Business and Technical Agility with Team Topologies - dealing with legacy systems - Reliance Jio - 2021-09-16

From a talk at Reliance Jio

---

Organizations that do not adapt rapidly to the modern, highly-changeable business environment are failing, and failing in large numbers. Increased regulation, pressures from climate change, shifting of energy sources, digitalization, and (recently) the COVID-19 pandemic are all driving a need for business agility in organizations of all sizes.

In this talk, we’ll explore how the patterns and principles from Team Topologies promote true business agility through a rapid flow of software change, fast feedback from running systems, a strong drive for loose coupling, and an awareness of sociotechnical mirroring. Combined with a product mindset and techniques from Domain-driven Design, the Team Topologies approach is helping organizations around the world to adapt to the “new normal” and achieve true business agility.

Matthew Skelton, co-author of Team Topologies, shares insights from organizations in several different industry sectors including banking, financial services, insurance, retail, and leisure.

Transcript

1. TeamTopologies.com
   @TeamTopologies
   Business and Technical Agility
   with Team Topologies
   (dealing with legacy systems)
   Matthew Skelton
   co-author of Team Topologies
   @matthewpskelton
   Reliance Jio - 16 September 2021
   

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2. 2
   Manuel Pais
   Independent IT organizational
   consultant and trainer
   Ex-dev, ex-build manager,
   ex-tester, ex-QA lead
   Twitter: @manupaisable
   LinkedIn: manuelpais
   Matthew Skelton
   Founder at Conflux
   Experience as: software developer,
   technical director, change enabler,
   conference organizer...
   Twitter: @matthewpskelton
   LinkedIn: matthewskelton
   

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3. Team Topologies
   3
   Organizing business and
   technology teams for fast flow
   Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais
   IT Revolution Press, 2019
   teamtopologies.com/book
   

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4. “innovative tools and concepts for
   structuring the next generation
   digital operating model”
   Charles T. Betz,
   Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
   4
   

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5. 5
   What is business agility?
   Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
   Valuable: product mindset
   Team Topologies examples
   

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6. How does Team Topologies
   help with business &
   technical agility?
   6
   

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7. Team Topologies
   encourages decoupling of
   business concepts to help
   make the organization
   more responsive
   

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8. Team Topologies patterns
   help to turn blocking
   compliance checks into
   self-service, flow-aligned,
   API-driven checks
   

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9. Team Topologies is partly a
   sense-making approach to
   help organizations gain
   situational awareness and
   therefore agility
   

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10. Team Topologies helps the
    organization to focus
    tightly on its core mission
    via streams and limiting
    team cognitive load
    

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11. 11
    What is business agility?
    Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
    Valuable: product mindset
    Team Topologies examples
    

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12. What is
    business agility?
    12
    

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13. Business Agility: the ability
    to respond rapidly* to
    changing internal and
    external conditions (* in hours)
    

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14. 14
    Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash
    Remote-first
    

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15. 15
    Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash
    Speed of change:
    technology, climate,
    geopolitical
    

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16. 16
    Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash
    Increased
    global and local
    competition
    

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17. Questions to answer
    How would we optimize for
    a fast flow of change?
    

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18. Questions to answer
    How would we make sure
    we focus on user needs?
    

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19. Questions to answer
    How would we easily
    ‘course-correct’ when we
    need to adjust?
    

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20. 26
    What is business agility?
    Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
    Valuable: product mindset
    Team Topologies examples
    

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21. Being agile,
    not doing ‘Agile’
    

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22. 28
    State of DevOps reports
    2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
    Annual survey of 1000-5000 IT
    professionals worldwide using
    rigorous statistical methods
    2020 2021
    

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23. 29
    State of DevOps 2019
    Analysis from responses of
    over 31,000 IT professionals
    worldwide over 6 years
    “an independent view into the
    practices and capabilities that
    drive high performance”
    + “Four Key Metrics”
    

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24. 30
    State of DevOps 2019
    “The use of cloud… is
    predictive of software delivery
    performance and availability.”
    “High performers favor
    strategies that create
    community structures at both
    low and high levels in the
    organization...”
    

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25. 31
    State of DevOps 2019
    “Heavyweight change approval
    processes, such as change
    approval boards, negatively
    impact speed and stability. In
    contrast, having a clearly
    understood process for
    changes drives speed and
    stability, as well as reductions
    in burnout.”
    

