Agility At Spotify

Spotify Engineering Culture, by Henrik Kniberg

While there has recently been a lot of debate surrounding Spotify’s business model, their product development practices and culture have been getting a lot of positive buzz in the Agile community. Earlier this year, Henrik Kniberg posted two videos on Spotify’s technology blog that describes how the team works. They are inspiring and should be watched by anyone who wonders how agility works as a company scales. Since 2006, Spotify has grown to 1200 people in 30 countries and they have managed to evolve their Lean/Agile practices throughout.

In Part 1, Henrik describes how the team evolved into Autonomous Squads, who are loosely coupled, but tightly aligned, and how they have built communities within their structure.

Spotify Engineering Culture – part 1 from Spotify Training & Development.

Part 2 highlights how the teams continuously improve, both the product they work on and how they work. Many of us can identify with the balancing act between chaos and bureaucracy. I love the Definition of Awesome and big, visible improvement boards!

Spotify Engineering Culture – part 2 from Spotify Training & Development

Both videos highlight how Spotify has evolved and protected agility in their culture, which is how they have been able to scale it.

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