Adapt Together for AI success - enhancing value flow with curated context and knowledge diffusion - Flowtopia

The book Team Topologies Second Edition (2025) demonstrates convincingly that organizing business and technology for fast flow of value via empowered teams produces outsized results for enterprises worldwide. As evidence from AI adoption spreads, it’s clear that organizations that already organize for bounded agency in humans are well-suited to adopting AI effectively and humanely.

However, it’s not enough to organize for value flow. Taken too far, a singular focus on value flow can lead to duplication, fragmented value, loss of innovation, financial inefficiency, and people isolated from networks of learning. An effective AI-savvy operating model also needs regular, curated, intentional context from informed, empowered humans. What’s missing in most organizations - even those that organize for value flow - is active knowledge diffusion and cross-organizational alignment via deliberate, curated sharing and selection of metrics, practices, techniques, and mental models.  

In this talk, Matthew Skelton - co-author of the groundbreaking books Team Topologies and Adapt Together - shares deep insights about how organizations can find success with and without AI by enhancing the architecture for value flow provided by Team Topologies with deliberate alignment and innovation diffusion from Adapt Together, based on experience with hundreds of organizations worldwide.

Key takeaways:

- In an age of rapid change in technology, regulations, and markets, organizing for value flow is not enough: we need cross-organizational context, learning, innovation diffusion
- Team Topologies provides the architecture for  value flow
- AI is forcing every organization to become a learning organization
- Ways of Learning become as important as Ways of Working
- Team Topologies provides the architecture for value flow; Adapt Together provides the discipline for “continuous context” and alignment

