How Spotify builds products

In strong teams, product, design, and engineering work side by side, in a give‐and‐take way, to come up with technology‐powered solutions that our customers love and that work for our business.

Products are defined and designed collaboratively, rather than sequentially. They have finally moved beyond the old model in which a product manager defines requirements, a designer designs a solution that delivers on those requirements, and then engineering implements those requirements, with each person living with the constraints and decisions o

A deadline with a flexible scope invites pushback, compromises, and tradeoffs—all ingredients in healthy, calm projects. It’s when you try to fix both scope and time that you have a recipe for dread, overwork, and exhaustion.

Instead, it is necessary to optimize for early and often learning in a real environment with real customers or consumers. This lowers the risk of delivery, generates value earlier, enables pivoting to maximize value, and locks in progress as you go. The best part is that, unlike pouring concrete, which sets, with knowledge-based products and servic