There Is No Spotify Model for Scaling Agile

Many people see the Spotify Model as an agile method or scaling approach. Go beyond squads and tribes to understand how culture helps Spotify succeed.

Recently a client told me that they were adopting the Spotify Model. Which sounded great at first. Spotify has published some great articles and videos about how they have grown and transformed their organization to be agile. Then it occurred to me that what he was saying was completely wrong.

The “Spotify Model” is not an Agile Method

So everyone has fallen in love with the Spotify Model and the charismatic Henrik Kniberg, one of the early coaches at Spotify who provided a window into how Spotify uses agile. And somehow, they have come to see the “Spotify Model” as an agile method or framework.

Wrong, dead wrong.

In his own words, Kniberg has stated that Spotify was not intended to be a framework or model. In Unlocking Agility, Spotify employee Anders Ivarsson is quoted as saying: “There really wasn’t a ‘Spotify model’ in the first place — we just documented what we had at the time to illustrate how we organized our work; it was never meant to be a static model. It sometimes concerns me that…