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Untangling software delivery with Team Topologi...

Untangling software delivery with Team Topologies, flow metrics, and careful decoupling - Conflux

The key predictive IT delivery metrics uncovered by the book Accelerate and the State of DevOps Reports - aka “DORA metrics” - point the way towards flow-centric operating models for every modern enterprise building and running software-enriched services. However, improving flow of value within an organization is often difficult due to cross-team dependencies and coupling: everything is tangled. In an organization with 700 software engineers, if 60% of the time is spent waiting on other teams - a typical industry flow efficiency - the financial penalty of dependencies and coupling is high. It is vital, therefore, to invest in decoupling and removing team dependencies - untangling - to enable value to flow better and more efficiently.

In this talk, Matthew Skelton - founder at Conflux and co-author of the book Team Topologies - explores techniques and metrics to help you untangle your software delivery, together with real-world examples of organizations successfully applying Team Topologies and related approaches to decouple teams and improve flow:

Independent Service Heuristics (ISH)
User Needs Mapping (UNM)
The 4 key metrics (DORA)
Flow efficiency and proxy measures

Increasingly, the ideas and patterns in Team Topologies (TT) are being applied worldwide not just in software/IT but increasingly in non-IT contexts like legal services, healthcare, education, and HR, resulting in quicker time-to-market and better ROI. These applications of TT point the way to an operating model for fast flow organizations.

Talk K28

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcayzfzRIvk&list=PLKK5zTDXqzFNt1OTjhlrCnhVl1UO2QMbk&index=18

Matthew Skelton

August 24, 2023
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  1. Untangling software delivery with Team Topologies, flow metrics, and careful

    decoupling Matthew Skelton, Conflux - co-author of Team Topologies DORA community Talk & Learn | 2023-08-24 K28
  2. Photo goes here Matthew Skelton Founder at Conflux Co-author of

    Team Topologies LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/matthewskelton Mastodon: mastodon.social/@matthewskelton 2
  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. 4

  5. 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. 5
  6. 11 Team Topologies exposes any lack of clarity in purpose,

    conflict in priorities, or misalignment of incentives
  7. 12

  8. The cost of tangled software DORA metrics & TT to

    the rescue! Real examples of detangling How to detangle with metrics & TT 13
  9. 15 Use balanced health metrics (DORA, flow, cost, blockers, etc.)

    + TT techniques (TIM, ISH, UNM) to help find good boundaries for fast flow by untangling (decoupling) separate services
  10. 17 If each engineer in the organization is blocked for

    1 hour per working day, how much does this cost?
  11. 18 • Fully-loaded cost: €160k per year • 260 paid

    days per year • Total of 400 engineers
  12. 19 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 💥
  13. 22

  14. Instead of trying to measure “team autonomy” directly, prefer measures

    like rapid flow, rapid feedback, minimal blocking dependencies… 💡 30
  15. 35

  16. 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/ 39
  17. 4 key metrics: ‘Accelerate’ lead time deployment frequency Mean Time

    To Restore change fail percentage Encourage fast flow
  18. 4 key metrics: ‘Accelerate’ lead time deployment frequency Mean Time

    To Restore change fail percentage Encourage operability
  19. What % of lead time is actual work? Example: 120

    hours / (120+630) x 100 = 16% Flow Efficiency 43
  20. 4 key metrics & ‘blocker count’ lead time deployment frequency

    Mean Time To Restore change fail percentage ‘blocker count’ as a proxy for flow efficiency 46
  21. Use 4 key metrics 📊 + “blocker count” to assess

    and find better service & team boundaries for flow 47
  22. “If we adjusted the service & team boundary here, would

    it improve the 4 key metrics?” 💓 48
  23. 52 “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
  24. 54 “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
  25. 56 “[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
  26. Case Study “How JP Morgan Applied Team Topologies to Improve

    Flow in a Market Leading Enterprise Platform” 59 https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=y3OL7dv2l48 Fast Flow Conf 💖 https://www.fastflowconf.com/
  27. 62 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]
  28. • Financial advice • Founded 2009 • Consumers & companies

    • 'Explainable AI' • Increasingly successful 64
  29. “Team Topologies ... has given us the tools we were

    looking for and have helped us to build a plan and have confidence that we know where we’re going and how to get there.” Richard Marshall, CTO, Wealth Wizards 70
  30. Concepts • Stream-aligned: build & run • Boundaries that help

    flow • Supporting team types: reduce cognitive load on Stream teams 71
  31. Results • Clear patterns and language • Framework for design

    decisions • Confidence in scaling approach 72 https://medium.com/ww-engineering/to-monolith-or-to-microservice-f8c3f967e63c
  32. Thanks to: Richard Marshall CTO, Wealth Wizards (to 2021) 73

    Further details: https://teamtopologies.com/wealthwizards
  33. Case Study “How the Home Office’s Immigration Technology department reduced

    its cloud costs by 40%” 75 https://www.gov.uk/government/case-studies/how- the-home-offices-immigration-technology-departm ent-reduced-its-cloud-costs-by-40
  34. Case Study Making service owners accountable for the $ spend

    for their service helps to clarify service boundaries 💡 77
  35. Team First Look at your organisation through the lens of

    teams, rather than just the people they work for. teamform.co 87
  36. The cost of tangled software DORA metrics & TT to

    the rescue! Real examples of detangling How to detangle with metrics & TT 88
  37. 90 Use balanced health metrics (DORA, flow, cost, blockers, etc.)

    + TT techniques (ISH, UNM, TIM) to help find good boundaries for fast flow by untangling (decoupling) separate services
  38. thank you confluxhq.com Copyright (c) 2017-2023 Conflux group of companies.

    All Rights Reserved. The name “Conflux” and the filled C device are Registered Trademarks ® in multiple jurisdictions.