DevOps Topologies 10 years on: what have we learned about silos, collaboration, and flow? - DevOpsDays London 2024

More than 10 years ago - in October 2013 - the influential DevOps Topologies patterns were published by Matthew Skelton. Since then, the DevOps Topologies patterns have been used by thousands of organizations including Netflix, Condé Nast International, adidas, and Accenture to improve their approaches to building and running software services at scale. These patterns were the early inspiration for the groundbreaking and award-winning book Team Topologies - authored in 2019 by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais - which has sold over 150,000 copies worldwide.

Another vital industry resource that began life in 2013 is the State of DevOps Report assessments. These reports are based on insights from thousands of IT professionals around the world and use rigorous statistical approaches to create predictive relationships between practices and outcomes. Out of the State of DevOps Reports came the Accelerate metrics (aka DORA metrics) which have helped many thousands of organizations to focus on key foundational practices for high performance in IT.

However, even after more than 10 years of consistent, clear, actionable advice and recommendations, many organizations are still stuck in a low-performing state. Why is this? What is holding back these organizations from improving their IT delivery performance?

In this talk, Matthew Skelton - founder at Conflux and co-author of the book Team Topologies - explores the key learnings from 10 years of Team Topologies and State of DevOps Reports and outlines key steps that organizations can take to improve IT delivery performance:

- Organize for flow
- Address team cognitive load
- Estimate the cost of “tangled software”
- Use the Accelerate metrics and community techniques to find good boundaries for flow
- Promote ‘active knowledge diffusion’ across organizational boundaries for alignment and staff engagement

By combining learnings from State of DevOps Reports and Team Topologies together with principles championed by the DevOps community and knowledge diffusion approaches like Adapt Together™️, organizations can navigate a route to business agility via a fast flow operating model.

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From a talk at DevOpsDays London 2024: https://devopsdays.org/events/2024-london/speakers/matthew-skelton/

