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Supporting a Sustainable Fast Flow of Change with Effective Enabling Teams

Supporting a Sustainable Fast Flow of Change with Effective Enabling Teams

Enabling Teams is one of the fundamental Team Topologies types. They exist to help identify and address missing capabilities in Stream-aligned teams and to accelerate upskilling within those teams. When used effectively, they become a significant enabler for the organization to achieve a more sustainable fast flow of change.

However, most organizations are not yet leveraging them to their full extent. They are often seen as a "side project" that some experts do when they can spare time from their main activities. However, Enabling Teams are much more than that and can be a significant differentiator and multiplying factor that enables the organization to accelerate its learning and shaping of new capabilities.

As someone who has worked with Enabling Teams for several years, I have seen firsthand the impact they can have on organizational effectiveness. In this talk, I will share a range of considerations, patterns, anti-patterns, and real-world experiences to help develop effective Enabling Teams.

My aim is to improve the understanding of Enabling Teams, inspire people to leverage them further and move forward in the journey towards Effective Enabling Teams.

🎥 Video from talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6gLh_X0A0c
ℹ️ For more info, check: https://esilva.net/enabling-teams

Eduardo da Silva

May 25, 2023
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  1. Supporting a Sustainable Fast
    Flow of Change with Effective
    Enabling Teams
    Eduardo da Silva, PhD
    (esilva.net | @emgsilva | [email protected])
    FastFlowConf 2023, 2023-05-24

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  2. 2
    Enabling Teams help
    Stream-aligned Teams
    upskill and address
    capability gaps

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  3. Leveraging Enabling Teams is
    strategic for modern orgs to
    achieve a more “sustainable Fast
    Flow of Change”
    3

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  4. Sustainable Fast Flow of Change
    ↳quickly & sustainably respond to needs from our environment
    4
    Photo by Simon Berger on Unsplash
    4

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  5. 5
    Kickstarting
    Measuring Impact
    Scaling
    Journey Towards Effective Enabling Teams

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  6. 6
    Kickstarting
    Measuring Impact
    Scaling
    Journey Towards Effective Enabling Teams
    Starting to practice
    Enabling Teams
    behaviors and
    having first Enabling
    Teams

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  7. 7
    Kickstarting
    Measuring Impact
    Scaling
    Journey Towards Effective Enabling Teams
    Starting to practice
    Enabling Teams
    behaviors and
    having first Enabling
    Teams
    Have several teams,
    with clear mission
    and continuously
    measuring their
    impact

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  8. 8
    Kickstarting
    Measuring Impact
    Scaling
    Journey Towards Effective Enabling Teams
    Starting to practice
    Enabling Teams
    behaviors and
    having first Enabling
    Teams
    Have several teams,
    with clear mission
    and continuously
    measuring their
    impact
    Enabling teams are
    first class-citizen
    used to scale
    strategic capabilities
    and platforms

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  9. 9
    Source: https://pers.bol.com/en/facts-figures | Figures are from March 2023
    ℹ 150+
    Teams
    ℹ Teams
    organized
    around
    “Products”
    (multi-team
    scopes)
    ℹ Several
    Platform
    Groups

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  10. 10
    Kickstarting
    Measuring Impact
    Scaling
    Upscaling Data
    Science capability in the
    organization to cope with its
    many scaling challenges.
    Group of Data Leads and
    Data Scientists applying
    Enabling Teams behaviors,
    as they help scale Data
    Science in teams and org.

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  11. 11
    Kickstarting
    Measuring Impact
    Scaling
    Start small and
    show value

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  12. 12
    🧭 Start small & Show Value
    ● Focus on practicing
    “Enabling Behaviors”

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  13. 13
    🧭 Start small & Show Value
    ● Focus on practicing
    “Enabling Behaviors”
    ● Avoid “analysis paralysis”,
    focus on showing value

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  14. 14
    🧭 Start small & Show Value
    ● Focus on practicing
    “Enabling Behaviors”
    ● Avoid “analysis paralysis”,
    focus on showing value
    ● Learn & understand what you
    org needs

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  15. 15
    Kickstarting
    Measuring Impact
    Scaling
    Start small and
    show value
    Create conditions to involve
    the right people

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  16. 16
    🧭 Create conditions to involve the right people
    ● Pioneers and experts should
    feel safe to do Enabling
    work

