If you meet the Spotify Model on the road, kill the Spotify Model.

There is a Zen koan that states, "If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him." Finding a Buddha on that road is in effect looking outside of ourselves and making the mistake of trying to follow another person on their journey. By imitating them we forget that their road can never be ours; attempting to follow them to enlightenment is folly. This koan came to mind as I was discussing Agile transformation efforts with some of my fellow coaches working to help companies adopt and adapt to Agile ways of working.

One of the most common things I've seen having worked on Agile transformations over the past few years has been consultants pushing, and companies falling in love with, the “Spotify Model” and viewing it as a means to make themselves more Agile and improve their team’s performance. Spotify is a very Agile organization. They have an incredible product. They have great technology. They are constantly innovating. Seems like adopting their model would benefit a company that is undergoing an Agile transformation, wouldn’t it? Unfortunately, there are two issues to this idea.

One, Spotify has a very unique culture. If you read the Backstage section of their website, you can easily see that they really do value their team members. Teams enjoy a degree of autonomy both in their practices and their tools that is almost unmatched. Their culture is one of extreme flexibility, analysis, and experimentation (i.e. failure is normal or even celebrated). These traits allow the teams at Spotify to be creative in their approach to products and their work.

Ask yourself, does my company have that same level of trust and autonomy as Spotify? Is failure accepted as part of the learning process? If you can’t say “yes” to that, then adopting the Spotify Model is not going to work for you, because the model was born from their culture. Trying to do the Spotify Model if your culture isn’t the same as Spotify’s, and your approach to product isn’t as customer-centric, is like trying to run a Mac application on a Windows machine. It just won’t work because your organizational operating system, Bob Gower's term for an organization's culture, values and principles, isn't compatible with the application, i.e. the Spotify Model.

Two, Spotify doesn’t even do the "Spotify Model" as it is presented in the well-known Henrick Kniberg videos (which are incidentally no longer available on Spotify's website). The model as is presented in those videos is the one that existed in 2013. It was an innovative take on how to scale Agile across a growing company that was a scrappy young contender in the streaming media business. It worked for a while, but Spotify's chapter leads and shareholders have since inspected the working model and found it needed to evolve and change. Where there were once Chapter Leads who operated horizontally across squads, there are now Engineering Managers aligned vertically to squads that belong to product areas. This allows for a more focused, dedicated and accountable approach to value delivery for product areas. It has also brought a better balance between the organization's working on value delivery for customers and addressing technical maturity.

"In articles or talks like this it may come across that Spotify is some sort of agile nirvana where everything just works and that is simply not true." – Henrik Kniberg

At this point, I need to give Spotify a major hat tip for being truly Agile, meaning they have embraced the inspect and adapt process in areas beyond the IT organization. They tried an innovative experiment in creating an engineering culture and practice that reflected their values as they began expanding as a company, giving rise to the Spotify Model. They have since inspected how the model worked and found where it could be improved so that they could be even more Agile in addressing technical maturity and value delivery to internal and external customers and Spotify's shareholders. They are being Agile in the truest sense because the process is constantly evolving based on feedback and intent.

“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.” - Buddha

Given this, I think that if you’re working with a consultant on your Agile transformation and they suggest you adopt the "Spotify Model" but they a) haven’t really taken a good, hard look at your present culture, and b) can’t tell you how the Spotify Model has evolved at Spotify since its inception then you need to find another partner to your Agile transformation effort. They are prescribing something without really understanding your reality. Start by looking at your organizational culture, and be very honest with yourself about whether you exhibit the traits that allow teams to be creative, flexible, passionate and accountable.

Those traits allowed Spotify to come up with its initial model and has permitted that model to evolve. Like Spotify does, hold retrospectives on how the transformation is going. Accept, and even celebrate, failure as a vital part of the continuous improvement process. Keep your focus on adopting the principles and values that support Agility. Put people, your customers and your teams, at the center of everything you do. Recognize that the transformation is a long evolutionary process and requires hard work and best served by finding your own path and not imitating another’s.