Spotify model
The Spotify model (Kniberg & Ivarsson, 2012) organises engineering teams into Squads (cross-functional 6-12 person teams each owning a product slice), Tribes (collections of related squads), Chapters (cross-squad communities of practice, e.g., all backend engineers), and Guilds (broader interest-based communities).
The model spread widely because it offered a vocabulary for the structural decisions every scaling engineering org makes. Worth noting: Spotify itself has explicitly stated the model was a snapshot of a moment in 2012, not a steady-state blueprint, and the company evolved past it. The pattern of squad autonomy + chapter expertise + cross-cutting guilds remains influential even where the specific labels aren't used. Modern formulations (Team Topologies' stream-aligned + enabling teams; the Inverse Conway Maneuver) generalise the underlying insight: large engineering orgs need explicit decisions about which axis (product, technology, customer segment) drives the team boundaries.