Agile Israel 2014Simon Marcus – Agile Lead

@lycaonmarcus

Scaling Agile

Music for EveryoneMusic for Every moment

What does scaling FEEL like at Spotify?Is there a Spotify way? (spoiler : nope!)How are we organized?What do we mean by agile, and why?How do we change?What do we mean by agile, and why?

Today’s Playlist

From 10k to 10mm subscribers in 6 years40mm MAUs50% growth since December 20135 Million playlists created or updated a day56 countries

600 engineers, product owners and designers 20+ CoachesFirst acquisitions: Tunigo, The Echo Nest

Teams are Scaling...

Teams are Scaling...

How we got started

Bringing music to the world !@#!@

The Spotify WaysOur work spaces

Who we hire The roles we have

How we have funThe words we use

The words we don’t use

The tools we use Implicit rules

How we act when things go right

$How we grow people

How we learn

Being Swemerican

How we got started

Bringing music to the world !@#!@

The Spotify WaysOur work spaces

Who we hire The roles we have

Being Swemerican

How we have funThe words we use

The words we don’t use

The tools we use Implicit rules

How we act when things go right

$How we grow people

How we learn

How we got started

Bringing music to the world !@#!@

The Spotify WaysOur work spaces

Who we hire The roles we have

How we have funThe words we use

The words we don’t use

The tools we use Implicit rules

How we act when things go right

$How we grow people

How we learn

Being Swemerican

How we got started

Bringing music to the world !@#!@

The Spotify WaysOur work spaces

Who we hire The roles we have

Being SwedishBeing American

How we have funThe words we use

The words we don’t use

The tools we use Implicit rules

How we act when things go right

$How we grow people

How we learn

How we got started

Bringing music to the world !@#!@

The Spotify WaysOur work spaces

Who we hire The roles we have

Being SwedishBeing American

How we have funThe words we use

The words we don’t use

The tools we use Implicit rules

How we act when things go right

$How we grow people

How we learn

In The Last Week I. . .

Spent a day at an offsite with tech leaders arguing about our org structure

1 Helped gang-write a new career path for non-management tech leaders

2

Gave and received “loops” feedback to and from peers

3 Participated in a grass-roots effort to improve project management

4

In The Last Week I. . .

Spent a day at an offsite with tech leaders arguing about our org structure

1 Helped gang-write a new career path for non-management tech leaders

2

Gave and received “loops” feedback to and from peers

3 Participated in a grass-roots effort to improve project management

4

In The Last Week I. . .

Spent a day at an offsite with tech leaders arguing about our org structure

1 Helped gang-write a new career path for non-management tech leaders

2

Gave and received “loops” feedback to and from peers

3 Participated in a grass-roots effort to improve project management

4

So what about our famous org

structure?

Squads

SOCIAL

Life in a Squad

Life in a Squad

Own Services and PipelinesOps in SquadsEvangalizing Mission

Autonomy = Responsibility

Life in a Squad

Chapters

SOCIAL

SOCIAL

SOCIAL

SOCIAL

Chapter Lead

Tribes

SOCIAL

SOCIAL

SOCIAL

SOCIAL

SOCIAL

SOCIAL

SOCIAL

Guilds

Kanban or Scrum or

Scrumban or XP or SAFe or

what?

Yep.

Finding betterish ways to do things that work until they don’t,

and then finding new things.

What is Agile?

Changing (Creating Interesting

Problems)

Organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations – Melvin Conway

Spotify’s Org Chart

Circa 2013

The Wages of Autonomy

A lot of Talking

Execution

20+ teams100+ people8+ months

Alignment Autonomy

Awesome?

Alignment

Autonomy

Awesom

e!!!

A genuine Agile culture…Optimized for lots of ideas, personal growth, long term effectiveness…Challenged to find better ways of moving faster, learning more, making it easier to get things done.

Spotify’s Way

Figuring out what you want to optimize for…Know yourself and who you want to be…Test structures that remain coherent with your beliefs, even as they scale.

Your Way?

Spotify’s Blog: http://labs.spotify.com/My Twitter: @lycaonmarcus

Feedback: sayat.me/lycaonmarcus

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