How to use ‘Economies of Empowerment’ to get the benefits of both speed and scale - Agile Yorkshire

Many organizations struggle to scale nimble ways of working as the organization or department grows, stifling innovation and delivery effectiveness. What worked at a small scale appears expensive at larger scales, where drive for deduplication and efficiency begins to couple together previously separate initiatives, slowing them down.

The traditional management approach of “Economies of Scale” - taken from manufacturing - does not work well for knowledge work and continuously evolving digital services that are the foundation of many organizations today because digital services are not the mass-production of identical widgets. However, “Economies of Speed” - where time-to-market is the overriding factor - are often not sustainable beyond a funding round, deadline, or acquisition.

Instead of a back and forth ‘flip-flop’ between organizing for scale and organizing for speed, organizations can get the best of both approaches by organizing for empowerment. Using “Economies of Empowerment” as the organizing principle drives clarity of mission, purposeful boundaries that work for flow, continuous adaptation to new technologies, and rapid innovation via cross-team learning & sharing.

In this talk, Matthew Skelton - co-author of the groundbreaking book Team Topologies and CEO/CTO at Conflux - shares insights from helping hundreds of organizations to apply principles and practices from Team Topologies, Adapt Together™, and related approaches in order to scale nimble value delivery via empowered teams and “Economies of Empowerment”.