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26. 32
    State of DevOps 2019
    Key technical practices
    ● Lightweight change process
    ● Real DR testing
    ● Maintainable code
    ● Loosely-coupled systems
    ● Monitoring
    ● Trunk-based development
    ● Deployment automation
    

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27. Accelerate
    Building and Scaling High Performing
    Technology Organizations
    Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, Gene Kim
    IT Revolution Press, 2018
    Order via stores worldwide:
    https://itrevolution.com/book/accelerate/
    33
    

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28. 34
    4 key metrics: ‘Accelerate’
    lead time
    deployment frequency
    Mean Time To Restore
    change fail percentage
    

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29. 35
    State of DevOps 2021
    “...principles and
    patterns from Team
    Topologies are helping
    organisations in every
    sector and geography
    become more
    high-performing.”
    https://puppet.com/resources/report/2021-state-of-devops-report/
    

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30. 36
    Fast feedback via
    deployment pipelines
    

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31. 37
    Good technical
    practices (TDD, …)
    

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32. 38
    Team ownership of
    software & services
    

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33. 39
    Configuration in
    version control (Git)
    

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34. 40
    Cloud-native:
    transparent in
    operation
    

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35. 41
    Cloud-native:
    designed for
    automation
    

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36. 43
    Re-aligned
    architecture
    

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37. 45
    Domain-driven design
    (DDD)
    Untangle business concepts for
    faster flow
    

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38. 47
    Wardley Maps
    Increase situational awareness
    and apply the right techniques -
    custom/product/utility
    

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39. 49
    Team Topologies
    Fast flow, rapid feedback, team
    interactions, org evolution, team
    cognitive load, ...
    

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40. 50
    Rapid flow of change
    

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41. 51
    Rapid feedback from
    running systems
    

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42. 52
    Handovers kill flow
    

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43. View Slide

44. View Slide

45. View Slide

46. 56
    Flow of change
    

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47. 🔍
    Track dependencies and
    separate as “blocking” vs
    “non-blocking”
    57
    

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48. ⏳ ⏳
    Blocking
    Non-
    Blocking
    

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49. Remove barriers to flow:
    hand-offs, approval gates,
    manual inspections
    Replace with self-service APIs
    59
    

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50. ⚠
    Compliance mindset shift:
    Permitting to Enabling
    60
    

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51. View Slide

52. “What would be needed for us to be
    compliant with security/finance/PII
    rules with multiple, decoupled, rapid
    flows of change?”
    (Self-service APIs)
    Scaled Expertise
    62
    

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53. Compliance
    as Code
    (API)
    63
    Flow of change
    Domain
    experts as
    Enabling
    team for
    compliance /
    governance
    

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54. 64
    What is business agility?
    Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
    Valuable: product mindset
    Team Topologies examples
    

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55. The value of a
    product mindset
    

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56. Product:
    Holistic User Experience
    Functionality + Design + Monetization + Content
    – Marty Cagan, 2010
    66
    Source: https://svpg.com/defining-product/
    

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57. View Slide

58. 68
    A product is optional to
    use - no-one is forced to
    use the product
    

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59. View Slide

60. 70
    A product is carefully
    designed and curated
    

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61. View Slide

62. 72
    A product simplifies
    something for users
    

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63. View Slide

64. 74
    A product evolves to take
    advantage of technology
    changes
    

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65. A strong focus on
    user needs drives
    good software
    #UX
    

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66. The software should
    ‘get out of the way’ -
    design for usability
    

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67. ⚠
    Product Management
    for internal platforms
    77
    

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68. View Slide

69. 79
    A platform is optional to
    use - no team is forced to
    use the platform
    

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70. Platforms must advocate for their
    platform product and “market” it to
    internal teams
    (User Personas, UX, talking...)
    Internal Marketing
    80
    

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71. 81
    A platform is a curated
    experience for engineers
    (the customers of the
    platform).
    

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72. 82
    What is business agility?
    Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
    Valuable: product mindset
    Team Topologies examples
    

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73. Team Topologies
    examples
    

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74. [Before Team Topologies]
    

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75. View Slide

76. 86
    Challenge
    Hiscox needed to increase the pace of change to
    release new products quickly into a highly
    competitive and fast-moving market.
    Solution
    Introduced DevOps practices and infrastructure
    automation
    

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77. 87
    Results
    ● Reduced cost per release on a major app by 97%.
    ● Release cycle improved from 10 weeks per
    deployment to 50 deployments per week.
    ● Reduced time per release by 89%.
    ● Reduced staff required to release by 75%.
    https://www.uk.cdw.com/files/2515/3555/5104/Hiscox-Case-Study-20180411.pdf
    

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78. 88
    https://techbeacon.com/devops/5-lessons-how-devops-cloud-reinvented-it-ops-hiscox
    Jonathan Fletcher,
    CTO at Hiscox
    Insurance
    

