Steal from the best

Kevin Goldsmith
Steal from the best
Lessons learned from three years at Spotify

Full-Stack Autonomous Teams (Squads)
PO
UX
iOS
Android
K&M
QA
Backend
Agile Coach
Autonomous
adjective
au·ton·o·mous - ȯ-ˈtä-nə-məs
(of a country or region) having the freedom to govern itself or control its own affairs.
"the federation included sixteen autonomous republics"
having the freedom to act independently.
"school governors are legally autonomous"
synonyms: self-governing, independent, sovereign, free, self-ruling, self-determining,
autarchic; self-sufficient
"an autonomous republic"

Tribe
Squads
Chapters
Ideal size: 40-150 people

Tribe
Squads
Chapters
Product Owner
User Experience

@KevinGoldsmith Enterprise Agile SF
Nimble Autonomy
Why was this model created?
Velocity
Minimize decision-making bottlenecks

Nimble Autonomy
Velocity
Reduce synchronization bottlenecks

Nimble Autonomy
Velocity
Reduce process to a minimum

Nimble Autonomy
Velocity
Reduce process to a minimum
Address short-term challenges

Nimble Autonomy
Velocity
Happiness

Nimble Autonomy
Velocity
Happiness
Increase sense of ownership

Nimble Autonomy
Velocity
Happiness
Individual stability while fostering dynamic
organization

Nimble Autonomy
Velocity
Happiness
Individual stability while fostering dynamic
organization
Encourage personal and professional growth

Nimble Autonomy
Velocity
Happiness
Scale

Nimble Autonomy
Velocity
Happiness
Scale
Support organizational growth while maintaining
culture

Nimble Autonomy
Velocity
Happiness
Scale
Adaptability

Nimble Autonomy
Big Projects
Challenges
Autonomous teams makes coordination difficult
No full-time project managers in technology organization
Very uneven execution record
Got into some bad anti-patterns

Nimble Autonomy
Big Projects
Solutions
Strong culture of project retrospectives
Library of retrospectives on successful and unsuccessful
projects to inform Road Managers (people taking on project
leadership for a specific project)
Learned to choose Road Managers with project management
training or prior work experience

Nimble Autonomy
Strategic Alignment
Challenges
Bottom-up nature of autonomous teams challenged alignment
to long-term strategic direction from leadership

Nimble Autonomy
Strategic Alignment
Solutions
“Aligned Autonomy”
DIBBs - Data-driven decision documents for larger company
strategic efforts (Data/Insights/Beliefs/Bets)
Strategy Team - crossed functional group that would meet to
create single prioritized list of active Bets. Met every six weeks
Squads - expected to align to relevant bets

Nimble Autonomy
Growing Senior Leaders
Challenges
Tribe leads have people management, strategy and delivery
responsibility
Chapter Leads have people management responsibility and
operate in highly consensus-driven teams

Nimble Autonomy
Growing Senior Leaders
Solutions
Leadership training program

Nimble Autonomy
Resource Efficiency
Challenges
Autonomous teams are resource hungry because they need to
be self-sufficient
Teams can get focused on improving things within their sphere
of control, ignoring larger issues

Nimble Autonomy
Resource Efficiency
Solutions
Raise lots of money

Nimble Autonomy
Functional/Departmental Culture Friction
Challenges
The culture of the Spotify Model described was confined to
project engineering
The original Product Leadership group consisted primarily of
engineers from the squads
The engineering team was the majority of the company for many
years
As the company grew, hiring more experienced external product
leadership and other departments grew their own cultures there
was increasing cross-functional and cross-departmental friction

Nimble Autonomy
Functional/Departmental Culture Friction
Solutions
Later iterations of Spotify leadership made significant changes
to the organizational culture

Nimble Autonomy
The structure of the model is less
important than the culture that
created it

Nimble Autonomy
The Spotify Engineering Culture
Thoughtful
Deliberate
Agile-first
Transparent
Bottom-up
Continuously improving

