What every Agile team can learn from Europe’s fastest learners
Most agile teams measure everything and learn nothing. They track velocity. They count story points. They celebrate shipped features. But ask them what they learned last sprint? Silence!
I wanted to know why some companies keep learning while others just keep moving. So I went looking. Not in theory. In practice.
Engineering blogs. Case studies. Annual reports. Talks.
Five names kept showing up: ING, Spotify, Booking.com, bol.com and About You.
Different industries. Same pattern.
They didn't start with dashboards. They started with doubt. They built habits around experiments. They used data as conversation, not command.
Here's what they did. And what you can copy.
ING: From control to learning
Why they changed
Mobile banking changed the game. Bunq, N26, Revolut moved faster than traditional banks could handle.
ING had trust and reach. But not rhythm. Projects crawled through approvals while customers sprinted ahead.
What they changed
Full reorganization around product outcomes. Squads, tribes, chapters.
Smaller releases. Feature flags. Real users in the loop before big rollouts.
What got in the way
Old habits don't die quietly.
Stand-ups turned into status updates. Retros happened without reflection. Autonomy arrived before clarity. Leaders asked for reports instead of lessons.
What it delivered
Shorter time-to-market. Higher engagement. Tighter feedback loops across countries.
Speed with consistency. Inside regulation.
What you can copy
Tie every release to a one-line hypothesis. Put leaders in retros and ask "What did we learn?" Make experiments small and safe so they happen often. Reward honesty over certainty.
Spotify: Learning as the product
Why they changed
Hypergrowth created chaos. Hundreds of squads shipped fast. Alignment fell apart.
Speed without shared insight is just motion.
What they changed
They pushed hypothesis-driven work into the inner loop. Experiments became part of rollouts, not an optional extra.
They tracked learning velocity. How quickly a squad forms a belief, tests it, adjusts.
What got in the way
Overlapping tests. Teams peeking at results too early. Experiments treated as optional side projects.
They tightened design. Added guardrails. Made learning stories visible, not just wins.
What it delivered
Failure became normal and useful.
Hundreds of experiments monthly. Most fail quietly. Some shape the product for millions.
The real win? A product rhythm that adapts faster than competitors can copy.
What you can copy
Measure the rhythm of learning, not just rate of delivery. Treat rollouts as experiments with guardrails. Share learning stories in demos, not just release notes. Build safety before autonomy.
Booking.com: Making it cheap to be wrong
Why they changed
At their scale, guesses are expensive. A tiny conversion shift moves millions.
They needed confidence they could explain, not charisma they could sell.
What they changed
Company-wide experimentation platform. Every change is testable. Hypothesis first. Stop rule defined upfront.
Success is reusable learning, not a single green arrow.
What got in the way
When tests become easy, they multiply. Noise. Overlap. Wins without stories.
They added learning metrics. Each test must state the knowledge it will create.
What it delivered
Tens of thousands of controlled experiments yearly. Faster decisions. Fewer taste debates. Higher reliability.
A shared language across design, engineering, data science.
What you can copy
Write the decision rule and stop rule before you start. Track learning you can reuse, not just lifts. Publish failed tests so others don't repeat them. Treat "less wrong" as real progress.
bol.com: Doubt as a system
Why they changed
Growth brought noise. Projects multiplied. Opinions too.
The loudest voice often won. Teams shipped a lot, learned little.
What they changed
They made doubt a ritual. Before decisions: How do we know this is true?
PowerPoint gave way to prototypes. Live experiments got clear kill conditions.
What got in the way
Experiments lingered without stop rules. Energy scattered.
They capped work in progress. Closed tests that didn't teach. Shared the lesson anyway.
What it delivered
Evidence-based decisions rose. Lead times dropped. Fewer failed launches.
The bigger win? Curiosity felt safe again.
What you can copy
Ask the doubt question in every refinement. Cap active experiments to restore focus. Celebrate a clean kill like a clean launch. Turn knowledge into a shared asset.
About You: Scaling a mindset, then selling it
Why they changed
The product grew fast. The engine started groaning.
Too much custom work. Too little repeatable speed.
What they changed
They productized their internal stack. That became SCAYLE. A platform other brands could use to move at About You's pace.
Experimentation and data discipline turned from internal habit to external product.
What got in the way
Turning creative process into reliable product is hard. Documentation. Shared data models. Quality at scale.
Teaching brands exposed their own blind spots. Which they fixed.
What it delivered
SCAYLE powers dozens of brands. Became a second growth engine.
About You sharpened its practice by exporting it.
What you can copy
If your way of working creates value, package it. Teaching forces maturity. Feedback from platform customers improves your own teams. Share your system to sharpen your system.
Patterns I kept seeing
Purpose before process.
Experiments before dashboards.
Safety before speed.
Dialogue before decisions.
None of these companies are perfect. They simply learn in public. And they keep going when it gets awkward. That's the part worth copying.
A simple frame to start today
I use The Experiment Triangle when teams want to move from measuring to learning.
Why
What do we want to learn? What will we change if the answer hurts?
When
Are we calm and honest enough to look at this together?
What
What is the smallest test that teaches us the most?
If one side is missing, start there. Small tests. Short loops. Real conversations.
Try this with your team
Pick one metric that feels safe but says little.
Bring it to your next retro and ask:
What should this number actually tell us?
What would need to change for it to have meaning?
That's enough for the first week.
One conversation. One habit of honesty.
Closing
Data doesn't make teams better. People do. Choose one honest question. Run one small test. Have one good conversation.
That's how learning starts. That's how teams grow.