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79. 89
    < 2015 2016 2017
    data center
    flooded
    data storage
    failures
    2015
    POCs for
    cloud
    Infrastructure as
    Code - config in
    version control
    New capabilities:
    upskilling and
    awareness
    Ops: learn to code
    Dev: learn infra
    Migrate core UK policy
    admin to cloud
    Rework apps to be
    more cloud-native
    https://blog.weareconvivio.com/how-hiscox-insurance-adopted-agile-working-in-a-0-5bn-bet-on-the-cloud-d613955d3ef9
    

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80. 90
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4FQjOyKwRo&feature=youtu.be&t=662
    

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81. 91
    “DevOps has meant big
    improvements in reliability and
    visibility, and those lead directly
    to improved productivity and
    speed of releases. With more
    reliability in your delivery
    process, you get a faster pace
    of change.”
    Jonathan Fletcher,
    CTO at Hiscox
    Insurance
    https://www.uk.cdw.com/files/2515/3555/5104/Hiscox-Case-Study-20180411.pdf
    

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82. 92
    “We decided to limit
    DevOpsifying to our
    crown jewels: the five
    applications we care
    about most.”
    Jonathan Fletcher,
    CTO at Hiscox
    Insurance
    https://www.uk.cdw.com/files/2515/3555/5104/Hiscox-Case-Study-20180411.pdf
    

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83. 93
    “We moved people into roles that were more
    aligned with the business unit — “product
    focused” is probably the right term, as I
    mentioned earlier. Each product team has its
    own business analysts, developers, testers and
    other functions as needed. These teams are the
    masters of their own destiny, rather than trying
    to beg and borrow capacity from a big group
    function.”
    Jonathan Fletcher,
    CTO at Hiscox
    Insurance
    https://www.uk.cdw.com/files/2515/3555/5104/Hiscox-Case-Study-20180411.pdf
    

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84. 94
    “We needed a team to evangelize and support
    the adoption of DevOps. … We created a
    platform services team (which I run). That team
    learned continuous delivery and other
    DevOps practices...”
    Jonathan Fletcher,
    CTO at Hiscox
    Insurance
    

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85. 95
    Results
    ● Reduced cost per release on a major app by 97%.
    ● Release cycle improved from 10 weeks per
    deployment to 50 deployments per week.
    ● Reduced time per release by 89%.
    ● Reduced staff required to release by 75%.
    https://www.uk.cdw.com/files/2515/3555/5104/Hiscox-Case-Study-20180411.pdf
    

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86. Case studies in the TT book
    96
    

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87. 97
    ...
    

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88. Sept 2021:
    24 months since
    publication of TT
    Photo by noor Younis on Unsplash 98
    

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89. Industry examples on the
    TT website
    99
    

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90. View Slide

91. Organizations that
    Matthew and Manuel have
    worked with since 2019...
    101
    

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92. A large European banking group
    A major cloud technology company
    GOV: Brazil, Canada, Norway, UK, US
    Several major telecoms companies
    A scale-up in Open Banking
    An aerospace laboratory
    Healthcare providers
    Several mortgage companies
    102
    

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93. Case Study
    103
    

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94. ● Founded 2005
    ● 70 stores in the UK
    ● £260m revenue
    ● 2500 employees
    ● 2019: changes to make IT
    more responsive
    104
    

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95. High fragmentation of work and focus
    105
    Jan
    2019
    

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96. Identify boundaries - business domain
    106
    m
    id-2019
    

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97. Team Topologies at DOES London 2019
    107
    Jun
    2019
    

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98. Team Topologies for Product Managers
    108
    Jun
    2019
    “The Product Managers from each team took
    special interest in the team interaction types as
    it helped them to have useful, directed
    conversations about upcoming work, they could
    essentially fact-check their different roadmaps
    and make sure that the interactions required
    were lined up in advance. “
    -- Andy Norton,
    Software Development Manager, Footasylum
    

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99. Align to Team Topologies concepts
    109
    Aug
    2019
    

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100. Combine with Wardley Mapping
     110
     Jan
     2020
     

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101. Adopt the Thinnest Viable Platform
     112
     Feb
     2020
     Static data fine
     to begin with:
     shops rarely
     move!
     

