A Guild is an organizational model for Scrum. It was especially developed by Spotify. A Guild is a group of team members with the same expertise and/or interests. It is similar to the Chapter, but more flexible and open to interested (new) members. This means that a Guild looks more at the expertise, a Guild more at the expertise and interests. For example, a web developer in Guild Web Development may also be interested in the Guild User Experience.

Other organizational forms of the Spotify organizational model:

A chapter consists of members of a tribe who have the same expertise.

A tribe groups squads. This is intended to reflect the dynamics of a startup, especially if the squads of a tribe complement each other. This would be the case, for example, if the best software developers were to meet with the best system integrators.

Squads are the smallest granular elements of the Spotify model.

Why this is interesting for a Chief Digital Officer (CDO)?
Scrum is a form of agile business. Today, many agree that digitalization only works agilely in companies. Many New Work followers also see it this way. For this reason Scrum is important for Chief Digital Officer (CDO) to know. A wide variety of startups have also developed special adaptions (e.g. Spotify). For corporates there are also special adaptations of the Scrum Model (e.g. SAFe), so that you can work fast and structured agile. Because often there are large resistances in traditional structures. Perhaps these approaches can help to break up encrusted structures and transform the company into an agile startup. This can free up a lot of energy. However, this should go hand in hand with sensible change management. Otherwise there is a great danger that agile will become chaos.

See also (glossary Scrum):

Weblinks:

Jan

My name is Jan Puder (LinkedIn profile Jan Puder). I am the founder & CEO of the BusinessTech-Company. Me and the BusinessTech-Company want to push the digital frontier. This is the reason, why I started this website. I want to provide information about digital businesses, especially for Chief Digital Officers.

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