how agile coaches help us win the agile coach role @ spotify

Kristian Lindwall Agile coach team lead

@klindwall

Brendan Marsh Agile coach

@brendanmarsh

How Agile Coaches Help Us WinThe Agile Coach Role @ Spotify

Inspiration for this talk

What is Spotify?

�3How do we scale Agile?

What is an Agile Coach?

�8

The right music for every moment

�11

24M active users. 6M paying subscribers.

20M songs.

�12

55 countries

Growing fast

30

3 years ago

Tribes ”Provide fast and

reliable access to all the world's music”

”Enable high product development speed while maintaining a

highly available service”

P P P P Squad Squad Squad Squad

Chapter

Chapter

P P P P Squad Squad Squad Squad

Chapter

Chapter

Growing fast

25030

10010

Now

�15How do we scale?

• “Feel like a mini-startup”

• Self-organizing

• Cross-functional

• 5-7 engineers, less than 10

Squad

P

C

Example squads

Pics of squad rooms

Tribes ”Provide fast and

reliable access to all the world's music”

”Enable high product development speed while maintaining a

highly available service”

P P P P Squad Squad Squad Squad

Chapter

Chapter

P P P P Squad Squad Squad Squad

Chapter

Chapter

Squad (Servant) Leadership

Product Owner

Chapter Lead(s)

Agile Coach

“POTLAC”

How are we supporting our team?

Agile Coaches

Individuals

Squads

Tribes

Scope of the Agile Coach

�24

The agile coach

Our primary goal: High performing teams and a high performing organization !

Motivated people... building valuable, quality products...

...fast!

March 7, 2014

How do we help them reach high performance?

By going above and beyond the call of an Agile Practitioner

�28

March 7, 2014

We definitely do the basics...

Scrum

Kanban

User stories

Stand ups

Retrospectives

Sprints

Planning PokerXP

Story PointsDemos

Agile - Lean Practitioner

Lyssa Adkins - The Agile Coaching Competency Framework

Agile - Lean Practitioner

Teaching

Mentoring

Coaching

Facilitating

Lyssa Adkins - The Agile Coaching Competency Framework

Agile - Lean Practitioner

Teaching

Mentoring

Coaching

Facilitating

Technical Mastery

Business Mastery

Transformational Mastery

Lyssa Adkins - The Agile Coaching Competency Framework

�33

Some recent examples of this in practice

1 on 1 coaching

- Team members

- Product owners

- Chapter leads

- Senior management

Agile - Lean

TeachingMentoring

Technical

Coaching

Team offsite- Full day(s) offsite

- Team building

- Problem Solving

TeachingFacilitating

Agile - Lean Practitioner

PO book club- Series of lunch and learns

- Challenges POs

- What is the impact of planned work?

TeachingFacilitating

Business Mastery

Agile - Lean Practitioner

TDD/XP workshop- 2 day workshop

- Facilitated by coach and CL

- Focus on engineering skills

TeachingFacilitating

Technical Mastery

Agile - Lean Practitioner

Squad roadmapping

- Group of coaches came up

with new visualization

- Ran workshops with all squads in a tribe

Facilitating

Business Mastery

Agile - Lean Practitioner

Bootcamp- 2 week induction

- Tech Introduction - “From Click to Play”

- Agile Introduction

TeachingMentoring

CoachingFacilitating

Agile - Lean Practitioner

Continuous Delivery Unconference

- Lightning Talks

- Open Space

- Initiatives

!

Teaching CoachingFacilitating

Agile - Lean Practitioner

MasteryTechnical

�41

Putting it all together

How do we know how we’re doing?

�44

Most recent model

�45

An Example...

Section name

How do WE grow?

•Conferences / Meetups •Training / Workshop •Thought Leader Talks •Mentoring •Pairing •Agile Practices Sharing •Lean coffee •Unconference

�46

Section name

Recap

First level text •Second level – Third level – Fourth level

�47

Recap

Kristian Lindwall Agile coach team lead lindwall@spotify.com @klindwall

Brendan Marsh Agile coach brendanm@spotify.com @brendanmarsh brendanmarsh.com

March 7, 2014

Copyright stuffNapster pic by bixentro, cc 2.0 http://www.flickr.com/photos/bixentro/ !Airplane pic by wildhaber http://www.flickr.com/photos/wildhaber/5976264120/Kuster & Wildhaber Photography !Busy record store pic by gomattolson http://www.flickr.com/photos/gomattolson !Empty record store pic by passetti http://www.flickr.com/photos/passetti/