Transcript

1. DevOps Topologies 10 years on: what have we learned about silos, collaboration, and flow? Matthew Skelton, Conflux - co-author of Team Topologies DevOpsDays London | 2024-09-27 K26 Image CC BYNC Duncan Rawlinson https://duncan.co/land-of-plenty/
2. 2 Matthew Skelton holistic innovation Originator of Adapt Together™ by Conflux Co-author of Team Topologies matthewskelton.com
3. Team Topologies Organizing business and technology teams for fast flow Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais IT Revolution Press, September 2019 Order via stores worldwide: teamtopologies.com/book 3
4. Ten years after SODOR and DevOps Topologies, what is holding back lower-performing organizations from improving their IT delivery performance? 4
5. 10 years on: DOTs and SODOR The cost of tangled software Accelerate metrics + TT for flow Success with fast flow 5
6. Decoupling of teams & technology for fast flow Diffusing of ideas for learning and alignment 7
7. [key point] 8
8. 10 years on: DevOps Topologies and State of DevOps Reports 9
9. 10 https://legacy.devopsdays.org/events/2010-europe/lightning-talks Hamburg 2010
10. 11 https://speakerdeck.com/matthewskelton/winning-people-to-devops
11. 12 2013: Epic battles between Dev and Ops
12. 13 https://blog.matthewskelton.net/2013/10/22/what-team-s tructure-is-right-for-devops-to-flourish/
13. 14 https://web.devopstopologies.com/
14. 15 https://confluxhq.com/d evops-topologies
15. 16 https://web.devopstopologies.com/ Used by Netflix, Condé Nast, Accenture, etc. etc.
16. Thanks to Gene Kim and IT Revolution Press (and many other inspiring people) 17
18. 19 Image taken from devopstopologies.com - licensed under CC BY-SA Example: Anti-Type B (DevOps Team Silo)
19. 20 Image taken from devopstopologies.com - licensed under CC BY-SA Example: Anti-Type E (Rebranded SysAdmin)
20. 21 Image taken from devopstopologies.com - licensed under CC BY-SA Example: Anti-Type H (Fake SRE)
21. 22 Image taken from devopstopologies.com - licensed under CC BY-SA Example: Type 1 (Dev and Ops Collaboration)
22. 23 Image taken from devopstopologies.com - licensed under CC BY-SA Platform grouping Stream-aligned team Collaboration Flow of value DevOps Topologies (2013) Team Topologies (2019+)
23. 24 Image taken from devopstopologies.com - licensed under CC BY-SA Example: Type 3 (Ops as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (Platform))
24. Stream-aligned team 25 Image taken from devopstopologies.com - licensed under CC BY-SA Platform grouping Stream-aligned team Flow of value DevOps Topologies (2013) Team Topologies (2019+) XaaS XaaS
25. 26 Image taken from devopstopologies.com - licensed under CC BY-SA Example: Type 5 (DevOps Team with an Expiry Date)
26. 27 Image taken from devopstopologies.com - licensed under CC BY-SA Platform grouping Stream-aligned team Flow of value DevOps Topologies (2013) Team Topologies (2019+) Facilitating Enabling team
27. Platform grouping 28 Flow of change Stream-aligned team Stream-aligned team Complicated Subsystem team XaaS XaaS Collaboration Stream-aligned team xN 💡 Team Topologies diagrams are always just “snapshots in time”, never fixed designs
28. 29 0 - Address the dynamic interactions between teams and groups, not just static structure
29. 30 State of DevOps Reports (SODOR)
30. 31 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 2022 2023 https://www.puppet.com/resources/history-of-devops-reports …
31. 32 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...”
32. 33 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.”
33. 34 State of DevOps 2019 “We use a structural equation model (SEM), which is a predictive model used to test relationships” → Improvements in practices predict improved organizational performance
34. 36 Team Topologies practices are predictive of higher organizational performance - SODOR https://www.puppet.com/resources/state-of-devops-report “Highly evolved organizations tend to follow the Team Topologies model”
35. 37 Team Topologies ideas are now a key part of the AWS ‘Well-architected’ guidance https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/devops-guida nce/oa.std.1-organize-teams-into-distinct-topology-types-to-optimiz e-the-value-stream.html “[OA.STD.1] Organize teams into distinct topology types to optimize the value stream”
36. 38 Team Topologies ideas are now a key part of the Azure ‘Cloud Adoption Framework’ https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-adoption-framew ork/ready/considerations/devops-teams-topologies “Consider establishing an enabling team that can … support applications and platforms … ”
37. 39 2013 2024+
38. 40 2013 2024+ Practitioner-led co-evolution
39. The cost of tangled software 42
40. 43 If each engineer in the organization is blocked for 1 hour per working day, how much does this cost?
41. 44 • Fully-loaded cost: €160k per year • 260 paid days per year • Total of 400 engineers
42. 45 Engineer fully weighted cost per year Engineer cost per day Hours blocked per 8-hour day Days blocked per 260-day year Cost of blockers per engineer per year Number of engineers Total cost of blockers per year €160,000.00 €615.38 1 32.5 €20,000.00 400 €8,000,000.00 €8 million per year 💥
