Agile at Scale
Spotify Model
Team Structure
| Team Structure | What is it? |
|---|---|
| Squad | A team without hierarchy where leadership occurs by influence composed of a Product Manager, a Product Designer, Engineers and sometimes also a Agile Leader or Team Lead. Since it is a self-managed team, sometimes there is the need for complementary roles, such as Technical Writer and Software Quality Engineer. Each Squad has a specific context where the team is focused on. |
| Tribe | Composed of Squads, but now with a hierarchy where the Leadership team leads functionally where Product Managers are led by a Product Lead, Designers are led by a Design Lead, and Engineers are led by an Engineer Lead or Engineer Manager. |
| Chapter | A group of people (from various Squads) that have the same role / specialty / discipline like Engineers Chapter, Product Managers Chapter, and Designers Chapter. The objective is to exchange experiences, share and align best practices, and even have some basic guidelines and standards across teams. |
| Guild | A group of people that get together around a topic (like a Community of Practice), such as Agile Guild, Web Guild, Mobile Guild |
Decoupled Releases
Each team has total autonomy over their scope and can release new versions with no dependency of other teams.
Release Trains and Feature Toggle
We should be able to make constant releases without having to align with every team. There is where Feature Toggles come into the game, because if you start creating a new feature where enabling it depends on switching a toggle (hence Toggle Feature) it allows the people responsible for Release Management to keep releasing new versions without worrying that a feature is not complete, because its toggle would be turned off.
References
| General References | Source |
|---|---|
| Spotify engineering culture (part 1) | Spotify |
| Spotify engineering culture (part 2) | Spotify |
| Spotify Squad Framework — Part I | PM101 |
| Spotify Squad framework — Part II | PM101 |
| Discover the Spotify model | Atlassian |
| Don’t simply copy Spotify Model, adapt it to your scenario | |
|---|---|
| Don’t Copy the Spotify Model | InfoQ |
| Why Spotify Squads Are a Popular Failure for Product Teams |
| Articles against Spotify Model |
|---|
| Don’t do Spotify Model ! |
| Failed #SquadGoals |
| Reactions to “Spotify’s Failed Squad Goals” |
SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework)
| Reference | Source |
|---|---|
| Scaled Agile Framework | Scaled Agile |
| What is SAFe? | Atlassian |
References
Recommended Books
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Scrum - by Jeff Sutherland The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time 
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Essential Scrum - by Kenneth Rubin A Pratical Guide to Most Popular Agile Process
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Coaching Agile Teams - by Lyssa Adkins A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition
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Agile Retrospectives - by Esther Derby Making Good Teams Great
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People to Follow
 |
Jeff Sutherland Linkedin, Twitter One of the people behind the Agile Manifesto |
 |
Paulo Caroli Linkedin, Twitter Writer of many books and creator of Team Retrospectives |
