Business and Technical Agility with Team Topologies - DevOps Manchester - 2021-09-15

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.

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From a talk at DevOps Manchester meetup group on 15 Sept 2021

Transcript

1. TeamTopologies.com @TeamTopologies Business and Technical Agility with Team Topologies Matthew Skelton co-author of Team Topologies @matthewpskelton DevOps Manchester meetup - 15 Sept 2021
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
3. Team Topologies 3 Organizing business and technology teams for fast flow Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais IT Revolution Press, 2019 teamtopologies.com/book
4. “innovative tools and concepts for structuring the next generation digital operating model” Charles T. Betz, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research 4
5. 5 What is business agility? Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’ Valuable: product mindset Team Topologies examples
6. How does Team Topologies help with business & technical agility? 6
7. Team Topologies encourages decoupling of business concepts to help make the organization more responsive
8. Team Topologies patterns help to turn blocking compliance checks into self-service, flow-aligned, API-driven checks
9. Team Topologies is partly a sense-making approach to help organizations gain situational awareness and therefore agility
10. Team Topologies helps the organization to focus tightly on its core mission via streams and limiting team cognitive load
11. 11 What is business agility? Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’ Valuable: product mindset Team Topologies examples
12. What is business agility? 12
13. Business Agility: the ability to respond rapidly* to changing internal and external conditions (* in hours)
14. 14 Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash Remote-first
15. 15 Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash Speed of change: technology, climate, geopolitical
16. 16 Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash Increased global and local competition
17. digital
18. “Digital”: 1 18 Rapidly-developed services accessed via personal compute devices
19. “Digital”: 2 19 Rich telemetry for existing processes provided via software and sensors
20. “Digital”: 3 20 Highly effective ways of working discovered & evolved through 1 and 2
21. Questions to answer How would we optimize for a fast flow of change?
22. Questions to answer How would we make sure we focus on user needs?
23. Questions to answer How would we produce the right thing in the right way at the right time?
24. Questions to answer How would we easily ‘course-correct’ when we need to adjust?
25. Questions to answer How would we maximize our chances of finding new opportunities for innovation?
26. 26 What is business agility? Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’ Valuable: product mindset Team Topologies examples
27. Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
28. 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
29. 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”
30. 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...”
31. 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.”
32. 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
33. 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
34. 34 4 key metrics: ‘Accelerate’ lead time deployment frequency Mean Time To Restore change fail percentage
35. 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/
36. 36 Fast feedback via deployment pipelines
37. 37 Good technical practices (TDD, …)
38. 38 Team ownership of software & services
39. 39 Configuration in version control (Git)
40. 40 Cloud-native: transparent in operation
41. 41 Cloud-native: designed for automation
42. 42 Continuous testing performance scanning deployment monitoring right-sizing integration
43. 43 Re-aligned architecture
44. 44 Domain-driven design (DDD)
45. 45 Domain-driven design (DDD) Untangle business concepts for faster flow
46. 46 Wardley Maps
47. 47 Wardley Maps Increase situational awareness and apply the right techniques - custom/product/utility
48. 48 Team Topologies
49. 49 Team Topologies Fast flow, rapid feedback, team interactions, org evolution, team cognitive load, ...
50. 50 Rapid flow of change
51. 51 Rapid feedback from running systems
52. 52 Handovers kill flow
56. 56 Flow of change
57. 🔍 Track dependencies and separate as “blocking” vs “non-blocking” 57
58. ⏳ ⏳ Blocking Non- Blocking
59. Remove barriers to flow: hand-offs, approval gates, manual inspections Replace with self-service APIs 59
60. ⚠ Compliance mindset shift: Permitting to Enabling 60
62. “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
63. Compliance as Code (API) 63 Flow of change Domain experts as Enabling team for compliance / governance
64. 64 What is business agility? Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’ Valuable: product mindset Team Topologies examples
65. The value of a product mindset
66. Product: Holistic User Experience Functionality + Design + Monetization + Content – Marty Cagan, 2010 66 Source: https://svpg.com/defining-product/
68. 68 A product is optional to use - no-one is forced to use the product
70. 70 A product is carefully designed and curated
72. 72 A product simplifies something for users
74. 74 A product evolves to take advantage of technology changes
75. A strong focus on user needs drives good software #UX
76. The software should ‘get out of the way’ - design for usability
77. ⚠ Product Management for internal platforms 77
79. 79 A platform is optional to use - no team is forced to use the platform
80. Platforms must advocate for their platform product and “market” it to internal teams (User Personas, UX, talking...) Internal Marketing 80
81. 81 A platform is a curated experience for engineers (the customers of the platform).
82. 82 What is business agility? Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’ Valuable: product mindset Team Topologies examples
83. Team Topologies examples
84. Case studies in the TT book 84
85. 85 ...
86. Sept 2021: 24 months since publication of TT Photo by noor Younis on Unsplash 86
87. Industry examples on the TT website 87
89. Organizations that Matthew and Manuel have worked with since 2019... 89
90. 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 90
91. Case Study 91