43. Untangling ≃ Decoupling 46
44. Decoupling: separating things that do not need to be together 47
46. Decoupling enables shorter time-to-value 49
47. Decoupling enables multiple, independent flows of change, each with its own cadence 50
48. 51 Multiple, independent flows
49. 53 1 - Organizing for fast flow helps us to remove inter-team dependencies, improving financial efficiency and time-to-value
50. Accelerate metrics + TT for flow 54
51. 🔍 Use the 4 Key Metrics from Accelerate and add “blocker count” 55
52. 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/ 56
53. 4 key metrics: ‘Accelerate’ lead time deployment frequency Mean Time To Restore change fail percentage
54. 4 key metrics: ‘Accelerate’ lead time deployment frequency Mean Time To Restore change fail percentage Encourage fast flow
55. 4 key metrics: ‘Accelerate’ lead time deployment frequency Mean Time To Restore change fail percentage Encourage operability
56. What % of lead time is actual work? Example: 120 hours / (120+630) x 100 = 16% Flow Efficiency 60
57. Measure ‘wait time’? https://www.isixsigma.com/methodology/lean-methodology/identify-constraints-and-reduce-wait-time-processes/ 61
58. Measuring ‘wait time’ is hard Count the number of blocking waits as a proxy ✨ 62
59. 4 key metrics & ‘blocker count’ lead time deployment frequency Mean Time To Restore change fail percentage ‘blocker count’ as a proxy for flow efficiency 63
60. Use 4 key metrics 📊 + “blocker count” to assess and find better service & team boundaries for flow 64
61. “If we adjusted the service & team boundary here, would it improve the 4 key metrics?” 💓 65
62. “If we adjusted the service & team boundary here, reduce the blocker count?” 📉 66
63. 67 TeamForm teamform.co
64. TeamOS 68 teamos.is Disclosure: Matthew Skelton has invested personally in the company behind TeamOS
65. Techniques from the Team Topologies community 69
66. 70 Independent Service Heuristics (ISH)
67. 71 “The Independent Service Heuristics (ISH) are rules-of-thumb (clues) for identifying candidate value streams and domain boundaries by seeing if they could be run as a separate SaaS/cloud product.” https://teamtopologies.com/ish
68. 72 User Needs Mapping (UNM)
69. 73 “User Needs Mapping attempts to capture the first 4 steps of the Wardley Mapping process … for identifying potential team [and service] boundary” https://teamtopologies.com/unm
70. 74 Team Interaction Modeling (TIM)
71. 75 “[Team Interaction Modeling helps] to describe how to re-organize … teams and their interactions to achieve better flow and deliver value faster.” https://teamtopologies.com/tim
72. 76 2 - Evolving at speed requires a set of core principles and practices, with people trained up and engaged
73. Success with fast flow 77
74. Case Study JP Morgan 78
75. Case Study “How JP Morgan Applied Team Topologies to Improve Flow in a Market Leading Enterprise Platform” 79 https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=y3OL7dv2l48 Fast Flow Conf 💖 https://www.fastflowconf.com/
76. Case Study 80
77. Case Study “60% of dependencies reduced through better team design” 💥 81
78. 82 Engineer fully weighted cost per year Engineer cost per day Hours blocked per 8-hour day Days blocked per 260-day year Cost of blockers per engineer per year Number of engineers Total cost of blockers per year €160,000.00 €615.38 1 32.5 €20,000.00 400 €8,000,000.00 €8 million per year 💥 Remember this? [Note: these are not figures from JP Morgan]
79. Case Study GOV.UK Home Office 83
80. Case Study “How the Home Office’s Immigration Technology department reduced its cloud costs by 40%” 84 https://www.gov.uk/government/case-studies/how- the-home-offices-immigration-technology-departm ent-reduced-its-cloud-costs-by-40
81. 85 https://www.gov.uk/government/case-studies/how-the-home-offices-immigration-technology-department-reduced-its-cloud-costs-by-40
82. Case Study Making service owners accountable for the $ spend for their service helps to clarify service boundaries 💡 86
83. Use cost metrics as a “financial scalpel” 🔪 to split services apart for fast flow 87
84. Case Study ABC Glofox 88
85. Case Study 89 confluxhq.com/glofox
86. 90 3 - Decouple, not coordinate.
87. Principles from Team Topologies that suggest certain architectures 97
88. 98 Multiple, independent flows, fractally
89. Respect Conway’s Law (aka ‘sociotechnical mirroring’) 99
90. Clear ongoing ownership of services and systems 100
91. Stream-aligned teams have end-to-end responsibility for a service (You Build It, You Run It) 101
92. Platforms improve flow and reduce extraneous cognitive load 102
93. Teams are small (~9), slowly changing, with ‘aligned autonomy’ 103
94. Teams are empowered to sense and adjust boundaries to improve flow on a frequent basis 104
95. 105 Architecture for fast flow resembles an ecosystem of loosely-coupled independently-viable services with clear boundaries and ownership aligned to the flow of business value.
