Learn More About the Spotify Squad Framework — Part I
Spotify is a 100%-Agile company that started with the Scrum framework, but as their teams were growing, they noticed some things weren’t working well for them. So, they decided to break some Scrum roles, artifacts, and events. This video explains Spotify Product Development, their release methodology, and the frameworks they use
What’s Squad?
A small cross-functional, self-organized team usually with less than eight members
Why autonomy?
Provides employees with a sense of collective ownership
- Motivates people to build better stuff, faster
- Makes decisions locally made instead of by managers and committees
- People work with autonomy, mastery, and purpose because autonomy allows for decision-making locally
Release trains – feature + toggles
Each client app has a release train that departs on its regular schedule, typically every week or every three weeks depending on the client.
- If the next train leaves with a feature that isn’t 100% done, they release it with this feature hidden.
Spotify process
Cross-pollination is better than standardization
- Spotify has little standardization, it doesn’t have a formal standard
- Their culture is more sharing than owning
- Peer code review
- They focus on motivation and building a good reputation as a workplace
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How the Squad Works
Tribe: Lightweight matrix, a primary dimension focused on product delivery and quality
- Chapter: Group formed based on competency areas
- Guild: A lightweight community of interest where people across the whole company gather and share knowledge of a specific area
- Spotify’s main focus is community over the structure
How easy can they get their stuff into production?
Spotify simplified the process to encourage small and frequent releases.
- They have three different Squads based on the self-service model: Feature Squad, Client App Squad, Infrastructure Squad
- The main goal is to have a small number of releases, invest in automation and infrastructure for continuous releases, and have them be easy to track.