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  17. 17
    🧭 Create conditions to involve the right people
    ● Pioneers and experts should
    feel safe to do Enabling
    work
    ● Value Enabling Work - do
    not penalize experts from
    doing that

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  18. 18
    🧭 Create conditions to involve the right people
    ● Pioneers and experts should
    feel safe to do Enabling
    work
    ● Value Enabling Work - do
    not penalize experts from
    doing that
    ● Coach & incentivize
    managers and leaders to
    embrace Enabling work

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  19. 19
    Kickstarting
    Measuring Impact
    Scaling
    Start small and
    show value
    Create conditions to involve
    the right people
    Obstacles to kickstart
    Enabling Teams

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  20. 20
    🧭 Other obstacles to kickstart Enabling Teams
    ● No support from leaders and
    managers
    ● Cut funding of Enabling
    Teams because they are not
    creating product features
    ● Too much Enabling work in
    progress

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  21. 21
    Kickstarting
    Measuring Impact
    Scaling
    Cloud adoption
    (& migration from own
    datacenter) to improve
    overall scalability and
    velocity (of teams and
    systems). Several Enabling
    Teams facilitating 150+
    teams upskilling and
    understanding their needs.

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  22. 22
    Kickstarting
    Measuring Impact
    Scaling
    High impact,
    hard to measure

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  23. 23
    🧭 High impact, hard to measure
    ● Multiplying & propagating
    effect
    ● Impact cannot be fully
    measured
    ● Focus on measuring the
    direct impact and
    acknowledge high ROI

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  24. 24
    Kickstarting
    Measuring Impact
    Scaling
    High impact, hard
    to measure
    Refine and pivot Enabling
    Teams mission

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  25. 25
    🧭 Refine and pivot Enabling Teams mission
    ● Must have a specific and
    purposeful mission
    ● Set specific targets and
    facilitating approach
    ● Continuously measure and
    learn - pivot if needed

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  26. 26
    Kickstarting
    Measuring Impact
    Scaling
    High impact, hard
    to measure
    Refine and pivot Enabling
    Teams mission
    Relevant metrics for
    Enabling Teams

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  27. 27
    🧭 Relevant metrics for Enabling Teams
    ● When starting define
    metrics around the mission
    ● Use Organization
    Performance metrics to
    identify priority for
    Enabling Teams and Work

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  28. 28
    Kickstarting Scaling
    Measuring Impact
    Adopting Enabling Teams
    at scale, in particular to
    scaling Data Science and
    other key disciplines and
    capabilities (such as
    Architecture).

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  29. 29
    Kickstarting Scaling
    Measuring Impact
    Leveraging short &
    long-lived Enabling Teams

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  30. 30
    🧭 Leveraging short & long-lived Enabling Teams
    ● Short-lived: most common;
    exist with very specific
    mission and focus; from few
    weeks to months
    ● Long-lived structural:
    longer-term sensing and
    evolving skills and
    capabilities for the org
    ● Most orgs needs both!

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  31. 31
    Kickstarting Scaling
    Leveraging short & long-lived
    Enabling Teams
    Enabling Teams co-evolving
    internal platforms
    Measuring Impact

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  32. 32
    🧭 Enabling Teams co-evolving internal platforms
    ● Sense and validating needs
    & capabilities for internal
    platforms
    ● Reduce required cognitive
    load of Platform Teams to
    understand and prioritize
    platform developments

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  33. 33
    Kickstarting
    Leveraging short & long-lived
    Enabling Teams
    Enabling Teams co-evolving
    internal platforms
    Measuring Impact
    Scaling
    High impact, hard
    to measure
    Refine and pivot Enabling
    Teams mission
    Relevant metrics for
    Enabling Teams
    Start small and
    show value
    Create conditions to involve
    the right people
    Obstacles to kickstart
    Enabling Teams
    Journey Towards
    Effective
    Enabling Teams

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  34. 34
    Photo by Simon Berger on Unsplash
    34
    🧭Effective Enabling Teams are essential for orgs to
    continuously learn & improve and to achieve a sustainable fast
    flow of change

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  35. 35

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  36. Thank you!
    Eduardo da Silva, PhD
    Independent consultant & Team Topologies Valued Practitioner (TTVP)
    # @emgsilva | esilva.net | [email protected]
    36

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