Using Enabling teams to enhance flow and diffuse practices at scale

Evolving an organization at speed requires a set of core principles and practices, with people trained up and engaged. Since the publication of the book Team Topologies in 2019, thousands of organizations worldwide have adopted Team Topologies principles for their digital operating model to help with this continuous evolution at speed.

One of the key aspects of Team Topologies is the use of Enabling teams to uplift capabilities (and detect skills gaps) in Stream-aligned teams, helping to maintain their autonomy and flow of value.

This talk covers key focus areas for Enabling teams, including:

- Enhancing flow and diffusing practices across the organization at scale
- Removing inter-team dependencies, improving financial efficiency
- Playing an active, informed role in upskilling, detecting gaps, improving platforms, and adjusting team boundaries
- Helping people to step up, embrace flow, help to nurture learning, and act as a 10x force for good

Ultimately, many roles previously focused on managing coupling & dependencies shift focus to continuously unblocking flow as part of Enabling teams, seeking out and amplifying good approaches by diffusing good practices across team and department boundaries.

[ From a talk at Agile Project Managers meetup group, Melbourne, AU - https://www.meetup.com/agile-project-managers-melbourne/events/300318237/ ]

Transcript

1. TeamTopologies.com @TeamTopologies Using Enabling teams to enhance flow and diffuse practices at scale Matthew Skelton, co-author of Team Topologies DDD and Agile PM Group - Melbourne | 2024-06-04 Talk 46
2. Matthew Skelton 2 Co-author of the book Team Topologies Founder at Conflux “Ecosystem Engineering” LinkedIn: matthewskelton Mastodon: @matthewskelton@mastodon.social
4. Team Topologies 4 Organizing business and technology teams for fast flow Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais IT Revolution Press, 2019 teamtopologies.com/book
5. 5 “We are on a mission to make work more humane and more effective for everyone via Team Topologies patterns and principles.” https://teamtopologies.com/mission
6. 6 Team Topologies ideas are now a key part of the AWS ‘Well-architected’ guidance https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/devops-g uidance/oa.std.1-organize-teams-into-distinct-topology-types-t o-optimize-the-value-stream.html “[OA.STD.1] Organize teams into distinct topology types to optimize the value stream”
7. 7 Team Topologies ideas are now a key part of the Azure ‘Cloud Adoption Framework’ https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-adoption-fr amework/ready/considerations/devops-teams-topologies “Consider establishing an enabling team that can … support applications and platforms … ”
8. 8 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”
9. How can we use Enabling teams to enhance flow and diffuse practices across the organization at scale? 9
10. 10 [Key message]
11. Why: the cost of tangled software Effective Enabling teams Enabling teams - the TT approach Real-world examples + starting 11 11
12. The cost of ‘tangled’ software 12
13. 14 CEO 🏢 • “Why does everything take so loooooooooong?” • More predictable results
14. 15 CFO 💰 • Financial efficiency from reducing dependencies ◦ (reshaping team and system architecture and communications) • Increased financial transparency ◦ (better cost tracking at all levels)
15. 16 COO ⚙ • Increased operational efficiency • Unblocking dependencies
16. 17 CIO/CTO 💻 • Better throughput with digital services • Aligning tech to business • Skills, training, capabilities • Navigating tech innovation
17. 18 HR 󰰁 • Organizational structures that work for fast flow and business agility • Employee engagement and wellbeing
18. 19 PMO 🔀 • Avoid coordination nightmares • Increased throughput
19. Organizations need: • Quicker time to value • Better financial transparency • Increased staff engagement • Reduced coordination costs 20
20. 21 If each engineer in the organization is blocked for 1 hour per working day, how much does this cost?
21. 22 • Fully-loaded cost: €160k per year • 260 paid days per year • Total of 400 engineers
22. 23 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 💥
23. Case Study JP Morgan 24
24. Case Study “How JP Morgan Applied Team Topologies to Improve Flow in a Market Leading Enterprise Platform” 25 https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=y3OL7dv2l48 Fast Flow Conf 💖 https://www.fastflowconf.com/
25. Case Study 26
26. Case Study “60% of dependencies reduced through better team design” 🎉 27
27. 28 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. 29 Cost of Delay https://blackswanfarming.com/four-steps-to-quantifying-cost-of-delay/
29. 30 stop managing dependencies start unblocking flow
30. 31 1 - Organizing for fast flow helps us to remove inter-team dependencies, improving financial efficiency
31. Enabling teams - the Team Topologies approach 32
32. Team Topologies 33 Organizing business and technology teams for fast flow Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais IT Revolution Press, 2019 teamtopologies.com/book