How I’ve adapted these ideas

Nimble Autonomy
Journey Teams
Avvo
• Organized by customer journey (jobs to be done)
• 15-30 cross-functional people
• Engineering, Product, Design, Test leads
• Dynamic Teams
• Autonomous
• Managers managed across teams*

Nimble Autonomy
Hire an Attorney Journey
OPPORTUNITIES ROOTED IN PAIN POINTS
• Why is this happening to me?
• Who can I trust to get advice?
• Who can I talk with about a private matter
like this?
• I don’t even know what I want, or how to
find someone to help
• I need to understand - ask a lot of questions
and do a lot of research to understand my issue
• I wish I didn’t need to do so much research
• I need to arm myself with the right info and
protect myself
• Where do I start? There are so many options
• I don’t want any hassle
• I should hire a lawyer so this issue can be resolved
and won’t keep coming up
• Is there anything I can do to save money?
• I’m sifting and sifting through information
• I want to do this as painlessly as possible
• I need this done as soon as possible
• I don’t know where to look
• I trust my friend’s recommendation
• I don’t feel comfortable handling this case by myself
• I need to feel comfortable with the lawyer
• I need to feel that my lawyer is working for me and
cares about my case
• I don’t want to be treated like a criminal
• I need an attorney who is empathic, a good listener,
personable, a good communicator, who cares
about me, who cares less about the money, and
who is an advocate
• I need an attorney with experience in my area of
law, who has good reviews, a good
reputation, a good win/loss records, and is affordable
• I want to know about the background (personal &
professional) of my lawyer
• I want someone to keep things moving
• I want to hide from all this paperwork—there is so `
much
• I would rather talk with a person than use
technology
• I don’t want to spend too much time doing this
• I hope the attorney isn’t screwing me over
• I consider my lawyer a resource (not a savior)
• I probably won’t think about it again for a
while now that it’s over
• I don’t think this legal issue will ever go
away
• I think some attorneys care, but it’s more
about getting the most money than
making me feel taken care of
• I think the legal system is unfair and
overly complicated
• I feel closure with the legal issue because
the case is over and settled
• I don’t feel like I’ll ever have personal
closure
• I feel like the attorney made me feel special
• I am skeptical about whether the lawyer is doing
a good job
• The attorney takes care of everything (because,
duh, it’s their job)
• I feel satisfied because the lawyer is very helpful
• I feel relief because someone is finally here to
help me
• I feel normalized because attorneys have seen
these cases before
• I am overwhelmed by the paperwork
• I am scared and feel like a failure
• I feel frustrated because no one can help
• I’m worried about family
• I am confused about my rights, why this is
happening, and what my legal issue means
• I feel like a failure
• I feel stressed being put through this
process I didn’t even want to be a part of
• I’m smart, I can do this
• I feel hopeless because I don’t know where to start
• I feel defiant, because they say the situation
is hopeless but I’ll find a way
• Now that I am learning, I’m feeling more
secure about where this is heading
• I’m scared because my research showed me
the worst case scenario
We have opportunities to humanize attorneys, both by helping
attorneys improve their soft skills and by making those skills more
visible on the site.
1 2 3 4
Something happens to you that forces
your hand to solve a problem
Incident-initiated
“I need legal help”
User-initiated
“I want legal help”
OR
Online Offline
Both
Google search
Q&A forums
Seeking advice from people
they know and trust
Talk to government services
Online
Refer attorney to friends
Do nothing
Offline
Google search
Research referred
lawyers
Seeking referrals from
people they know and trust
Call attorneys
Email attorneys
Meet at court
Meet at office
Talk by phone
Talk by email
Both
Research legal issue Looking for an attorney Hiring an attorney Working with an attorney Post-resolution
THINK
FEEL
Compare prices
Understand the process
of working together
Issue arises
DOING
Legal journey starts with one or
more triggers above Researching legal issue throughout journey
OR
OR
Humanizing attorneys
We have opportunities to facilitate consumer connections, whether
it’s by having consumers hearing directly from others about their
experiences or talking to another human before they hire.
Creating networks
Consumers want attorneys who have specific experience and
expertise in their problem, and we have opportunities to help
consumers evaluate and narrow attorneys based on these criteria.
Improving attorney evaluation
Consumers research throughout the legal journey and we can better
support this behavior throughout our funnel today. Beginning with
the research process, all the way through post-resolution, we have the
opportunity to continue to trigger and build consumer investment
with our tools, so they will keep coming back to Avvo.
Creating engagement loops for research throughout
the journey
But each problem was different and re-
quired starting anew every time.
Researching was more than just Google
searches, as people talked to family, friends,
and acquaintances for advice.
People continually tune and retune their
research - narrowing, broadening, and nar-
rowing throughout.
Referrals from friends and family continue to
be a significant way of finding a lawyer.
Soft skills (such as empathy) are the final,
deciding factor on whether to hire.
People often had multiple, discrete legal
problems during their life.
KEY TAKEAWAYS

