An introduction and explanation of 8 guiding principles design by the Agile Coaching team for Spotify Ads R&D and how they might help you with your own change efforts

1. We are more impactful with both team-level insight AND leadership relationships;
2. We should not become operational (or at least be careful about becoming operational);
3. Focusing too much on short-term tactical wins limits the ability to have sustained impact;
4. Coach (aka change agent) collaboration is more effective than silos;
5. Results are for the short-term; systems and habits are for the long-term;
6. Involving leaders (both formal and informal) in both brainstorming and implementation makes improvement faster;
7. Coaching structure should follow coaching strategy; coaching strategy should follow product/business strategy;
8. Sharing work and successes should be intentional, not just organic.

I've worked 6 years in the "tech industry" at Spotify and before that 14 years consulting with ThoughtWorks at "legacy" industries. Large digital natives have habits that typical digital transformations do not emphasise enough (a lot of focus on strategic growth while still managing short-term cash flow; delegating accountability to scale agility; aggressive decoupling to avoid coordination; experimental mindset - willingness to take bets) but they also have vulnerabilities that legacy industries should not repeat and can possibly exploit (over-specialisation; over-emphasis on individuals over teams; over-emphasis on celebrating status and perks over stakes and outcomes).

BAPO stands for Business Architecture Process Organisation. It is Jan Bosch's more fleshed out expression of "structure should follow strategy". I recently experimented with applying this framework within Spotify Ads R&D and would like to share what worked and what didn't. Concepts expanded beyond BAPO to include product capabilities versus architecture services; overlapping product lifecycle s-curves; Simon Wardley's Pioneers, Settlers, Town Planners; and a reframing of the teaching people how to fish metaphor. Beyond sharing my successes and failures, this session will also encourage attendees to sketch how they might try this framework in their own context and anticipate what issues may appear.

Thinking back over my 4 years at Spotify, I see 3 main insights: 1. Aligned autonomy is an ongoing struggle; 2. Building teams in the context of high growth require different assumptions; 3. Consulting companies are generally better at forming high-performing teams fast.

Thinking back over my 4 years at Spotify, I see 3 main insights: 1. Aligned autonomy is an ongoing struggle; 2. Building teams in the context of high growth require different assumptions; 3. Consulting companies are generally better at forming high-performing teams fast.

Thinking back over my 4 years at Spotify, I see 3 main insights: 1. Aligned autonomy is an ongoing struggle; 2. Building teams in the context of high growth require different assumptions; 3. Consulting companies are generally better at forming high-performing teams fast.

The word "leadership" can trick us into believing that we are talking about the same thing when are actually not. This talk will explore different "leadership" accountabilities and how they might manifest in different roles.  I'll also describe different patterns of how this might play out including specific examples from ThoughtWorks and Spotify.

The 5 levels of Planning ( Vision, Roadmap, Release Plan, Sprint/Iteration Plan, Daily Commitment) is a useful way to summarise key planning activities for different horizons in an Agile context.  This will be an overview of the 5 levels of planning, including examples of how we've been trying this out at Spotify.

I've been involved in an initiative to explore how we might improve the speed of learning and delivery at Spotify.  I'd like to share some of the themes and ideas on how one might improve speed for a technology-oriented company with hundreds of people.

Lego games and similar simulations are a fun, engaging way to introduce Agile concepts.  However, they require non-trivial effort to setup and clean and don't really work for distributed participants.  This will be a discussion and demonstration of Agile simulation game using Minecraft.

Alternate title: "Everything you wanted to know about User Stories but was afraid to ask"

"User Stories" have become the de facto standard way of breaking down work in Agile software development.  However, many practitioners (and even nominal teachers) succumb to common errors and misunderstand critical points that distinguish effective practice.

This is a presentation of my efforts to create a more detailed look into patterns around User Stories and other aspects of work breakdown within Agile software development.

Daily stand-up meetings have become a common ritual of many teams, especially in Agile software development. However, there are many subtle details that distinguish effective stand-ups and a waste of time.

This session will be an exercise to reflect and think more deeply about the patterns of effective versus "waste of time" stand-ups.

Let's put aside the "bubblegum and unicorns" of the Spotify Engineering Culture videos and talk about what doesn't quite work at Spotify and how we're trying to solve it.

This is a failure / learning report intended for change agents who need encouragement that it's always hard AND it's always possible to improve.

Back in the day, Extreme Programming ruled the world of "lightweight methodologies".  If you just assumed someone in the community was technically savvy, that was a good bet.  This is no longer the case.  17 years on, the leading edge of technical practice looks different.  I'd like to rant(*) on how some of it doesn't even come close to what we did before.

(*) Really more comment politely and rationally

It's easy enough to say that we should encourage everyone to be a leader, it's much harder to actually engage in the specific behaviours to do it.

The Ladder of Leadership is a model from David Marquet and Steven Covey that represents different stages of leader-follower interactions, from "I'll tell you what to do"/"Tell me what to do" to "What have you been doing?"/"I've been doing..."

This workshop introduces the Ladder and is an opportunity to practice different stages to help you to both recognise problems with leader-follower interactions and learn how to respond to turn them into leader-leader interactions.