Business and Technical Agility with Team Topologies (Retail, Manufacturing, Distribution) - Valtech and Commercetools - 2021-07-21

(From a talk given at a Valtech/Commercetools session on 2021-07-21 - retail, manufacturing, distribution focus)

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 (Retail, Manufacturing, Distribution) Matthew Skelton co-author of Team Topologies @matthewpskelton Valtech/Commercetools - 21 July 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. Questions to answer How would we optimize for a fast flow of change?
18. Questions to answer How would we make sure we focus on user needs?
19. Questions to answer How would we easily ‘course-correct’ when we need to adjust?
20. 26 What is business agility? Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’ Valuable: product mindset Team Topologies examples
21. Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
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
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”
24. 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
25. 34 4 key metrics: ‘Accelerate’ lead time deployment frequency Mean Time To Restore change fail percentage
26. 35 Fast feedback via deployment pipelines
27. 36 Good technical practices (TDD, …)
28. 37 Team ownership of software & services
29. 38 Configuration in version control (Git)
30. 39 Cloud-native: transparent in operation
31. 40 Cloud-native: designed for automation
32. 42 Re-aligned architecture
33. 44 Domain-driven design (DDD) Untangle business concepts for faster flow
34. 46 Wardley Maps Increase situational awareness and apply the right techniques - custom/product/utility
35. 48 Team Topologies Fast flow, rapid feedback, team interactions, org evolution, team cognitive load, ...
36. 49 Rapid flow of change
37. 50 Rapid feedback from running systems
38. 51 Handovers kill flow
42. 55 Flow of change
43. 🔍 Track dependencies and separate as “blocking” vs “non-blocking” 56
44. ⏳ ⏳ Blocking Non- Blocking
45. Remove barriers to flow: hand-offs, approval gates, manual inspections Replace with self-service APIs 58
46. ⚠ Compliance mindset shift: Permitting to Enabling 59
48. “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 61
49. Compliance as Code (API) 62 Flow of change Domain experts as Enabling team for compliance / governance
50. 63 What is business agility? Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’ Valuable: product mindset Team Topologies examples
51. The value of a product mindset
52. Product: Holistic User Experience Functionality + Design + Monetization + Content – Marty Cagan, 2010 65 Source: https://svpg.com/defining-product/
53. ⚠ Product Management for internal platforms 76
55. 78 A platform is optional to use - no team is forced to use the platform
56. Platforms must advocate for their platform product and “market” it to internal teams (User Personas, UX, talking...) Internal Marketing 79
57. 80 A platform is a curated experience for engineers (the customers of the platform).
58. 81 What is business agility? Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’ Valuable: product mindset Team Topologies examples
59. Team Topologies examples
60. Case studies in the TT book 83
61. 84 ...
62. July 2021: 22 months since publication of TT Photo by noor Younis on Unsplash 85
63. Industry examples on the TT website 86
65. Organizations that Matthew and Manuel have worked with since 2019... 88
66. 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 89
67. Case Study 90
68. • Founded 2005 • 70 stores in the UK • £260m revenue • 2500 employees • 2019: changes to make IT more responsive 91
69. High fragmentation of work and focus 92 Jan 2019
70. Identify boundaries - business domain 93 m id-2019
71. Team Topologies at DOES London 2019 94 Jun 2019
72. Team Topologies for Product Managers 95 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
73. Align to Team Topologies concepts 96 Aug 2019
74. Combine with Wardley Mapping 97 Jan 2020
75. Adopt the Thinnest Viable Platform 99 Feb 2020 Static data fine to begin with: shops rarely move!
76. Clarity of purpose from team types 100 Feb 2020
77. Concepts • Stream-aligned (business domain) • Thinnest Viable Platform • Evolving teams and interactions • Combine with Wardley Mapping 101 teamtopologies.com/examples
78. • Product Mgt superpowers • Effective comms during COVID-19 • Responsive, autonomous teams Results 102 teamtopologies.com/examples
79. “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 103
80. Thanks to: Paul Martin IT Director, Footasylum Andy Norton Software Development Manager, Footasylum 104
81. 133 What is business agility? Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’ Valuable: product mindset Team Topologies examples
82. Respond rapidly to changing external and internal conditions
83. Situational awareness, clarity of business purpose, good technical practices, localised decisions
84. Strong focus on user needs and User Experience (UX), clear costs, viability, mission, ...
85. Real-world examples
86. How does Team Topologies help with business and technical agility? 138
87. Team Topologies encourages decoupling of business concepts to help make the organization more responsive
88. Team Topologies patterns help to turn blocking compliance checks into self-service, flow-aligned, API-driven checks
89. Team Topologies is partly a sense-making approach to help organizations gain situational awareness and therefore agility
90. Team Topologies helps the organization to focus tightly on its core mission via streams and limiting team cognitive load
91. What’s next? 143
92. Free Resources 145 teamtopologies.com/resources (links, slides, video) teamtopologies.com/tools (templates, assessments, etc)
93. Infographics • Getting Started • In a Nutshell 146 teamtopologies.com/infographics
94. academy.teamtopologies.com
95. TeamTopologies.com @TeamTopologies Team Topologies Partner Program 🤝 partners@teamtopologies.com
96. TeamTopologies.com @TeamTopologies Sign up for news and tips: TeamTopologies.com
97. 153 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