96. 106 “With the explicit platform strategy [based on Team Topologies], we simplified upfront planning … for the whole organization. Defined interaction models between teams streamlined execution with just enough collaboration.” – Maksim Koutun, Director of Engineering @ Flo Health teamtopologies.com/flo
97. 107 “The work is delivered in many small changes that are uncoordinated to enable flow. … Management’s job is to provide context, prioritization and to coordinate across teams. Lending resources if needed across teams to unblock things. … It works well within a high trust culture.” Adrian Cockcroft https://mastodon.social/@adrianco/111174832280576410 Technology strategy advisor, Partner at OrionX.net (ex Amazon Sustainability, AWS, Battery Ventures, Netflix, eBay, Sun Microsystems, CCL)
98. 108 “The work is delivered in many small changes that are uncoordinated to enable flow. … Management’s job is to provide context, prioritization and to coordinate across teams. Lending resources if needed across teams to unblock things. … It works well within a high trust culture.” Adrian Cockcroft https://mastodon.social/@adrianco/111174832280576410 Technology strategy advisor, Partner at OrionX.net (ex Amazon Sustainability, AWS, Battery Ventures, Netflix, eBay, Sun Microsystems, CCL) It’s compli ate !
99. 110 organize for fast flow of value We help product, technology and engineering leaders design high-impact team-of-teams organizations. teamtopologies.com
100. 111 4 - Multiple, loosely-coupled flows of value, with significant automation & helper tooling, aware of team cognitive load
101. 112 Multiple, independent flows, fractally
102. If we have clear boundaries for flow, with limited interactions, how do we create alignment? How do we learn from each other at pace? 113
103. 114 Multiple, independent flows, fractally
104. 115 Active diffusion of knowledge across team boundaries
105. 116 Alignment and engagement “High performers favor strategies that create community structures at both low and high levels in the organization...”
106. 117 internal conferences guilds Communities of Practice lunch & learn public blogs
107. 118 https://internaltechconf.com/ Internal Tech Conferences Victoria Morgan-Smith and Matthew Skelton
108. 119 “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)
109. 120 https://internaltechconf.com/ Internal Tech Conferences Victoria Morgan-Smith and Matthew Skelton It’s compli ate !
110. 121 “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
111. 122 Thriving organizations, delivering at speed™ Create alignment, trust, and engagement across your organization whilst delivering at pace with fast flow. adapttogether.info
112. 123 5 - Fast flow organizations need active knowledge diffusion across flow boundaries to create trust, alignment, and learning
113. “But won’t GenAI make all this irrelevant?” 124
114. nope 125 (... but that’s the subject of another talk :) )
115. 10 years on: DOTs and SODOR The cost of tangled software Accelerate metrics + TT for flow Success with fast flow 154
116. Ten years after SODOR and DevOps Topologies, what is holding back lower-performing organizations from improving their IT delivery performance? 155
117. organizing for flow feels alien to many 👾 156
118. 157 limited mindset shifts
119. CxO concerns ignored 158
120. ‘silver bullet’ re-org 159
121. “structure” will fix it 160
122. hierarchy & ‘profession’ outweigh value flow 161
123. tight coupling in time 162
124. no knowledge diffusion 163
125. limited psych safety 164
126. 165 success factors
127. 166 0 - Address the dynamic interactions between teams and groups, not just static structure
128. 167 1 - Organizing for fast flow helps us to remove inter-team dependencies, improving financial efficiency and time-to-value
129. 168 2 - Evolving at speed requires a set of core principles and practices, with people trained up and engaged
130. 169 3 - Decouple, not coordinate.
131. 170 4 - Multiple, loosely-coupled flows of value, with significant automation & helper tooling, aware of team cognitive load
132. 171 5 - Fast flow organizations need active knowledge diffusion across flow boundaries to create trust, alignment, and learning
133. Case Study 172 confluxhq.com/glofox
134. Decoupling of teams & technology for fast flow Diffusing of ideas for learning and alignment 173
135. Decoupling: teams, software, technology, deployments, data, business concepts, ... 174
136. Diffusing: principles, practices, learning, techniques, approaches, ... 175
137. 176 The Adapt Together™ approach from Conflux creates alignment, trust, and engagement across your organization whilst delivering at pace with fast flow. adapttogether.info Team Topologies is the leading approach to organizing business and technology teams for fast flow, providing a practical, step-by‑step, adaptive model for organizational design and team interaction. teamtopologies.com Copyright (c) 2017-2024 Conflux group of companies, Team Topologies Ltd, and Holistic Innovation Ltd. All Rights Reserved. The name “Conflux” and the filled C device are Registered Trademarks ® in multiple jurisdictions. The Team Topologies logo is a Registered Trademark ® in multiple jurisdictions.