Transcript

1. ‘Economies of Empowerment’ get the benefits of both speed and scale Matthew Skelton Co-author of Team Topologies & Adapt Together CEO/CTO at Conflux matthewskelton.com K306 Agile Yorkshire meetup | 2026-06-03
2. 2 Question: “How can we scale without slowing down?”
3. 3 “Surely we need to make things bigger?”
4. 4 Answer: empower teams around smaller things and actively curate sharing
5. 5 The focus on empowerment clarifies mission and focus up and down the organization: what value are providing, and to whom?
6. 11 Example: Scale-up reaches market fit, gets acquired by BigCorp … but then loses its effectiveness as BigCorp approaches take over
7. 14 Example: New service line or product within a large corp or GOV dept has initial success but now must become “enterprise”-y
8. 17 Example: Previous funding dries up and there is push towards operational efficiency
9. Economies of Scale 🐘 versus Economies of Speed 🏎 19
10. Economies of Scale 🐘 versus Economies of Speed 🏎 20
11. Challenge: How can organizations navigate away from a binary choice between speed and scale and instead get the benefits of both? 21
12. Matthew Skelton levers and language for tech-savvy value delivery Co-author of Adapt Together™ Co-author of Team Topologies matthewskelton.com 24
13. Recent work with: • Insurance group • Established bank • Scaleup bank • Gaming & betting company • Telecoms companies 25
14. Instead of a back and forth ‘flip-flop’ between operating for scale and operating for speed, organizations can get the best of both approaches by ‘economies of empowerment’. 26
15. 27 economies of empowerment: operating for agency of individuals, teams, departments… for outsized outcomes
16. ❏ ‘Infrastructure for agency’ in the form of Team Topologies ❏ ‘Vending Machine’ self-service discipline via APIs ❏ Treat compliance as enhancing agency via automation to empower teams ❏ Use active knowledge diffusion to uplift engagement, trust, alignment, and awareness 28
17. Scale 🐘 Speed 🏎 Empowerment 💪 29
18. Economies of Scale 🐘 31 Cost Efficiency Simpler technology landscape Negotiation power Interdependencies Lower adaptability Single Points of Failure
19. 32 Minimize variation Minimize duplication Drive down costs Prefer manageability
20. Economies of Speed 🏎 34 Faster time-to-market Operational agility Higher responsiveness Higher costs Regulatory complexity Non-traditional management
21. 35 Welcome variation Accept duplication Accept higher costs Prefer accountability
22. 36 Importance of economies of scale Importance of economies of speed 🐘 🏎 💪 ⁉
23. 37 Importance of economies of scale Importance of economies of speed 🐘 🏎 💪 ⁉
26. Economies of Empowerment 💪 40 Fast time-to-market Operational agility Responsiveness Technology as enabler Focus on outcomes Regulation acts as a differentiator Thriving workplaces
27. 41 Organize and operate for agency Convergence to a few solutions Diversity of supply and services Innovation around compliance API / ecosystem mindset
29. 43 Importance of economies of scale Importance of economies of speed 🐘 🏎 💪 ⁉ What’s needed to make a transition to Economies of Empowerment?
30. ❏ Team Topologies ❏ Self-service APIs discipline ❏ Compliance as enhancing agency ❏ Active Knowledge Diffusion 44
31. ‘Infrastructure for agency’ via Team Topologies 45
32. Team Topologies paraphrased: “Given the need for ongoing stewardship of long-lived services, how can we realistically arrange the flow of value to be rapid, safe, sustainable?” 46
33. 10 vital case studies Team types Team interaction modes Heuristic for boundaries Long-lived stewardship Architecture for value flow Evolution patterns … 47
34. 48 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Flow of value
35. 50 EBSCO Information Services, a leading provider of research databases, leveraged Team Topologies with Conflux's support to optimize its organizational dynamics for software delivery. • $9.1M recurring annual cost reduction • 26% faster feature delivery • Dependency-related blockers decreased by 45% • Repeatable enterprise capability playbook • Significantly higher team satisfaction https://confluxhq.com/ebsco
36. 51 More at: teamtopologies.com/examples
37. What about Agentic AI? 🤖 52
38. Tom Peperkamp 53 “... The organizations poised to win [with Agentic AI] are not necessarily those with the most advanced models, but those whose operating models are already built for trust, clarity, and bounded autonomy … Team Topologies provides the blueprint for creating the bounded autonomy and clear interfaces that agents need to thrive.” https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tompeperkamp_agentic-ai-is-coming-but-it-wont-b e-the-activity-7337585782481711105-hzy0/
39. Stuart Winter-Tear 54 “... 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/
40. Scale out adoption and awareness of Team Topologies across the enterprise: Academy, enterprise content license, bulk book purchases, TT Success Toolkit™ 56 ➡ Get started: teamtopologies.com/scale
41. Team Topologies provides the ‘infrastructure for agency’ and empowerment within the organization 57
42. ‘Vending Machine’ self-service discipline via APIs 58
43. “As-a-Service” 59
45. Butler / white glove • Custom requirements • Immediate attention • Highly personal • Does not scale
47. Vending machine • Transactional and scalable • Compose new products from vending machine products • Negotiate asynchronously
48. Vending machine Example: Take products from a vending machine, add to a bag, sell as ready meal
49. 65 Book: Unbundling the Enterprise https://itrevolution.com/product/unbundling-the-enterprise/ By Stephen Fishman, Matt McLarty APIs, Optionality, and the Science of Happy Accidents (Includes value dynamics calculations)
50. APIs (vending mindset) Empowers teams and groups - inside and outside the org - to innovate autonomously without need for central control: “distributed innovation”
51. APIs (vending mindset) Use of external APIs (public) drives significantly bigger growth (UtE, p.166) Use of internal APIs provides the discipline and ideas to “harvest”
52. Vending Machine (API) model provides agency, empowering teams to deliver and innovate autonomously 70
53. Treat compliance as enhancing agency via automation to empower teams 71