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102. Clarity of purpose from team types
     113
     Feb
     2020
     

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103. Concepts
     ● Stream-aligned (business domain)
     ● Thinnest Viable Platform
     ● Evolving teams and interactions
     ● Combine with Wardley Mapping
     114
     teamtopologies.com/examples
     

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104. ● Product Mgt superpowers
     ● Effective comms during COVID-19
     ● Responsive, autonomous teams
     Results
     115
     teamtopologies.com/examples
     

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105. “the interaction modes defined
     by Team Topologies gave us real
     insight into how we could
     maintain effective practices,
     and also cross-team
     collaboration.“
     -- Andy Norton,
     Software Development Manager,
     Footasylum
     116
     

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106. Thanks to:
     Paul Martin
     IT Director, Footasylum
     Andy Norton
     Software Development
     Manager, Footasylum
     117
     

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107. Dealing with legacy
     architectures
     

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108. Use loosely-coupled, logically
     independent, asynchronous,
     message-driven services.
     147
     

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109. Use loosely-coupled, logically
     independent, asynchronous,
     message-driven services.
     148
     Smalltalk (1960s)
     Erlang (1980s)
     

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110. “...start adopting product architectures
     that permit work to flow in small,
     decoupled batches. These loosely coupled
     architectures, with stable interfaces,
     enable us to work in parallel on many
     subsystems.”
     - Don Reinertsen
     149
     The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development (p. 127 - Principle B15)
     

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111. 150
     Standard, modern
     version control
     Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash
     

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112. 151
     All changes via a
     deployment pipeline
     Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash
     

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113. 152
     4 Team Types:
     clarity of purpose and
     behavior
     Photo by Dev Benjamin on Unsplash
     

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114. 153
     Team Interaction
     Modes
     Photo by Van Tay Media on Unsplash
     

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115. Legacy Adaptation Patterns
     

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116. 155
     Split off services by
     domain (DDD)
     Photo by Jeremy Bezanger on Unsplash
     

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117. 156
     API wrapper +
     outer services
     Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
     

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118. 157
     Eventual
     consistency
     Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash
     

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119. 158
     Branch By
     Abstraction
     Photo by sainan wang on Unsplash
     

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120. https://martinfowler.com/articles/patterns-legacy-displacement/
     Patterns of Legacy Displacement
     

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121. Case Study
     160
     

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122. ● Founded in 1847
     ● Insurance sector
     ● Norway and Baltics
     ● 4000 employees
     ● Cloud/DevOps
     transformation 2015-now
     161
     

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123. 2015
     162
     Project-based
     Waterfall
     

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124. Now: Stream-aligned
     163
     

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125. Supporting topologies
     164
     Design Platform, Analytics Platform, Web
     Application Platform, CRM platform,
     Infrastructure platform
     Mainframe core system
     Architecture, Information Security
     

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126. Concepts
     ● Stream-aligned: build & run
     ● Supporting team types: clarity
     ● Platform teams have customers:
     Stream-aligned teams
     165
     

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127. Results
     ● Digital sales: 40% growth (5 yrs)
     ● Customer service: 2x digital
     ● Claims handling: 80%+ online
     166
     teamtopologies.com/examples
     

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128. Thanks to:
     Christian Moe
     Chief Digital Officer
     Gjensidige Insurance
     167
     

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129. 168
     What is business agility?
     Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
     Valuable: product mindset
     Team Topologies examples
     

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130. Respond rapidly to
     changing external and
     internal conditions
     

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131. Situational awareness,
     clarity of business purpose,
     good technical practices,
     localised decisions
     

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132. Strong focus on user needs
     and User Experience (UX),
     clear costs, viability,
     mission, ...
     

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133. Real-world examples
     &
     Dealing with legacy
     

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134. How does Team Topologies
     help with business and
     technical agility?
     173
     

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135. Team Topologies
     encourages decoupling of
     business concepts to help
     make the organization
     more responsive
     

     View Slide

136. Team Topologies patterns
     help to turn blocking
     compliance checks into
     self-service, flow-aligned,
     API-driven checks
     

     View Slide

137. Team Topologies is partly a
     sense-making approach to
     help organizations gain
     situational awareness and
     therefore agility
     

     View Slide

138. Team Topologies helps the
     organization to focus
     tightly on its core mission
     via streams and limiting
     team cognitive load
     

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139. What’s next?
     178
     

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140. Free Resources
     180
     teamtopologies.com/resources
     (links, slides, video)
     teamtopologies.com/tools
     (templates, assessments, etc)
     

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141. Infographics
     ● Getting Started
     ● In a Nutshell
     181
     teamtopologies.com/infographics
     

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142. academy.teamtopologies.com
     

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143. TeamTopologies.com
     @TeamTopologies
     Team Topologies
     Partner Program
     🤝
     partners@teamtopologies.com
     

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144. TeamTopologies.com
     @TeamTopologies
     Sign up for news and tips:
     TeamTopologies.com
     

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145. 188
     Manuel Pais
     FlowOnRails
     Twitter: @manupaisable
     LinkedIn: manuelpais
     Matthew Skelton
     Conflux
     Twitter: @matthewpskelton
     LinkedIn: matthewskelton
     Copyright © Conflux Digital Ltd and FlowOnRails 2018-2021. All rights reserved.
     teamtopologies.com
     

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