The Spotify model - Agile

The Product Owner tells the Squad “What” has to be done , prioritizes the work and maintains the backlog. 

Each Squad is self-organizing and can choose to follow Scrum, Kanban, XP or a hybrid of these. Squads are aligned to their mission, product strategy and short-term goals. Each Squad owns the release and delivery end to end. Typically, an infrastructure / DevOps Squad enables them to carry out smooth releases but does not do it for them. 

The Squad has access to an Agile Coach who runs retrospectives and Sprint Planning meetings. The coaches help the Squads to continuously improve. 

Tribe: A Tribe is a group of Squads that are related to each other by nature of the work being done by them. for e.g multiple Squads working together on the same product feature or closely related product features/ same product within a portfolio of different products.

 

 

The number of people in a Tribe is recommended to be 100 in line with the Dunbar number. As per the Dunbar number, most people cannot maintain a social relationship with more than 150 people or so. All the Squads within a Tribe are co-located and physically able to interact in common areas dedicated for this purpose. 

There is a Tribe Lead who is responsible for creating a productive and an innovative environment for the Squads. The Tribe Lead can be part of a Squad as well.  

Tribes meet often to showcase what they have been working on, what has been delivered and their learnings. The showcase could include the working software, new tools and techniques. 

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Handling Dependencies 

One of the foremost challenges to resolve in a scaled agile environment are “conflicts and dependencies”. These can crop up during the development of a product among the Squads within a Tribe and also exist among Squads in other Tribes as well.   

Dependencies could slow down or block the progress. Such dependencies are identified and are handled by reprioritization or through technical solutions. Sometimes innovative ideas could help remove the dependencies.  

The end goal is to avoid dependencies between Tribes by making the Tribes self-organizing; and once that is achieved by having minimal dependencies among Squads within a Tribe. 

Survey for Continuous Improvement: 

A survey is done for all Squads at the end of every Quarter to understand the pain points and areas for improvement. 

For e.g multiple Squads having issues with the release process need urgent attention. One of the Squads not getting enough support from their Product Owner needs leadership intervention. 

Chapter: Certain disciplines/technological areas within the Tribe, like QA, Database Specialists, Front-end developers, Back-end developers, UX Specialists will benefit with regular discussions and interactions. People within these functions across multiple Squads and within the same Tribe constitute the Chapter. 

Constant communication within the Chapter members is encouraged. Each Chapter meets regularly to discuss their achievements and challenges in their respective areas of expertise e.g QA Chapter, UX Chapter, DB Chapter. 

There is a Chapter Lead who can guide the various members of the Chapter on “How” things can best be done. For e.g the QA Chapter lead can strategize the End-to-End Functional, Performance and Security Testing to be carried out for the new version of the product in an upcoming release. This will ensure the testers within all the Squads have a common well thrashed out testing strategy for the upcoming product release.  

The Chapter lead can also be the line manager of the members in his Chapter, performing the traditional managerial responsibilities like people development, performance appraisals, career growth etc. The Chapter lead is also a member of one of the Squads in the Tribe, making him remain closer to ground realities.x` 

All the Chapter leads within a Tribe typically could report to the Tribe lead, and the Tribe Lead performs all the managerial responsibilities for the Chapter Leads within his Tribe as well as the next level Squad members of his Tribe.  

Guild : A Guild is like a “community of interest” cutting across Tribes throughout the Organization/ Business Unit.  

Imagine an Enterprise that has three Tribes each located in three different locations. There could be QA Chapters for each Tribe with respect to the location. There is also a need for QA members of one Tribe to exchange and share processes and learnings with QA members of the other two Tribes. The Guild is an organic structure that serves this purpose.