http://www.europeanbusinessreview.com 25more. Each of these frameworks has its own
origins and scope.
One alternative, which many people could
have heard about is the so-called “Spotify
model,” named after the way digital music
streaming service, Spotify organises for agility
at scale. A few years ago, it got a serious boost
when Dutch banking group ING announced
that it would emulate the model to accelerate
its digital transformation. Spotify’s model is a
nice example for showcasing an organisation
that is looking or a “minimum viable work and
organising model.”
In Spotify’s model, the whole organisation
is reconceived into relatively small autono-
mous, multidisciplinary teams – or “squads.” A
team has a “product owner,” who represents
the customer and who helps the team prioritise
work. Each squad has end-to-end responsibility
for a particular customer value mission.
Squads with closely related missions are
grouped into “tribes;” groupings that are not too
big, in order not to jeopardise agility. A “tribe
lead” – a squad member himself – is responsible
for connecting the dots between the squads.
People in the squads are also networked across
squads and tribes based on their expertise or
discipline. These are called “chapters.” Chapters
are groupings that create economies of scale.
Arguably, chapters are light-weight, light-
touch functions. Light-weight, because their
experts are supposed to operate from within
the squads. There’s no big central function team
somewhere high-up into the organisation. Light-
touch, because the discipline that the experts
install for achieving economies of scale should
not come at the expense of the squads’ ability
to deliver customer value fast and frequently. In
practice, that’s a hard balance to strike.
Finally, Spotify also talks about “guilds.”
These are essentially, communities of interest
or practice. They work more organically than
chapters. They allow people who share a
common passion, interest or practice to come
together to share experiences, cases and chal-
lenges, and even create shared best practices
to follow. Guilds promote learning with a
bottom-up drive.With all the diversity of frameworks and
methods for scaling agility, in your view,
what is the most effective way or mecha-
nism that organisations should implement
tobecomemoreagileatscale?
What all the frameworks for scaling agility
have in common is that they are suggestions.
They are works in progress.
Now, for a work in progress to effectively
progress, you need constructs in your organ-
ised model that stimulate learning, particularly
learning by doing. You need mechanisms that
allow you to iterate back and forth between
DFWLQJDQGWKLQNLQJWRÀQGQHZDQGEHWWHUZD\V
of working.
Personally, I believe that working with commu-
nities of practice – or “guilds” – can be a great
mechanism to help organisations effectively learn
how to become more agile at scale.
It goes something like this: People start by
looking at their agile practices and routines as.
Professor Stijn Viaene at
Vlerick Business School