K306 - How to use ‘Economies of Empowerment’ to get the benefits of both speed and scale - Matthew Skelton - FastFlowConf London 2025

From a talk at FastFlowConf London 2025

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’ Originator of Adapt Together™ by Conflux matthewskelton.com K306 FastFlowConf London | 14 October 2025
2. 2 Win a copy of Team Topologies Second Edition! Scan the QR code and answer the question:
3. 3 Question: “How can we scale without slowing down?”
4. 4 “Surely we need to make things bigger?”
5. 5 Answer: empower teams around smaller things and actively curate sharing
7. 11 Example: Scale-up reaches market fit, gets acquired by BigCorp … but then loses its effectiveness as BigCorp approaches take over
9. 14 Example: New service line or product within a large corp or GOV dept has initial success but now must become “enterprise”-y
11. 17 Example: Previous funding dries up and there is push towards operational efficiency
12. Economies of Scale 🐘 versus Economies of Speed 🏎 19
13. Economies of Scale 🐘 versus Economies of Speed 🏎 20
14. Challenge: How can organizations navigate away from a binary choice between speed and scale and instead get the benefits of both? 21
15. 22 Real results: • $9.1M recurring annual cost reduction • 26% faster feature delivery • Blockers decreased by 45% • Significantly higher team satisfaction
16. 23 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 10 new case studies from around the world
17. 24 Win a copy of Team Topologies Second Edition! Scan the QR code and answer the question:
18. Matthew Skelton empowering and augmenting teams using technology Originator of Adapt Together™ by Conflux Co-author of Team Topologies matthewskelton.com 25
19. Recent work with: • Insurance group • Established bank • Scaleup bank • Gaming & betting company • Telecoms companies 26
20. 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’. 27
21. 28 economies of empowerment: operating for agency of individuals, teams, departments… for outsized outcomes
22. ❏ ‘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 29
23. Scale 🐘 Speed 🏎 Empowerment 💪 30
25. Economies of Scale 🐘 32 Cost Efficiency Simpler technology landscape Negotiation power Interdependencies Lower adaptability Single Points of Failure
26. 33 Minimize variation Minimize duplication Drive down costs Prefer manageability
28. Economies of Speed 🏎 35 Faster time-to-market Operational agility Higher responsiveness Higher costs Regulatory complexity Non-traditional management
29. 36 Welcome variation Accept duplication Accept higher costs Prefer accountability
30. 37 Importance of economies of scale Importance of economies of speed 🐘 🏎 💪 ⁉
31. 38 Importance of economies of scale Importance of economies of speed 🐘 🏎 💪 ⁉
34. Economies of Empowerment 💪 41 Fast time-to-market Operational agility Responsiveness Technology as enabler Focus on outcomes Regulation acts as a differentiator Thriving workplaces
35. 42 Organize and operate for agency Convergence to a few solutions Diversity of supply and services Innovation around compliance API / ecosystem mindset
37. 44 Importance of economies of scale Importance of economies of speed 🐘 🏎 💪 ⁉ What’s needed to make a transition to Economies of Empowerment?
38. ❏ Team Topologies ❏ Self-service APIs discipline ❏ Compliance as enhancing agency ❏ Active Knowledge Diffusion 45
39. ‘Infrastructure for agency’ via Team Topologies 46
40. 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?” 47
41. 10 vital case studies Team types Team interaction modes Heuristic for boundaries Long-lived stewardship Architecture for value flow Evolution patterns … 48
42. 49 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Flow of value
43. 50 Real results: • $9.1M recurring annual cost reduction • 26% faster feature delivery • Blockers decreased by 45% • Significantly higher team satisfaction
44. 51 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
45. 52 More at: teamtopologies.com/examples
46. What about Agentic AI? 🤖 53
47. Tom Peperkamp 54 “... 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/
48. Stuart Winter-Tear 55 “... 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/
49. Scale out adoption and awareness of Team Topologies across the enterprise: Academy, enterprise content license, bulk book purchases, TT Success Toolkit™ 57 ➡ Get started: teamtopologies.com/scale
50. Team Topologies provides the ‘infrastructure for agency’ and empowerment within the organization 58
51. ‘Vending Machine’ self-service discipline via APIs 59
52. “As-a-Service” 60
54. Butler / white glove • Custom requirements • Immediate attention • Highly personal • Does not scale
56. Vending machine • Transactional and scalable • Compose new products from vending machine products • Negotiate asynchronously
57. Vending machine Example: Take products from a vending machine, add to a bag, sell as ready meal
58. 66 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)
59. 67 Unbundling the Enterprise: OOOps Example: Amazon • Create optionality by unbundling core infrastructure capabilities into API-enabled digital services • Business [and tech] leaders identify opportunities by aligning tech innovation with the … need for … services • Drive optimization and continuous improvement through … “sense and respond” across every team and activity p.133, UtE
60. APIs (vending mindset) Empowers teams and groups - inside and outside the org - to innovate autonomously without need for central control: “distributed innovation”
61. 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”
63. Vending Machine (API) model provides agency, empowering teams to deliver and innovate autonomously 71
64. Treat compliance as enhancing agency via automation to empower teams 72
66. 74 The CISO and Head of Risk both wanted to use compliance as an accelerator …
67. 75 BUT Very few rules were defined or discoverable, so every extra risk decision slowed things down further …
68. 76 https://olympic.ca/sports/slalom/
69. 77 Use the compliance requirements as “guide-poles” on a slalom course - plot the quickest route to success. Competitors will also be struggling.
