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How Autonomy Saved One of Spotify’s Most Loved Features From Being Killed

May 14, 2025 8:00 am (UTC)

"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 organisational culture of Agile management and autonomous teams enables innovation, using the Discover Weekly feature as an example.

The speaker

Joakim Sundén is a founding partner of Better Product Work, where he helps visionary leaders challenge the conventional way of building products. From 2011 to 2017, he worked as a Senior Agile Coach at Spotify, where he was part of a team collaborating with the CTO to develop the company’s approach to customer-focused product development at scale. This model would later become world-famous as ‘the Spotify Model’ of Tribes, Squads, Chapters, and Guilds. He now assists leaders in transforming and improving their organizations into models where employees are empowered to create innovative solutions that not only customers love but also drive business success.

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