1.
Become the
leading example
Kay Korper
Jacob Vesterlund

2.
How do you become
the leading example?
Continuous Improvement
Organisation
Quality

3.
Today’s Playlist
1. Spotify and our values
2. Continuous Improvement
3. Engineering Organisation
4. Quality

4.
“The right music for every moment”

5.
Quick facts
‣Over 75 million active users
‣Over 30 million subscribers
‣$3bn in revenue paid to rightsholders
‣Over 30 million songs
‣Over 2 billion playlists
‣Available in 59 markets

6.
Today’s Playlist
1. Spotify and our values
2. Continuous Improvement
3. Engineering Organisation
4. Quality

7.
Continuous Improvement

8.
Continuous Improvement
‣Improving the individual
‣Improving as a company

9.
Performance Development
1:1’s
Continuous
Feedback

10.
Squad set up
for learning

11.
Learning on the job
continuous feedback loop through:
stand-ups, retro’s, right challenges, peer feedback etc.

12.
Hack days / Hackweek

13.
“It’s ok to fail“

14.
Create an environment where innovative and
passionate people can be their best.

15.
“ How does such an environment look like?”

16.
Today’s Playlist
1. Spotify and our values
2. Continuous Improvement
3. Engineering Organisation
4. Quality

17.
Alliance

18.
Squad

19.
“Small agile team designed
to feel like a start-up”
•Cross-functional (most of them)
•Own mission
•Daily work
•Autonomous

20.
Alliance

21.
Today’s Playlist
1. Spotify and our values
2. Continuous Improvement
3. Engineering Organisation
4. Quality

22.
Quality
‣How do we deliver great quality?
‣How can we make sure we deliver with speed
and quality?
‣How can make sure we can learn quickly
through experimentation?

23.
Stage 1: Quality work in squads
‣ The squad as a whole owns quality and the processes
around.
‣ The squad decided when something is ready to be released.
‣ Everyone participates in testing activities.

24.
QA = Quality Assistance
Instead of acting as quality gatekeeper we want to help
the team to deliver the software with the best possible
quality.

25.
Quality Assistance role
‣Mentor and coach team member about quality at all stages of the
software development process.
‣Involve the team in activities such as exploratory testing and
regression testing.
‣Track and coordinate quality issues.

26.
Continuous Delivery
“Continuous Delivery is the ability to
get changes of all types—including
new features, configuration changes,
bug fixes and experiments—into
production, or into the hands of
users, safely and quickly in a
sustainable way.”
http://continuousdelivery.com/

27.
Stage 2 : Continuous Delivery
‣ Shorten release cycles.
‣ Automated deployments.
‣ Have the squads handle deployment and
operations of their own code.

28.
Test Automation
‣ Good set of automated tests instead of doing just manual
testing is a must for continuous delivery.
‣ Have the automated tests run when a developer does a pull
request, and when the code is merged instead of on nightly
builds.
‣ Good automated tests enables good manual testing instead of
repetitive manual regression testing.

29.
Continuous Delivery (Now)
Clients.
‣ Nightly builds for all employees.
‣ Two week release cycle for clients. (iOS,
Android, Desktop).
‣ Automatic bump of dependencies.
Backend.
‣ Click to Deploy or Continuous
Deployment
‣ Cycle time from code done to production
servers is less than 23 hours (for 80% of
commits)
‣ 90% commits are less than 400 lines.

30.
Stage 3 : Experimentation
‣Showing early prototypes to users.
‣A/B Testing.

31.
“ Become the leading example”
1. Focus on learning
2. Create an environment where it safe to fail
and fail fast. Failure is the most important step to success.
3. Involve the whole team in working with quality
4. Look at how you deliver your product, not only the
product itself.

32.
Thank you.
Jacob Vesterlund
jacves@spotify.com
Kay Korper
kay@spotify.com