Every few months, another company proudly announces they’ve adopted the "Spotify model." And every time, I want to ask: Do you even know that Spotify abandoned it?
It is rather funny, this obsession with new frameworks. New for you, obviously. I hear it in meetings; I see it in presentations - the push to adopt the famous “product trio” model from Spotify.
Guys, a small reality check. Spotify no longer uses it.
They tried it, it served a purpose, and then they moved on. They abandoned it because it did not work for them in a long run. I have read it, and people who work there confirm - not everyone even used it back then. So this model you are trying to copy from a giant, the giant itself has already thrown it away. The same story, from what I read, is at Google. Their famous models are not universally applied.
Your main argument for adopting a framework is often, “It worked for Airbnb, it worked for Google!”
Let’s be honest - your company is not Spotify. It’s not Google. It’s not Airbnb. And that’s okay. But pretending you are only sets you up for failure.
When you suggest applying the trio model, you are implying your company today has the same structure as Spotify did when they were a startup. When they were fighting for product-market fit, had no legacy code, no technical debt. They hired bright, hungry people, not employees waiting for their tenure so their mortgages can be paid. It is a completely different story.
You are ignoring the most important layer: your context. The organizational structure, the people you have, their skills, their understanding of the business - you are ignoring all of it for the sake of a fancy framework.
A framework is just a unification of practices that should already be on everyone’s mind. It groups things together. It creates a common language for skills and processes that are already there.
But more often than not, in a company that exists for some time, every team is different. The skills are different. The bigger the company, the more legacy you have. Legacy code, legacy processes, legacy thinking. You have skill gaps, technology gaps, and people who probably should not be there.
The product trio is a fancy name for unifying something that you simply do not have. You can’t duct-tape a Spotify process onto a legacy enterprise and expect Agile miracles. That’s not transformation - that’s corporate cosplay. You cannot just glue a sheepskin onto a wolf and hope it will start bleating. It will not work. It just will not.
So please, stop measuring your company against Spotify or Google. You are not Spotify. You are not Airbnb. And you are clear as hell not Google.
Stop trying to use something that might work for effective, outcome-based companies, because you are likely not one yet. As long as you do not fix the foundation, no framework in the world will help you.
A framework is like a language. If your team doesn’t speak it fluently, forcing it on them won’t make them communicate better - it’ll just make them resent you. It is not about the framework. It is about skills, clear goals, and the vision for the company and the product.
The framework can only help to unify this vision across teams. It can identify gaps, maybe find teams that do not want to adhere to the new line of the party, let’s put it this way. But framework itself will not fix your company.
People, goals, and target outcomes can work without any framework if you have those things right. But only a few of us do. Only a few companies truly know what they are after, have the required resources, and have the people with the skills they need at this particular moment of time.
So please, stop telling me about product trios and discovery sprints. It sounds great, it works on paper. It rarely works in the real world.
Before you copy another framework, ask yourself:
What problem are we actually trying to solve?
Do we have the right people to execute this?
What happens when (not if) this framework fails?
If you can’t answer these, you’re not ready for a framework - you’re ready for a reality check. Fix your foundation first.
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