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 Aarhus 2023. Learn about the organizational culture that enables innovation, focusing on the development of Discover Weekly as a case study. Explore concepts such as autonomous teams, aligned autonomy, and data-driven decision-making. Gain insights into overcoming skepticism, managing risks in product development, and fostering a culture that celebrates both success and failure. Understand the importance of iterative processes, experimentation, and outcome-focused approaches in software engineering. Delve into practical strategies for facilitating context, limiting blast radius, and monitoring data and user feedback. Conclude with valuable lessons on innovation and organizational dynamics in the tech industry.

Intro
Discover Weekly
Spotify HQ
Radio
Discover
Re-connecting the dots
"Traditional" organizations
Autonomous squad
4 Risks in product development
Focused on outcomes, not output
Activities, epics, features, stories
These bets have a low success rate
Moving from opinions to data
Alignment – Autonomy
Aligned autonomy
Gatekeeping vs facilitating context
Iterate, iterate, iterate
Experiments
Winning formula
Employee release
Daniel Ek
Celebrate failure
Limit blast radius
Watching the data
Watching the buzz
Conclusions
Innovation can't be forced
Outro