Fast Flow - Blockers & Pitfalls @ Fast Flow BCN, Jan 2024

Based on his experience helping customers with Team Topologies during the last 4 years, Manuel will rant about share what are the most common blockers to fast flow in tech organizations. From the classics originally illustrated in the Team Topologies book to the "new kids on the block", some of which come from misinterpretations of ideas in the book! This rant talk also contains personal reflections on what we would have done differently if we had to rewrite the book today.

Transcript

1. TeamTopologies.com @TeamTopologies Fast Flow Blockers & Pitfalls Manuel Pais co-author of Team Topologies Fast Flow BCN - 18 Jan 2024 Image by Simon Berger
2. Team Topologies 2 Organizing business and technology teams for fast flow Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais IT Revolution Press (2019) https://teamtopologies.com
3. 3 What is fast flow?
4. 4 A safe, rapid flow of changes to our services (textbook definition)
5. 5 A safe, rapid flow of changes to our systems value to our customers
6. 6 A flow-based process delivers information on a regular cadence in small batches (The Principles of Product Development FLOW)
7. 8 What prevents fast flow?
8. 9 The Classics
9. 10 Figure 1.2: Obstacles to Fast Flow
10. 11 “We need the new operating model in place in 3 months”
11. 12 Re-orgs towards an ideal end state (on paper)
12. 13 Continuous org evolution (small batch)
13. 14 “Hiring freeze in place but still asked to grow revenue”
14. 15 Asking teams to do more with less capacity
15. 16 Clarify value streams Make hard product decisions Re-align team responsibilities
16. 17 New Kids on the Block
17. 18 “We can’t learn new skills because of cognitive load”
18. 19 Cognitive load as a blocker to fast flow
19. 20 Cognitive load as a constraint on fast flow
20. teamperature.com
21. 22 XaaS XaaS XaaS XaaS XaaS XaaS XaaS XaaS XaaS XaaS XaaS XaaS XaaS
22. 23 All services are known and stable (on paper)
23. 24 Expect most services to be in flux, XaaS as a temporary interaction
24. 25 “Teams are locked in to services, we can't adapt to significant market changes”
25. 26 Misunderstanding “long lived” as “static” (never changing teams)
26. 27 Keep team as an entity, change composition or responsibilities when it makes sense
27. 28 “Team Topologies mandates using microservices”
28. 29 Feature
29. 30 Team-sized services with cognitive load in mind
30. 33 </rant>
31. academy.teamtopologies.com
32. 35 Copyright © Team Topologies Ltd 2024. All rights reserved. teamtopologies.com