Optimizing for flow - digital delivery in the public sector using Team Topologies

For effective, modern, cloud-connected software systems we need to organize our teams to optimize for a fast flow of change. Taking account of Conway’s Law, we look to match the team structures to the required software architecture, enabling or restricting communication and collaboration for the best outcomes.

This talk will cover the basics of organization dynamics using Team Topologies, exploring a selection of key team types, and how and when to use them in order to make the development and operation of your software systems as effective as possible.

The talk also explores the use of Team Topologies patterns in several public sector organizations: the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV), Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), and UK government agencies.

We see how optimizing for flow whilst reducing cognitive load is an effective guiding principle for service design and digital service delivery.

Transcript

1. TeamTopologies.com @TeamTopologies Optimizing for flow digital delivery in Government and public sector using Team Topologies Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais co-authors of Team Topologies @matthewpskelton @manupaisable Public - 13 April 2022
2. 2 Manuel Pais Co-author of Team Topologies Twitter: @manupaisable LinkedIn: manuelpais Matthew Skelton Co-author of Team Topologies Twitter: @matthewpskelton LinkedIn: matthewskelton
3. Team Topologies 4 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 5
5. PROBLEMS TO SOLVE with Team Topologies
6. Why is our transformation not achieving fast flow?
7. What’s our purpose and mission as a team within the wider organization?
8. Why are our teams not able to respond quickly to business needs?
9. How can we safely remove low-level complexity from customer-facing teams?
10. TODAY Team Topologies in GOV
11. October 2021: 25 months since publication Photo by noor Younis on Unsplash 12
12. 13 (GOV.UK)
15. 16 Flow of change
16. Case Study 17
17. • ESDC - Employment and Social Development Canada • One of the larger GOV depts in Canada • Most citizens in Canada are users / customers 18
18. 19 Independent Service Heuristics
19. Rules-of-thumb for identifying candidate value streams and domain boundaries by seeing if they could be run as a separate SaaS/cloud product. 20 Independent Service Heuristics
20. Rules-of-thumb for identifying candidate value streams and domain boundaries by seeing if they could be run as a separate SaaS/cloud product. 21 Independent Service Heuristics
21. GitHub: Independent Service Heuristics 22 https://github.com/TeamTopologies/Independent-Service-Heuristics
22. Current heuristics 23 1. Sense-check: Could it make any logical sense to offer this thing "as a service"? 2. Brand: Could you imagine this thing branded as a public cloud service (like AvocadoOnline.com 🥑)? 3. Revenue/Customers: Could this thing be managed a viable cloud service in terms of revenue and customers? 4. Cost Tracking: Could the organisation currently track costs and investment in this thing separately from similar things? 5. Data: Could this thing operate with minimal data from other sources? 6. User Personas: Could this thing have a small/well-defined set of user types or customers (user personas)? 7. Teams: Could a team or set of teams effectively build and operate a service based on this thing? 8. Dependencies: Would this team be able to act independently of other teams for the majority of the time to achieve their objectives? 9. Impact/Value: Would the scope of this thing provide a team with an impactful and engaging challenge? 10. Product Decisions: Would the team working on this thing be able to “own” their product roadmap and the product direction?
23. 24 Candidate separate streams • HR: job evaluation/classification • Vulnerability scanning (code) • Self-service infrastructure • Real-time learning feedback • De-risking and approval of new software tools Jan 2020
24. 25 Applying Team Topologies https://sara-sabr.github.io/ITStrategy/2020/05/20/Team-Topologies-Whitelisting-app.html M ay 2020 “Team Topologies Inspired Whitelist App Development”
25. 26 Applying Team Topologies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoDmZhWs3-I O ct 2020 Pandemic response ++
26. Case Study 27
27. • Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration • One of the largest GOV departments in Norway • Every citizen in Norway is a user / customer 28
28. 29 Team Topologies training https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nav_kontinuerliglaewring-kontinuerligutvikling-activity-6633115981562556416-__sj Jan 2020 “...organizing different types of teams can contribute to better flow in service development”
29. 30 Recommending Team Topologies https://www.linkedin.com/posts/francisds_boken-team-topologies-som-jonas-sl%C3%B8rdahl-activity-6719536916477300736-Wl4E/ O ct 2020 Jonas Slørdahl Skjærpe - CIO at NAV “Team Topologies is a useful model for working with the organization of teams for speed and flow”
30. 31 Internal platform at NAV https://nais.io/blog/posts/2021/08/internal-technology-platform Aug 2021 Do we need an internal technology platform?
31. 32 Research paper in ACM Aug 2021 Organizational Implications of Agile Adoption: A Case Study from the Public Sector Mohagheghi, Parastoo, and Casper Lassenius. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1145/3468264.3473937 “Currently, the organization is exploring Team Topologies to limit the scope and size of each team and divide lines between areas of responsibility.”
32. 33 Case Study online Jan 2022 How the internal technology platform creates value at NAV “Team Topologies gave us a vocabulary and common mental models, which made it easier to communicate.” https://teamtopologies.com/nav
33. Case Study 34 National Health Service in England
34. • COVID-19 vaccinations • Rapid roll-out • Test centre booking • Test results to citizens • Collaboration patterns: digital and medical teams 35 NHS Digital
35. 36 NHS Digital Building Population Scale Digital Services in a Crisis https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/building-population-scale-digital-services-in-a-crisis-tickets-166672127821
36. Case Study 37 (GOV.UK)
37. • Citizen Services • Traditionally in-person in specific locations • Increasingly delivered via hybrid in-person + video • Increase effectiveness 38 (GOV.UK) - 1
38. • Employment • Courts • Immigration and Borders • Financial Regulation • ... 39 (GOV.UK) - further departments
39. 40 (GOV.UK) Organising for Digital Delivery 22 July 2021 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/organising-for-digital-delivery/organising-for-digital-delivery “... an ongoing commitment to and resourcing of the product development team to ensure rapid iteration and improvement of the product in response to observed customer behaviour or to add features removed from the initial launch scope.”
40. Coming... 52
41. Coming during 2021/2022 for GOV contexts 53 • Patterns for supplier selection & management • Patterns for supplier interactions and ways of working (Enabling team, etc.) • Applying TT outside of IT/software
42. Summary: Team Topologies in GOV 54
43. 55 (GOV.UK)
44. The Stream-aligned team is the starting point: fast flow and feedback from running systems
45. Team Topologies provides a common language and set of patterns for the whole IT organization
46. Explicitly design for team cognitive load
47. A platform is a curated experience for engineers to accelerate and simplify software delivery
48. What’s next? 60
49. Remote Team Interactions Workbook Using Team Topologies Patterns for Remote Working Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais IT Revolution, January 2022 61 Details: teamtopologies.com/workbook
50. Free Resources 62 teamtopologies.com/resources (links, slides, video) teamtopologies.com/tools (templates, assessments, etc)
51. Infographics • Getting Started • In a Nutshell 63 teamtopologies.com/infographics
52. academy.teamtopologies.com
53. TeamTopologies.com @TeamTopologies Team Topologies Partner Program 🤝 partners@teamtopologies.com
54. Sign up for news and tips: TeamTopologies.com 66
55. 67 Copyright © Team Topologies Ltd 2022. All rights reserved. teamtopologies.com