Transcript

1. Adapt Together for AI success Enhancing value flow with curated context and knowledge diffusion Matthew Skelton Co-author: Team Topologies & Adapt Together matthewskelton.com K311 Flowtopia online | 2026-06-24
2. 2 Question: “With tech, markets, regulation changing so rapidly, how can we refresh context continuously to enable ongoing value flow?”
3. 3 Question: “How can I turn this organization into an AI-native learning organization?”
4. 4 Organizing for flow is not enough: we need “continuous context”, cross-group sharing, innovation diffusion, and active alignment
5. 5 “Where are the insights, innovations, practices, and approaches to spotlight to provide the alignment we need?”
6. Matthew Skelton levers and language for tech-savvy value delivery Co-author: Team Topologies & Adapt Together Founder and CEO at Conflux matthewskelton.com 6
7. 8 Helping leaders in: • Software delivery • Charity fundraising • Marketing • Accounting • Legal services 8
8. 9 Helping leaders in: • Software delivery • Charity fundraising • Marketing • Accounting • Legal services 9 Knowledge work
9. 10 Problem: Why do 80% of firms report no benefit from AI? https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/18/ai_productivity_survey/ and https://www.nber.org/papers/w34836
10. 11 Reframe: what key principles provide ROI from AI?
11. 1. avoid hand-offs 2. align incentives for ongoing value delivery 3. protect fidelity of concepts 4. cognitively-scoped stewardship 5. actively diffuse learning and innovation 13
12. 1. avoid hand-offs 2. align incentives for ongoing value delivery 3. fidelity of concepts 4. cognitively-scoped stewardship 5. actively diffuse learning and innovation 14
13. 1. avoid hand-offs 2. align incentives for ongoing value delivery 3. fidelity of concepts 4. cognitively-scoped stewardship 5. actively diffuse learning and innovation 15
14. 1. avoid hand-offs 2. align incentives for ongoing value delivery 3. protect fidelity of concepts 4. cognitively-scoped stewardship 5. actively diffuse learning and innovation 16
15. 1. avoid hand-offs 2. align incentives for ongoing value delivery 3. fidelity of concepts 4. cognitively-scoped stewardship 5. actively diffuse learning and innovation 17
16. 1. avoid hand-offs 2. align incentives for ongoing value delivery 3. fidelity of concepts 4. cognitively-scoped stewardship 5. actively diffuse learning and innovation 18
17. 1. avoid hand-offs 2. align incentives for ongoing value delivery 3. protect fidelity of concepts 4. cognitively-scoped stewardship 5. actively diffuse learning and innovation 19
18. 20 Problem: Why do 80% of firms report no benefit from AI? https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/18/ai_productivity_survey/ and https://www.nber.org/papers/w34836
19. 1. Hand-offs everywhere 2. Misaligned incentives for ongoing value delivery 3. Fidelity of concepts ignored 4. Cognitive load and stewardship not treated as design principles 5. Limited learning and innovation 21 🤒
20. ❏ Team Topologies provides the architecture for value flow ❏ AI is forcing every organization to become a learning organization ❏ Ways of Learning become as important as Ways of Working ❏ Adapt Together provides the discipline for “continuous context” and alignment 22
21. Team Topologies provides the architecture for value flow 23
22. 24 Team Topologies Second Edition https://teamtopologies.com/book Organizing Business and Technology for Fast Flow of Value By Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais Second Edition: September 2025 10 new case studies from around the world
23. 25 Team Topologies paraphrased (by me) “Given the need for ongoing stewardship of long-lived services, how can we realistically arrange the flow of value to be rapid, safe, and sustainable?”
24. 26 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Flow of value
25. 27 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Flow of value Boundary-spanning Enabling team
26. 28 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Flow of value X-as-a-Service Collaboration
27. 29 “What about AI?”
28. Stuart Winter-Tear 30 “... Team Topologies [...] offers something Agentic AI desperately needs - but cannot invent on its own: Clear boundaries, Stable interfaces, Aligned domains, A culture of collaborative ownership. [Team Topologies is] … the infrastructure for agency itself.” https://www.linkedin.com/posts/stuart-winter-tear_orgs-that-have-worked-out-ho w-to-empower-activity-7339513909151719425-teiT/ AI Product Advisor to PE | Author of UNHYPED
29. 31 infrastructure for agency: rules, principles, guardrails that empower groups of humans and AI Agents to be effective stewards of value flow
30. Veronica Stewart 32 “As AI accelerates development and analysis, companies will increasingly need visibility into things like: domain boundaries, ownership clarity, cross-team dependencies, platform bottlenecks, architectural coupling The clearer the system is for humans, the more effectively AI can operate within it.” https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7438180828662263808/ AI Enablement & Product Operations Leader
31. 33 Which organizations are having genuine success with organizing for value flow, and what are the common success factors?
32. EBSCO used patterns and techniques from Team Topologies patterns to optimize software delivery. 34 confluxhq.com/ebsco • $9.1M recurring annual cost reduction • 26% faster feature delivery • Dependency-related blockers decreased by 45% • Repeatable enterprise capability playbook • Significantly higher team satisfaction
33. J.P.Morgan used key Team Topologies techniques to reduce 60% of dependencies (c.2022-2023) 35 https://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=y3OL7dv2l48 Athena - largest platform @ JPM Corporate & Investment Bank
