SPEAKING
Unleash innovation through empowered teams and organizations
I’ve been privileged to have been invited to conferences to share my experiences all over the world for over a decade and it’s something I still enjoy doing. I always try to mix inspiration and concrete practical advice delivered with humor and well crafted slides. You can see some of my most popular talks below, as well as video, feedback, ratings, and more. Do you want to book me as a speaker for your next event? Contact me!
Beyond Scrum: How The Best Are Different From The Rest
New talk, premiering at Regional Scrum Gathering, Belgrade
Scrum can be really great, but it only gets you so far. Team based collaboration and delivering product increments every two weeks is no longer the competitive advantage it maybe once was, it’s more or less expected in a modern workplace. Sure, many bigger organizations still struggle with being able to release more frequently and consistently with high quality, but most are well aware of the problem and know where to shop for solutions.
In my experience, the biggest difference between great product companies, such as Spotify, and the not-so-great, is that the latter are busy delivering tons of stuff that they don’t know is going to make any difference whatsoever. And even worse – they don’t seem to care! At least that’s what it looks like as their teams are busy implementing requirements and specifications initiated by “business people” and calling it done as soon as the solution fulfills the specification (if even that). Teams simply don’t have the tools, the way of working, or the responsibility of making sure they are actually changing user behaviors, creating impact, and delivering business results.
On the other hand, in the best companies, teams have all this and they know that most ideas on a typical roadmap are going to fail. This is why the leaders in these companies focus on what objectives they need to achieve, then give the teams the context and information they need, and let them figure out how to actually reach results.
You should do this too. In this talk I explain why and share my view and experience of how to make that happen.
Discover Weekly – How an empowered squad built one of Spotify’s most loved features against all odds
“I would have killed that if it was just me, 100%,” said Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek about Discover Weekly, a feature that would become one of Spotify’s most loved product features, almost a brand in itself. Designers and senior engineers were equally skeptical, but the team was still able to ship the feature. In this talk, you’ll learn how Spotify’s culture of autonomous/empowered squads enables innovation, using the Discover Weekly feature as an example.
This talk received 97 green, 2 yellow, and 0 red notes in the session feedback at GOTO Copenhagen 2022. Example feedback:
“I really like this talk, It’s was very inspiring to hear”
“This was fun and engaging! Good speaker”
“Really really interesting – and so well presented. My favorite talk so far – thank you.”
“Took like 15 pictures. Loved it.”
SAFe and the “Spotify Model”: Making the Most of Both
SAFe and the Spotify Model are two popular approaches to achieve greater business agility. They have several similarities, e.g., they are both rooted in Lean-Agile thinking and principles, on a surface level a Spotify Tribe is similar to a SAFe Agile Release Train (ART), and a Spotify Guild is similar to a SAFe Community of Practice (CoP).
However, under the surface there are differences between the structures and there are structures, principles, and ways of working that are different between the Spotify Model and SAFe.
When is Spotify’s approach more appropriate and when would SAFe’s approach be a better fit? How can you apply some of Spotify’s organizational structures and practices to your SAFe ARTs? These are some of the questions Joakim Sundé tries to answer in this talk. Joakim is both a SAFe Program Consultant and one of the Spotify Agile Coaches who helped develop the Spotify Model.
So you copied the Spotify model – here’s what you got wrong
(Keynote at Lean Agile Exchange 2022)
For a long time Spotify people (including me!) have tried to convince the world that “there is no Spotify Model and if there ever was one, Spotify isn’t using it anyway and you shouldn’t either”. And yet, countless organisations are using what they call “the Spotify model” to drive their agile transformations, some of them even claiming to be successful.
So, let’s stop pretending that the “Spotify model” doesn’t exist and instead look at how we can guide people set on this course to increase their chances to succeed.
These lessons from the trenches will be applicable to most agile transformations, whether you draw your inspiration from Spotify Model or not.
Session feedback average at Lean Agile Exchange 2022 was 4.73 (out of 5) for content and 4.67 for Speaker (median was 5.0 for both). Example feedback:
“Amazing talk!! Really clear and well rounded.”
“Amazing talk by Joakim Sunden. Grateful to hear this!”
“Loved the videos. Thanks for a brilliant and engaging talk :)”
Agile Transformations Using the “Spotify Model”: Lessons from the Trenches
(Agile Tour Vienna and Crisp Day)
For a long time Spotify people (including me!) have tried to convince the world that there is no “Spotify Model” and if there ever was one, Spotify isn’t using it anyway and you shouldn’t either. And yet, countless organizations are using the Spotify model to drive their agile transformations, some of them claiming huge successes. So, let’s stop kidding ourselves and instead look at how the Spotify model is actually being used and what we can learn from these organizations.
This talk will be structured around the change journey of one organization that I worked with for two years, where we used tribes, squads and other “Spotify concepts” as part of the transformation. I will share lessons from what I believe worked well and what I believe could have been done in a better way. I will also incorporate the experience from other client work as well as from having run the course “Agile at Scale, Inspired by Spotify” dozens of times all over the world.
The ”Spotify Model”: Agile at Scale through Aligned Autonomy
Spotify’s way of working with agile at scale, aka “the Spotify Model”, has spread like wildfire through the software industry and every other organisation now wants to leverage the power of “autonomous squads”. But autonomy, especially aligned and effective autonomy, is an outcome, not something you start with. So how can organisations and leaders help grow autonomous squads? In this talk Joakim Sunden will share his more than six years of experience from Spotify struggling with exactly this challenge.