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Editorial · The Post-Project World

Spotify: The Squad Model Examined

5 January 2026 · 00:08:14

Spotify's Squad Model has been copied by thousands of organisations worldwide. Most implementations miss the point entirely. In this episode, I examine what Spotify actually did—and what they've learned since publishing their famous engineering culture videos. The model looks simple on paper: autonomous squads, chapters for functional excellence, guilds for knowledge sharing, tribes for coordination at scale. But the magic isn't in the structure. It's in what the structure enables. I explore:→ Why squads work: end-to-end ownership and the elimination of handoffs→ The chapter model: how Spotify maintains technical excellence without traditional management→ Guilds: voluntary communities that spread knowledge without coordination overhead→ The problems they don't talk about: what happens when the model scales beyond its original context→ Why copying the structure without understanding the principles usually fails Spotify didn't eliminate coordination. They redesigned it. The lesson isn't to reorganise your teams into squads tomorrow. It's to understand why autonomous teams with clear missions need less management overhead than traditional hierarchies. If your organisation is considering "going Spotify," listen to this first. 🎧 Available now on Spotify and all major platforms.

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