How Autonomy Saved One of Spotify's Most Loved Features From Being Killed

Discover how autonomy and agile management at Spotify led to the creation of one of its most beloved features in this 43-minute conference talk from GOTO Copenhagen 2022. Explore the journey of Discover Weekly, from initial skepticism to widespread success, as Joakim Sundén, a consultant and coach, reveals the organizational culture that fosters innovation. Learn about aligned autonomy, data-driven decision-making, and continuous improvement strategies that enabled the team to overcome challenges and ship a feature that even the CEO might have killed. Gain insights into facilitating context, focusing on outcomes, and celebrating failure in product development. Understand how Spotify's approach to experimentation, limiting blast radius, and fostering a culture of innovation contributes to successful feature launches. Apply these lessons to your own organization to encourage creativity and drive product success.

Intro
Discover Weekly
Spotify HQ
Radio
Discover
Re-connecting the dots
Finding the successful product
PO/PM as collaborative leader & facilitator
Facilitating context
Focused on outcomes, not output
Activities, epics, features, stories
These bets have a low success rate
Moving from opinions to data
Aligned autonomy
"Traditional" organizations
Aligned autonomy
Iterate, iterate, iterate
Continuous improvement
Experiments
Winning formula
Employee release
Daniel Ek
Celebrate failure
Limit blast radius
Watching the buzz
Conclusions
Innovation can't be forced
Outro