliberate intention to understand and design.

64. Leading broad line distributor of MRO
(maintenance, repair, operations) products and
services determined to Keep the World
Working®
through innovative technology
solutions and deep customer relationships
Largest
MRO distributor in
North America
$15.2B
in 2022 sales
1927
Company
founded
>
4.5M
Active
customers
~
26K
Team
members
>
30M
Products
offered globally
>
75%
Orders originate
through a digital
channel
35
Distribution
centers
© 2023 W.W. Grainger, Inc.
Note: All metrics as of December 31, 2022 unless otherwise noted
Jason Yip
Senior Manager Product
Engineering
https://jobs.grainger.com/

65. Questions?
● 3 core beliefs
○ We’re in it together;
○ People are trustworthy;
○ Performance comes from playfulness
● 8 guiding principles
○ Consent over consensus;
○ The basic unit is the team, not the individual;
○ Enable autonomy with clear intent and technical
excellence;
○ Cross-pollination over imposed standards;
○ Develop products by developing people;
○ Think big, work small;
○ Use quality to generate speed;
○ Limit the “blast radius”
● 10 key practices
○ Aligned, autonomous cross-disciplinary teams;
○ Test Driven Development;
○ Evolutionary design;
○ Pairing / Whole team programming;
○ Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery
○ Release Trains (when synchronisation is
required);
○ Heartbeat retrospectives and blameless
postmortems;
○ T-shaped people;
○ Decoupled architecture and gradual rollout;
○ Continuous Research, Continuous Design,
Continuous Delivery
Jason’s perspective on effective product development culture (circa 2023) | by Jason Yip | Medium