33. Organization operating model constraints 34 1. Focus on flow 2. Ensure there is high trust inside teams 3. Design teams to be persistent (long-lived) 4. Limit team cognitive load 5. Enable rapid, safe changes to apps, data, infrastructure, etc. 6. Ensure that incentives are healthy for 24x7 operation and on-call 7. Encourage teams to be close to their customers - internal and external 8. Acknowledge that it is not possible to predict the behaviour of modern complex software ecosystems - design your processes to match 9. Encourage ongoing discovery and innovation at team and product levels 10. Avoid teams waiting on many other teams during delivery Learning from “DevOps” since 2008
34. 35 1 - Focus on flow
35. 36 2 - Ensure there is high trust inside teams
36. 37 3 - Design teams to be persistent (long-lived)
37. 38 4 - Limit team cognitive load
38. 39 5 - Enable rapid, safe changes to apps, data, infrastructure, etc.
39. 40 6 - Ensure that incentives are healthy for 24x7 operation and on-call
40. 41 7 - Encourage teams to be close to their customers - internal and external
41. 42 8 - Acknowledge that it is not possible to predict the behaviour of modern complex software ecosystems - design your processes to match
42. 43 9 - Encourage ongoing discovery and innovation at team and product levels
43. 44 10 - Avoid teams waiting on many other teams during delivery
44. “Team Topologies is a set of coherent patterns to encourage emergent behaviours for fast flow” 45 Matthew Skelton
45. The "flow of change" is the work/changes needed for a product or service on an ongoing basis (aka “flow of value”) 46
46. “Flow” emphasizes the continuous nature of developing and running modern software-enriched services 47
47. Implications of fast flow for teams and roles 48
48. 49 Flow unblocker
49. 50 Boundary finder
50. 51 Platform to reduce cognitive load
51. 52 …
52. 53 Flow boundary discovery techniques from the Team Topologies community
53. 54 Independent Service Heuristics (ISH)
54. 55 “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
55. 56 User Needs Mapping (UNM)
56. 57 “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
57. 58 Team Interaction Modeling (TIM)
58. 59 “[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
59. Team Topologies provides: • Language for dealing with flow, boundaries, architecture, dynamics • Heuristics (clues) for organizing teams and software • A focus on fast flow as a key driver 60
62. 63 Flow of change
63. 64 Snapshot in time Flow of change
64. TT principle #1 65 4 team types (well, 3 + 1) grouping Image © 2019 Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais. Used with permission.
65. Each team type (or grouping) has specific expected behaviors 66
66. Each team type (or grouping) has a specific relation to flow and team cognitive load 67
67. TT principle #2 68 3 team interaction modes Image © 2019 Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais. Used with permission.
68. The constraints on interactions provide signals to tell us when boundaries are not good for fast flow 69
69. The constraints on interactions provide signals to tell us about intent/mission, capabilities, skills, strategy, and lots more… 70
70. TT principle #3 71 fast flow
71. Organizing for fast flow means we are happy with: duplication, (a few) different versions, async + eventual consistency, ‘internal marketplace’, etc. 72
72. TT principle #4 73 team cognitive load
73. Using team cognitive load as a key architectural and design principle means we have a humane, compassionate, and realistic workplace 74
74. TT principle #5 75 thinnest viable platform (TVP)
75. TVP avoids ‘platform bloat’ by focusing on enhancing flow and reducing team cognitive load - rather than technology 76
76. TT principle #6 77 empower teams to adjust boundaries to enhance flow
77. Empowering teams to adjust boundaries for flow uses local knowledge for regular incremental gains, avoiding a dreaded ‘Re-org’ every 5 years 78
78. 79 2 - Evolving at speed requires a set of core principles and practices, with people trained up and engaged
79. Enabling teams 80 Improve flow Diffuse practices
80. 81 Improving flow
81. 82 Uplift skills, practices, capabilities
82. 83 Flow of change
83. 84 Detect skills gaps → training
84. 85 Flow of change HR / L&D / Skills
85. 86 Feedback: platform improvements
86. 87 Flow of change
87. 88 Help to adjust team boundaries
88. 89 Flow of change
89. 90 3 - Enabling teams play an active, informed role in upskilling, detecting gaps, improving platforms, and adjusting team boundaries
90. 91 Diffusing practices
91. 92 Detecting novel practices that work
92. 93 Facilitating group learning events: talks, workshops, conferences
93. 94 Nurturing community
94. 95 Avoiding standardization, creating FOMO
95. 96 4 - Enabling teams seek out and amplify good approaches by diffusing good practices across team and department boundaries
96. 97 Effective Enabling teams
97. 98 Help teams to become decoupled & independent
98. 99 Discover common problems across multiple teams
99. 100 Work with platforms to recommend useful services
100. 101 Detect and bridge capability gaps in Stream-aligned teams (SATs) to help the teams become decoupled and independent through new skills Discover common problems across multiple teams Liaise with platforms to recommend and shape useful services for SATs Enabling teams
