The Spotify Model for Team Structure

Tired of teams moving slow and staying siloed? 

Here's how Spotify reorganized their entire company to boost speed and autonomy - and ended up creating one of tech's most copied organizational models.

Instead of following rigid frameworks, Spotify focused on organizing around work. Here's the basic structure:

• Squads (6-12 people): Small, autonomous teams focused on one feature or area

• Tribes (40-150 people): Multiple Squads working on related features

• Chapters: Specialists (like developers) sharing best practices across Squads

• Guilds: Voluntary groups for anyone interested in a specific topic

Most companies try to control chaos through process. Spotify embraced chaos by trusting teams and giving them guardrails instead of gates.

Want to try this with your team? Start small:

1. Identify clear, separate areas of work in your product or service

2. Form one Squad around each area, giving them full autonomy to choose how they work

3. Create lightweight Chapters for your specialists to share knowledge

4. Let passionate team members form Guilds around shared interests

But don't try to copy Spotify exactly. 

The magic isn't in the model itself - it's in creating a structure that enables autonomy while maintaining alignment. 

Even Spotify doesn't use the original model anymore; they've evolved it as they've grown 📈