55. 73 The CISO and Head of Risk both wanted to use compliance as an accelerator …
56. 74 BUT Very few rules were defined or discoverable, so every extra risk decision slowed things down further …
57. 75 https://olympic.ca/sports/slalom/
58. 76 Use the compliance requirements as “guide-poles” on a slalom course - plot the quickest route to success. Competitors will also be struggling.
59. 77 Use the compliance requirements as a “map” of business opportunities to exploit with externalized API services. If it’s hard, make it easy for new customers to navigate.
60. 78 Turn Compliance from a Bottleneck into a Competitive Advantage Kosli automates governance by recording every change, enforcing policies, and proving compliance instantly kosli.com
61. 79 Clearly defined and illuminated compliance controls empower teams to delivery rapidly and safely. Don’t expect teams to kayak slalom in the dark!
62. Reframe compliance as a way to empower teams with more agency 80
63. Use active knowledge diffusion to uplift engagement, trust, alignment, awareness 81
64. If we have clear boundaries for flow, with limited interactions, how do we create alignment? How do we learn from each other at pace? How do we deduplicate and increase financial efficiency? 82
65. 83 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Flow of value
66. 84 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Flow of value Unintentional duplication
67. 85 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Flow of value Active knowledge diffusion
69. 87 £150m revenue Expand into new markets Increase EBITDA Move to cloud Insource most of the engineering …
70. 88 Stay nimble with empowered teams
71. 89 A series of internal tech conferences to align, inspire, connect, engage
72. 90 “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)
73. 92 internal conferences guilds Communities of Practice lunch & learn public blogs
74. 93 internaltechconf.com Internal Tech Conferences Victoria Morgan-Smith and Matthew Skelton
75. 94 Active diffusion of knowledge across team boundaries
76. 95 Innovation & Practices Enabling team
78. 97 Creating a deep ‘mechanical sympathy’ with the technology to navigate opportunities and limitations
79. 98 Seeking out and spotlighting currently-good practices is a kind of Kai-Zen (continunous improvement)
80. 100 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Flow of value Unintentional duplication
81. 101 “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
82. 102 “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)
83. 105 Leaders need: focused behavioural ‘levers’, proven ‘fast flow’ techniques from Team Topologies, active innovation detection and diffusion, and an engaging dynamic of cross-group sharing and standards uplift via high-quality content infrastructure.
84. 106 adapttogether.info Create alignment, trust, engagement, and awareness across your organization whilst delivering at speed.
86. 109 loosely-coupled, learning organization
87. Active knowledge diffusion empowers teams to share, learn, and align at speed and scale, driving innovation and efficiencies 110
88. Summary 111
89. 112 Question: “How can we scale without slowing down?”
90. 113 “Surely we need to make things bigger?” ❌
91. 114 Answer: empower teams around smaller things and actively curate sharing
92. 115 The focus on empowerment clarifies mission and focus up and down the organization: what value are providing, and to whom?
93. 116 Importance of economies of scale Importance of economies of speed 🐘 🏎 💪 ⁉ What’s needed to make a transition to Economies of Empowerment?
94. ❏ ‘Infrastructure for agency’ in the form of Team Topologies ❏ ‘Vending Machine’ self-service discipline via APIs ❏ Treat compliance as enhancing agency via automation to empower teams ❏ Use active knowledge diffusion to uplift engagement, trust, alignment, and awareness 117
95. 118 Organize and operate for agency Convergence to a few solutions Diversity of supply and services Innovation around compliance API / ecosystem mindset
96. 119 economies of empowerment: operating for agency of individuals, teams, departments… for outsized outcomes
97. 120 WE CAN DO THIS! 💪
98. 121 Get the slides
99. let’s work together 122 matthewskelton.com
100. Resources 123
101. Scale out adoption and awareness of Team Topologies across the enterprise: Academy, enterprise content license, bulk book purchases, TT Success Toolkit™ 124 ➡ Get started: teamtopologies.com/scale
102. 126 • Architecture for Flow 📕 ◦ susannekaiser.net/books/ • Collaborative Software Design 📙 ◦ collaborative-software-design.com • TT modeling shapes 💡 ◦ teamtopologies.com/shapes • User Needs Mapping 🗺 ◦ userneedsmapping.com • Value Dynamics Mapping 🕸 ◦ valuedynamicsmapping.com Resources
103. 127 • Join the TT Community 🧑🤝󰘉 ◦ community.teamtopologies.com • Becomes a TT Advocate 📢 ◦ teamtopologies.com/tta • Become a TT Partner 󰹿󰺄 ◦ teamtopologies.com/partners Resources
104. 128 • Transformation and consulting help via key trusted TT partners 💼 ◦ teamtopologies.com/enablement Resources
105. 129 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
106. 130 Resources Book: Internal Tech Conferences https://internaltechconf.com/ By Victoria Morgan-Smith and Matthew Skelton Accelerating Multi-team Learning
107. 131 Resources Book: Unbundling the Enterprise https://itrevolution.com/product/unbundling-the-enterprise/ By Stephen Fishman, Matt McLarty APIs, Optionality, and the Science of Happy Accidents (Includes value dynamics calculations)
108. 132 Resources Book: Empowered Agile Transformation https://www.alexandrastokes.com/store/p/empowered-agi le-transformation-beyond-the-framework By Alex Stokes Beyond the Framework
109. 133 Resources Book: Product Operations https://www.productoperations.com/ By Melissa Perri and Denise Tilles How successful companies build better products at scale
110. 134 Resources Book: Empowered https://www.svpg.com/books/empowered-ordinary-peopl e-extraordinary-products/ By Marty Cagan with Chris Jones Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products
111. 135 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
112. 136 adapttogether.info Create alignment, trust, engagement, and awareness across your organization whilst delivering at speed.
113. let’s work together 139 matthewskelton.com