34. Derek Waldron, Chief Analytics Officer at JPMorgan Chase 36 https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial- services/our-insights/jpmorgan-chases-derek- waldron-on-building-an-ai-first-bank-culture “...while productivity gains create capacity, they don’t necessarily translate into cost takeout. … If cost takeout or end-to-end metrics … are the goals, you need to prioritize the journey and reimagine it end to end.”
35. 37 Success pattern: Architecture of teams and systems is designed for value flow - end-to-end
36. Scale out adoption and awareness of Team Topologies across the enterprise: Academy, enterprise content license, bulk book purchases, TT Success Toolkit™ 38 ➡ Get started: teamtopologies.com/scale
37. AI is forcing every organization to become a learning organization 39
38. AI is evolving so quickly that traditional training programs are not enough. 40
39. 41 Alan D. Thompson
40. 42 Alan D. Thompson 🤯
41. AI - especially LLMs / GPT-based AI - drives probabilistic services which need a more nimble org response 43
42. Make it safe & secure for non-coders to create production-grade software apps with embedded AI agents 44
43. Make it safe & secure for non-coders to create production-grade software apps with embedded AI agents 45 Not trivial!
45. Distribute the discovery across the organization and then harvest and curate the results 47
46. Ways of Learning become as important as Ways of Working 49
47. Learning so we can do work or Doing work so we can learn 50
48. Accepting that without continuous learning, our work is likely to be wrong 51
49. 52 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Flow of value Boundary-spanning Enabling team
51. Adapt Together provides the discipline for “continuous context” and alignment 54
52. 55 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Flow of value
53. 56 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Flow of value Pockets of good practices and approaches
54. 57 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Flow of value Active knowledge diffusion
55. 58 Active diffusion of knowledge across team boundaries
56. 59 internal conferences guilds Communities of Practice lunch & learn public blogs
57. 60 internaltechconf.com Internal Tech Conferences Victoria Morgan-Smith and Matthew Skelton https://www.infoq.com/articles/book-review-internal-tech-conferences/
58. 61 “This initiative around internal conferences has been the single most effective thing to align business and technology that I have seen in this organization” – Murray Hennessey, CEO, (UK retail co)
60. 63 North Star Metric (NSM) as a key diagnostic tool for alignment and value orientation
62. 65 Levers for safe driving of value delivery: • Activity Health Indicators (AHI) • Multi-Team Capability Assessment (MTCA) • TagMe (Targets, Guardrails, Metrics, Examples)
63. 66 adapttogether.info Create alignment, trust, engagement, and awareness across your organization whilst delivering at speed.
64. 67 Innovation & Practices Enabling team
66. 69 AI context
67. Derek Waldron, Chief Analytics Officer at JPMorgan Chase 70 https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial- services/our-insights/jpmorgan-chases-derek- waldron-on-building-an-ai-first-bank-culture “We didn’t mandate the use of LLM Suite by anybody. Instead, we used an opt-in approach … There was a little bit of a fear of missing out. That social dynamic helped create a culture of adoption.”
68. “friendly FOMO” 71
69. 72 “The way that the Conflux crew used their active knowledge diffusion approach to seek out and champion good practices was a real revelation to us at TELUS and helped to shift thinking around how we innovate and share successes.” – Steven Tannock, Director, Architecture (Platform Technology & Tools) at TELUS Digital
70. 73 Alignment and acceleration of digital engineering at GOV.UK Home Office via shared standards, cross-team assessments, and spotlighting effective practices adapttogether.info/all-case-studies/govuk-home-office • 30% Efficiency Savings • 400% Increase in software delivery capability
71. 76 adapttogether.info Create alignment, trust, engagement, and awareness across your organization whilst delivering at speed.
72. Summary 77
73. 78 Question: “With tech, markets, regulation changing so rapidly, how can we refresh context continuously to enable ongoing value flow?”
74. 79 Question: “How can I turn this organization into an AI-native learning organization?”
75. 80 Organizing for flow is not enough: we need “continuous context”, cross-group sharing, innovation diffusion, and active alignment
76. 81 “Where are the insights, innovations, practices, and approaches to spotlight to provide the alignment we need?”
77. ❏ Team Topologies provides the architecture for value flow ❏ AI is forcing every organization to become a learning organization ❏ Ways of Learning become as important as Ways of Working ❏ Adapt Together provides the discipline for “continuous context” and alignment 82
78. Team Topologies provides the architecture for value flow 83
79. AI is forcing every organization to become a learning organization 84
80. Ways of Learning become as important as Ways of Working 85
81. Adapt Together provides the discipline for “continuous context” and alignment 86
82. 87 adapttogether.info Create alignment, trust, engagement, and awareness across your organization whilst delivering at speed.
83. let’s work together 88 matthewskelton.com
84. Resources 89
85. 90 Resources Book: Adapt Together https://adapttogether.info/ By Matthew Skelton and Renee Hawkins To be published by IT Revolution, 2027 ❓
86. 91 Resources Book: Team Topologies 2nd Ed https://teamtopologies.com/book By Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais Organizing Business and Technology for Fast Flow of Value Second Edition: September 2025
87. 92 Resources Book: Internal Tech Conferences https://internaltechconf.com/ By Victoria Morgan-Smith and Matthew Skelton Accelerating Multi-team Learning
88. let’s work together 93 matthewskelton.com