@KevinGoldsmith Nimble Autonomy
Aligned Autonomy
Avvo, Onfido, Anaconda
• Created company strategy calendar
• SLT picked 2-3 priorities for the year
• Each quarter 5-7 “bets” aligned to yearly strategy
• Teams aligned their work to support the bets
Enterprise Agile SF

Data-Driven Decision Making
Avvo
• Creation of DUHB(R) framework
• Data
• Understanding
• Hypotheses
• Bets
• Results
• Drove decision-making at all levels, company library of DUHBs created
Enterprise Agile SF

A culture of continuous improvement
Avvo, Onfido, Anaconda
• Brought general practice of retrospectives following any significant
company project
• Facilitated by agile coaches or myself
• Library of retrospectives available internally for review
Enterprise Agile SF

Everything comes from the values
AstrumU, Anaconda, Avvo, Onfido
• At AstrumU, created a collective values agreement very early to help
drive all future discussions around hiring
• Did collective values exercises for tech managers at Avvo, AstrumU,
Onfido to inform promotions, processes and hiring
Enterprise Agile SF

Hypothesis-driven product development
Avvo, Anaconda, Onfido
• Lean-style product development model pushing teams to bring value
to customers more quickly
• Relying heavily on feature flags, A/B/C testing, progressive rollout
• Data-driven feature investment model
• Reduce cost of failure using Lean and strong DevOps practices
• Make learning from failure a priority and eliminate culture of
punishing failure
Enterprise Agile SF

Avoid cultural silos
Avvo, AstrumU, Anaconda
• Include whole company in cultural evolution
• Educate/support all departments in continuous improvement
techniques
• Embed engineers in other departments (Finance, Marketing) to avoid
silos and share cultural knowledge
• Be transparent and inclusive in all cultural efforts
Enterprise Agile SF

Some Final Thoughts on
Spotify

Nimble Autonomy
Some Final Thoughts on Spotify
Spotify’s extremely flat hierarchies and “leaderless” teams were
well matched to the Swedish culture. This created problems for
companies trying to adopt the model in other countries and for
Spotify teams in the US
Spotify had no interest in other companies adopting its model.
The model itself was very fluid. Blog posts and talks (like this
one!) didn’t really give enough information for other companies
to really understand how to apply it

Nimble Autonomy
Spotify invented few of its practices
Spotify leadership made a point of learning and sharing with other
innovative companies and incorporating good ideas wherever we found
them
Each tribe or squad was its own mini laboratory and meant there was a
lot of inconsistency in specific practices used
New practices emerged organically, but were always adopted in a
considered and thoughtful way
Spotify was not precious about its practices and we always considered
than any new practice had a natural life span

Nimble Autonomy
Spotify’s true agile, cultural and scaling innovation was building
a true culture of learning and continuous improvement, hiring
for and inculcating new employees in that culture
Everything else came from that foundation

@KevinGoldsmith
@NimbleAutonomy
https://nimbleautonomy.com
https://kevingoldsmith.com
Nimble Autonomy
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