Zeenea Effective Data Governance Framework | S02-E02 – Organizing your Data Community

Spotify Feature Teams: a good practice, or a failure?

In the last episode, we explained how to build your Data Office with Personas and the Spotify Feature Teams paradigm.

The Spotify model has been criticized because there have been failures at companies that tried to implement it.

The three main reasons were:

• Autonomy is nice but it does not mean that teams can do what they want and there is a need to emphasize alignment

• Key results need to be defined at the leadership level and this is why building your OKRs are the right thing to do.

• Autonomy means accountability and the teams have to be measured and the fact that the increments they are working on need to be done and the definition of “Done” has to be specified.

We will focus in this episode on the Chapters and Guilds  and how to organize and better leverage your Data Community.

How to organize your Chapters and Guilds

Chapters

Collaboration in Chapters and Guilds needs specific knowledge and experience and it is wrong to assume that teams know Agile Practices.

When teams are growing, there is a need to have dedicated support and therefore, the Program Managers in charge of data related topics are accountable for the processes and organization of the Data Community.

At the highest level, organizing your data community means sharing knowledge at all levels: technological, functional, or even specific practices around data related topics.

The main drivers to focus on the Chapters organisation are:

• Teams miss information
• Teams miss knowledge
• Teams repeat mistakes
• Teams need ceremonies and agile common agreed practices.

Chapters meet regularly and often.

We advise to meet once a month. When too big, a Chapter can be split into smaller groups. Even if it is a position that can change overtime, a Chapter needs a leader, and not a manager.

They are in charge of animating and making it efficient by

• Getting the right people involved
• Sharing outcomes with upper level management
• Coordinating and moderating meetings
• Helping to establish transparency
• Finding a way of sharing and keeping available all the knowledge shared.
• Defining the Chapter: why, for whom and what it is meant for.

A tip is to define an elevator pitch for the Chapter.

The Chapter leader is also responsible for building a backlog to avoid endless discussions with no outcome.

Typically the backlog consists in the following topics:

Data topics

• Chapter Data People Culture
• Chapter data related topics in continuous improvement
• Chapter Data Practices
• Chapter Data Processes
• Chapter Data Tools

Generic topics

• Chapter continuous improvement
• Chapter feedback collection
• Chapter Agility Practices
• Chapter generic tools
• Chapter information sharing
• Chapter education program

The Chapter Lead is in charge of communicating outside of his Chapter with other Chapter leaders and has to get time allocation to animate.

How to start a Chapter

• Identify the community and all members
• Name the Chapter
• Organize the first chapter meeting
• Define elevator statement
• Initialize your the Chapter Web Page (and keep it updated for future new members onboarding)
• Negotiate and build the first Backlog
• Plan the meetings