‘Spotify’​ bandwagon , anyone ?

In a recent group conversation , there was a discussion on a leader asking that his team of 100 should be agile without using scrum or agile . What he ment was that he want the teams to be agile without using any of the methodologies in the market, Good question but is it plausible ?

One thing was clear that the leader is either oblivious of what agile/scrum or any other methodology is and how it adds ‘business value’ or s/he is averse to Agile , seems it didn’t work for them earlier.

So how the teams can be agile without having any agile traits learnt . We all concur that Agile is a mindset and Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, XP are all frameworks, Agile is a culture and the teams adapt to these frameworks, but end goal of these models are a ‘self driven’ team and thats probably the leader is looking for.

But hold on , have you seen such a model working ? . Check out exactly the ‘Spotify’ model . It elucidate the behavior of a matured team which are self propelled, needs no direction and owns what they do. But its not easy , if you see the model they do use scrum but the agility is a culture / habit and its built over time but the scrum or SAFe used is not used or lost once the teams are matured . Apart from this , if your teams have all the below imbibed in them , then agility is given and teams generates value time and again.

1) Autonomy

2) Loosely coupled Teams

3) A culture of ‘if you want to do something go and do it’

4) There is no release but its a ‘routine’

5) Rollback features in solution or/product

6) decoupled architecture

7) Team can “spraying the code” anytime they like

8) team sacrifice predictability

9) delivers value

10) An experimentation culture

11) No HIPO — highest paid person in the room , don’t make decision

12) A waste repellent culture

13) Highly collaborative

Check out the video from where i have tried to capture all the above values/ virtues , if you have time to watch it completely , it is worth watching and taking it to practice (easier said than done). And also check what ‘Steve Jobs’ said , with out trust , there is no such team and thus no mindset.