92. • Founded 2005 • 70 stores in the UK • £260m revenue • 2500 employees • 2019: changes to make IT more responsive 92
93. High fragmentation of work and focus 93 Jan 2019
94. Identify boundaries - business domain 94 m id-2019
95. Team Topologies at DOES London 2019 95 Jun 2019
96. Team Topologies for Product Managers 96 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
97. Align to Team Topologies concepts 97 Aug 2019
98. Combine with Wardley Mapping 98 Jan 2020
99. Focus on bounded contexts in Platform 99 Feb 2020
100. Adopt the Thinnest Viable Platform 100 Feb 2020 Static data fine to begin with: shops rarely move!
101. Clarity of purpose from team types 101 Feb 2020
102. Concepts • Stream-aligned (business domain) • Thinnest Viable Platform • Evolving teams and interactions • Combine with Wardley Mapping 102 teamtopologies.com/examples
103. • Product Mgt superpowers • Effective comms during COVID-19 • Responsive, autonomous teams Results 103 teamtopologies.com/examples
104. “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 104
105. Thanks to: Paul Martin IT Director, Footasylum Andy Norton Software Development Manager, Footasylum 105
106. Case Study 106
107. • UK's leading comparison and switching service • Founded in 2000 • ~250 staff, £140m+ revenue • > 2010: Autonomous teams • > 2017: Platformization 107
108. Autonomous stream-aligned teams 108 2015 ...
109. 109 Low-level AWS service calls before platform adoption 2015-2016: direct AWS API calls
110. 110 Low-level AWS service calls before platform adoption 2015-2016: direct AWS API calls 🤯
111. “people were spending more time having to interact with relatively low-level services thus spending their time on relatively low-value decisions” Paul Ingles, CTO at RVU / Uswitch 111
112. 112 2017 Infra platform started with few services First customer (centralized logging, metrics, auto scaling)
113. 113 2017 Early platform (first customer)
114. 114 2017 Infra platform started with few services First customer (centralized logging, metrics, auto scaling) 2018 Started using SLAs and SLOs, clarifying reliability/latency/etc Growing traffic in platform vs AWS
115. 115 Low-level AWS service calls since platform adoption 2015-2018: direct AWS API calls
116. 116 2019 Addressed critical cross-functional needs (GDPR, security, alerts + SLOs as a service) Adoption by HMRT (Highest Maturity & Revenue Team) 2017 Infra platform started with few services First customer (centralized logging, metrics, auto scaling) 2018 Started using SLAs and SLOs, clarifying reliability/latency/etc Growing traffic in platform vs AWS
117. 117 Measure and demonstrate 2019
118. 118 2019 Addressed critical cross-functional needs (GDPR, security, alerts + SLOs as a service) Adoption by HMRT (Highest Maturity & Revenue Team) 2017 Infra platform started with few services First customer (centralized logging, metrics, auto scaling) 2018 Started using SLAs and SLOs, clarifying reliability/latency/etc Growing traffic in platform vs AWS
119. 119 delivery metrics (Accelerate metrics for platform services) Platform Metrics
120. 120 delivery metrics (Accelerate metrics for platform services) user satisfaction metrics (Accelerate metrics for business services, NPS, etc) adoption & engagement metrics (% teams onboard, per platform and per service) reliability metrics (SLOs, latency, #Incidents, etc) Platform Metrics
121. 121 Deploys per person per week 2015-2017 - growth of ???
122. 122 • hard to understand • limited use case support • low level abstractions • insufficient reliability/stability • ... Platform Adoption Cost
123. 123 2020
124. infoq.com/articles/kubernetes-successful-adoption-foundation
125. 125 2020 Topologies & interaction modes
126. “we want platform teams to provide superlinear impact but with sublinear growth in their work” Paul Ingles, CTO at RVU / Uswitch 126
127. 127 2020 Context-specific platform
128. “Engineering principles guided the way we organise teams: loosely-coupled and highly cohesive. Team Topologies is great for tying a lot of those ideas together, and most importantly giving it some language.“ Paul Ingles, CTO at RVU / Uswitch 128
129. Concepts • Platforms to reduce cognitive load • Platform as a product / MVP • Discover good boundaries & APIs • Clear team interaction modes 129
130. Results • “Curated” platform experience • Reduced complexity for teams • Addressed cross-team needs 130
131. Results • From autonomy to self-sufficiency • Patterns applied beyond IT • Balancing fast flow with reliability 131 teamtopologies.com/examples
132. Thanks to: Paul Ingles Chief Technology Officer RVU / Uswitch Tom Booth Head of Infrastructure & Security RVU / Uswitch 132
134. 134 What is business agility? Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’ Valuable: product mindset Team Topologies examples
135. Respond rapidly to changing external and internal conditions
136. Situational awareness, clarity of business purpose, good technical practices, localised decisions
137. Strong focus on user needs and User Experience (UX), clear costs, viability, mission, ...
138. Real-world examples
139. How does Team Topologies help with business and technical agility? 139
140. Team Topologies encourages decoupling of business concepts to help make the organization more responsive
141. Team Topologies patterns help to turn blocking compliance checks into self-service, flow-aligned, API-driven checks
142. Team Topologies is partly a sense-making approach to help organizations gain situational awareness and therefore agility
143. Team Topologies helps the organization to focus tightly on its core mission via streams and limiting team cognitive load
144. What’s next? 144
145. Workbook coming soon... Team Topologies for Remote Teams 145 for Remote Teams Resources: teamtopologies.com/remote-first FREE
146. Free Resources 146 teamtopologies.com/resources (links, slides, video) teamtopologies.com/tools (templates, assessments, etc)
147. Infographics • Getting Started • In a Nutshell 147 teamtopologies.com/infographics
148. academy.teamtopologies.com
149. TeamTopologies.com @TeamTopologies Team Topologies Partner Program 🤝 partners@teamtopologies.com
150. 150 🠊 teamtopologies.com/shop
151. TeamTopologies.com @TeamTopologies Feedback: info@teamtopologies.com @TeamTopologies
152. Remote- Friendly Training teamtopologies.com/training 152
153. TeamTopologies.com @TeamTopologies Sign up for news and tips: TeamTopologies.com
154. 154 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