102. 103 Agile Coach Scrum Leader / Scrum Master Program Manager / Project Manager Product Delivery Manager Architect / Senior Staff Engineer
103. 104 Different roles, similar focus
104. 105 1 - team stewardship (~8)
105. 106 2 - unblock flow
106. 107 3 - adjust boundaries
107. 108 4 - reshape architecture
108. 109 “How would this approach affect flow, cognitive load, stewardship, architecture, product viability, boundaries, … both inside and outside the ~8-person team?”
109. How can we bring some coherence to different Enabling team activities across the organization? 110
110. Enabling Enabling Teams 111 PATTERN 5 EXAMPLE
111. 112 Expect a few different approaches at the same time, but not tens or 100s. Learn quickly, diffuse the learning, adopt the most effective approaches.
112. Ongoing diffusion of learning 113 Talks CoP Internal conference
113. Internal Tech Conferences 114 Accelerate Multi-team Learning Victoria Morgan-Smith and Matthew Skelton Conflux Books, 2019 internaltechconf.com
114. 115 5 - Many roles previously focused on managing coupling & dependencies shift focus to continuously unblocking flow
115. Real-world examples + getting started with Enabling teams 116
116. Case Study 117
117. Case Study 118 Large European banking group 10+ countries Central & Eastern Europe
118. Case Study 119 “We at RBI have established a successful team of Engineering Coaches based on this ideas that help teams to improve their development process and their testing and test automation approach” https://rruzitschka.medium.com/team-topologies-as-an-organizational-pattern-language-part-3-8a84704e218a
119. Case Study 120 “It is crucial not to see this team as a resource pool as this would severely impact the autonomy of the stream aligned team.”
120. Case Study 121 “The engineering coaches are a team of Senior Engineers with … (practical) experience in the area of CI/CD and Testing/Test Automation. Their task is … work with the hosting teams and coach them …”
121. Case Study 122 “Coaches work ideally around 50% of their time with the team. The rest of their time is used for self-training, training others and community work in guilds and chapters.”
122. Case Study 123 “The coaches are also expected to be ambassadors for our central engineering platform and must be able to explain the benefits of good engineering practices. ”
123. Case Study 124 https://rruzitschka.medium.com/team-topologies-as-an-organizational-pattern-language-part-3-8a84704e218a Robert Ruzitschka Engineering Coach at Raiffeisen Bank International
124. 125 6 - Enabling teams contain people with significant experience used as a “force multiplier”
125. Case Study 126
126. Case Study 127 Fintech scale-up, HQ in NL Open Banking APIs - SaaS 150+ bank customers 50+ countries
127. Case Study 128 “colleagues interested in a common topic can form a book club and … attend various conferences and workshops.” https://mambu.com/insights/articles/leading-dynamic-teams-autonomy-and-alignment
128. Case Study 129 “new and valuable learnings are usually presented during internal workshops boosting team knowledge and improving alignment.” https://mambu.com/insights/articles/leading-dynamic-teams-autonomy-and-alignment
129. Case Study 130 [ Agile Coaches formed a community to help facilitate rapid adoption of practices from Team Topologies ]
130. Case Study 131 https://mambu.com/insights/articles/leading-dynamic-teams-autonomy-and-alignment Ionut Penciuc System Owner at Mambu
131. 132 7 - Enabling teams play a key role in developing and sustaining a ‘generative’ culture (a learning organization)
132. 133 Team Topologies Academy academy.teamtopologies.com
133. Effective Enabling Teams 134 https://academy.teamtopologies.com/courses/effective-enabling-teams
134. Internal Tech Conferences 135 Accelerate Multi-team Learning Victoria Morgan-Smith and Matthew Skelton Conflux Books, 2019 internaltechconf.com
135. Why: the cost of tangled software Effective Enabling teams Enabling teams - the TT approach Real-world examples + starting 136 136
136. How can we use Enabling teams to enhance flow and diffuse practices across the organization at scale? 137
137. 138 1 - Organizing for fast flow helps us to remove inter-team dependencies, improving financial efficiency
138. 139 2 - Evolving at speed requires a set of core principles and practices, with people trained up and engaged
139. 140 3 - Enabling teams play an active, informed role in upskilling, detecting gaps, improving platforms, and adjusting team boundaries
140. 141 4 - Enabling teams seek out and amplify good approaches by diffusing good practices across team and department boundaries
141. 142 5 - Many roles previously focused on managing coupling & dependencies shift focus to continuously unblocking flow
142. 143 6 - Enabling teams contain people with significant experience used as a “force multiplier”
143. 144 7 - Enabling teams play a key role in developing and sustaining a ‘generative’ culture (a learning organization)
144. Step up Embrace flow Help nurture learning Act as a 10x force for good 145
145. 146 Copyright © Team Topologies Ltd 2021-2024. All rights reserved. teamtopologies.com