70. 78 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.
71. 79 Turn Compliance from a Bottleneck into a Competitive Advantage Kosli automates governance by recording every change, enforcing policies, and proving compliance instantly kosli.com
72. 80 Clearly defined and illuminated compliance controls empower teams to delivery rapidly and safely. Don’t expect teams to kayak slalom in the dark!
73. Reframe compliance as a way to empower teams with more agency 81
74. Use active knowledge diffusion to uplift engagement, trust, alignment, awareness 82
76. 84 £150m revenue Expand into new markets Increase EBITDA Move to cloud Insource most of the engineering …
77. 85 Stay nimble with empowered teams
78. 86 A series of internal tech conferences to align, inspire, connect, engage
79. 87 “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)
80. 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? 88
81. 89 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Flow of value
82. 90 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Flow of value Unintentional duplication
83. 91 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Flow of value Active knowledge diffusion
84. 92 Active diffusion of knowledge across team boundaries
85. 94 internal conferences guilds Communities of Practice lunch & learn public blogs
86. 95 internaltechconf.com Internal Tech Conferences Victoria Morgan-Smith and Matthew Skelton
87. 96 Innovation & Practices Enabling team
89. 98 Creating a deep ‘mechanical sympathy’ with the technology to navigate opportunities and limitations
90. 99 Seeking out and spotlighting currently-good practices is a kind of Kai-Zen (continunous improvement)
91. 101 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Flow of value Unintentional duplication
92. 102 “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
93. 103 “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)
95. 106 Achieve speed at scale, safely & sustainably via empowered excellence confluxhq.com/outcomes
96. 107 loosely-coupled, learning organization
97. Active knowledge diffusion empowers teams to share, learn, and align at speed and scale, driving innovation and efficiencies 108
98. Summary 109
99. 110 Who has won a copy of Team Topologies Second Edition? Signing at 15:00 ☕
100. 111 Question: “How can we scale without slowing down?”
101. 112 “Surely we need to make things bigger?” ❌
102. 113 Answer: empower teams around smaller things and actively curate sharing
103. 114 Importance of economies of scale Importance of economies of speed 🐘 🏎 💪 ⁉ What’s needed to make a transition to Economies of Empowerment?
104. ❏ ‘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 115
105. 116 Organize and operate for agency Convergence to a few solutions Diversity of supply and services Innovation around compliance API / ecosystem mindset
106. 117 economies of empowerment: operating for agency of individuals, teams, departments… for outsized outcomes
107. 118 WE CAN DO THIS! 💪
108. let’s work together 119 matthewskelton.com
109. Resources 120
110. Mission-driven not-for-profit core + entrepreneurial ecosystem Join in: 121 ➡ teamtopologies.com/mission
111. 122 • 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
112. 123 • Join the TT Community 🧑 🤝 󰘉 ◦ community.teamtopologies.com • Becomes a TT Advocate 📢 ◦ teamtopologies.com/tta • Become a TT Partner 󰹿 󰺄 ◦ teamtopologies.com/partners Resources
113. 124 • Transformation and consulting help via key trusted TT partners 💼 ◦ teamtopologies.com/enablement Resources
114. 125 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
115. 126 Resources Book: Internal Tech Conferences https://internaltechconf.com/ By Victoria Morgan-Smith and Matthew Skelton Accelerating Multi-team Learning
116. 127 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)
117. 128 Resources Book: Empowered Agile Transformation https://www.alexandrastokes.com/store/p/empowered-agi le-transformation-beyond-the-framework By Alex Stokes Beyond the Framework
118. 129 Resources Book: Product Operations https://www.productoperations.com/ By Melissa Perri and Denise Tilles How successful companies build better products at scale
119. 130 Resources Book: Empowered https://www.svpg.com/books/empowered-ordinary-peopl e-extraordinary-products/ By Marty Cagan with Chris Jones Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products
120. 131 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
121. 132 Achieve speed at scale, safely & sustainably via empowered excellence confluxhq.com/outcomes
122. let’s work together 134 matthewskelton.com