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Transforming ivory tower architecture to enabling teams

Transforming ivory tower architecture to enabling teams

Many large organizations are still working with centralized architecture related teams. Their role is often to provide architectural specifications to other teams and to ensure that these specifications are adhered to during implementation. These teams are often referred to as „ivory tower architecture“ teams, which aim at bundling high skilled architects. This role is certainly not available in abundance on the market.

However, they don’t scale in an agile environment in which we want to empower teams to make their own decisions. Certain guardrails are nevertheless necessary to ensure that the overall construct is functional. Furthermore, well-chosen guard rails can also drastically reduce the need for coordination between the teams.

We need to enable those teams to do most of the architectural work on their own while still making sure that the bits and pieces fit together. This is where Team Topologies, a methodology introduced by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais, come into play. There is one team type called „Enabling Team“.

This talk gives you a hands-on guidance how to transform a centralized architecture team towards an enabling team whose job it is to improve architectural work in other teams. You will learn:
- Which stakeholders to include in this journey
- Why the soon-to-be enabling team needs to be enabled as well and how to do that
- Where common pitfalls on this journey are
- Why this journey must be done in an agile manner with continuous learning and retrospectives

This talk will also include many examples from practical experience guiding such a transformation.

Michael Plöd

October 05, 2023
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Transcript

  1. Transforming
    Ivory Tower
    Architecture to
    Enabling Teams
    MICHAEL PLÖD
    FELLOW

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  2. Michael Plöd
    Fellow at INNOQ
    Mastodon: @[email protected]
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-ploed/
    Current consulting topics:
    • Domain-Driven Design
    • Team Topologies
    • Transformation from IT Delivery to digital product orgs
    Regular speaker at (inter-)national conferences and author of a
    book + various articles

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  3. 3
    The role “software architect“

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  4. 4
    Tasks
    Involvement in all
    phases and life
    stages of a software
    system
    Clarify
    requirements
    Communicate
    architecture
    Design
    structures Design crosscutting
    concepts
    Support
    implementation Evaluate
    architecture
    Amount of work
    + order depends
    on the system!

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  5. Working on architectural tasks
    Inspired by a model by Stefan Toth / Gregor Hohpe
    5

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  6. Division of work
    Classic:
    Architect decides what the
    team has to do
    Architect
    Development Team
    6

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  7. Division of work
    No one is responsible:
    Implicit architecture
    (emergent,
    democratic)
    Development Team
    7

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  8. Division of work
    Architects as agents:
    Architecture topics explicitly
    distributed in the team
    Development Team
    8

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  9. Division of work
    Architect in the team:
    supports team with
    architecture tasks
    Architect
    Developers
    Development Team
    9

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  10. IT-Strategy shift
    from
    economies of scale
    towards
    economies of speed

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  11. Autonomy
    Mastery
    Purpose

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  12. Autonomy - Mastery - Purpose
    We need an environment in which teams
    can achieve

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  13. Source: https://amplitude.com/blog/journey-to-product-teams-infographic

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  14. Mind the
    COGNITIVE
    LOAD
    of the teams.
    We need to
    make sure that
    teams aren’t
    overwhelmed
    Learning and
    mastering domain
    complexity
    Conducting
    experiments /
    Learning
    Delivering high
    value software

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  15. Architecture Team
    Development Team
    The starting point in many orgs

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  16. The potential goals
    Architect
    Developers
    Development Team
    Development Team

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  17. Do the architecture stuff on your own and take
    responsibility for it
    You can’t just say

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  18. 22
    Fundamental Team Topologies
    Complicated Subsystem
    Enabling
    Platform
    Stream-aligned

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  19. Complicated Subsystem Team
    • Responsible for building and maintaining a part
    of the system that is highly dependent on
    specialist expertise
    • Team manages the complexity of the subsystem
    using speci ic skills and expertise that are
    usually dif icult to ind or recruit.
    Enabling Team
    • Work alongside the stream-aligned teams
    and support them in the area of knowledge
    building and empowerment.
    • Have a strong collaborative nature and strive to
    understand the problems and shortcomings of
    the other teams
    • Inhouse consulting team
    Platform Team
    • Should give stream-aligned teams the
    possibility to do their work with a high degree of
    autonomy,
    • Platform provides self-service APIs, tools and
    services as an internal product
    Stream-aligned Team
    • Tailored to a business area or organizational
    capability (Bounded Context)
    • Is intended to create customer value quickly,
    safely and autonomously without having to
    delegate parts of the work to other teams.

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  20. Team Interaction Modes
    Collaboration
    X-as-a-Service
    Facilitating
    Image taken from the Team Topologies book

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  21. Team Interaction Modes
    Image taken from the Team Topologies book

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  22. Architecture Team
    Development Team
    Architecture Enabling Team

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  23. Key goals & tasks for architecture enablement
    Gradually shift architecture
    work into teams
    Design
    Documentation
    Requirments clari ication
    Evaluation
    Get obsolete over time
    After some time the teams
    should be able to do the
    architecture work on their own.
    Architects move into the teams.
    Pair Programming
    Challenging
    Moderation
    Education Protection
    Standardization
    Working in Mob Facilitation

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  24. Need to be coaches, mentors, sparring partners and not
    an hierarchical instance.
    The ivory tower never did that.
    Architecture Enablers

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  25. Step 1
    Enable the future enablers

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  26. Enabling future enablers
    Working in mobs with experienced coaches
    Dedicated training courses and personal development plans
    Allow them to fail
    Take their concerns seriously

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  27. Step 2
    The irst small steps

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  28. Goal: gain experience
    Do stuff, succeed, fail, learn, do
    stuff, repeat.

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  29. Step 3
    Work as an enabling team

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  30. Step 4
    Dissolve & Merge

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  31. Goal: get rid of the enabling team
    But please: don’t ire anyone, those
    folks are super valuable in Stream-
    aligned Teams

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  32. Let’s talk about stakeholders

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  33. Architects in
    Enabling Team
    Developers in
    Stream-aligned Teams
    Senior
    Management
    HR Personal Development
    Workers Council

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  34. Developers in
    Stream-aligned
    Teams
    Move architecture work to their
    team
    Create environment of psychological
    safety in terms of decision making
    Mind their cognitive load

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  35. Architects in
    Enabling Team
    Move from instructing to coaching
    Need to be enabled as well
    Mind and address their fears.
    Psychological safety is important
    here as well

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  36. Senior
    Management
    Set and manage expectations
    Readjust career paths
    Leaders of cultural change

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  37. Personal
    Development
    Establish training curriculums and
    coaching offers
    Work with architects and developers
    May have an eye on the overall
    transformation

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  38. HR
    Contracts
    Salaries
    Legal stuff

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  39. Workers Council?
    Unions?
    Seriously?

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  40. YES!

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  41. Mind the career / promotion system

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  42. Real World Example: Salary Bands
    Software Architect Level 1
    60 - 80k EUR
    Software Architect Level 2
    75 - 95k EUR
    Software Architect Level 3
    90 - 120k EUR
    •Leads team of architects
    •Responsible for overall architecture
    •Gives architectural instructions to
    other teams
    •Responsible for those instructions
    •Designs architectures being reviewed
    by senior folks

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  43. Feedback from workers council
    Workers Council
    This blocks architects
    from further rises of
    their salary

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  44. Feedback from workers council
    Workers Council
    Te same applies to all the
    collaborative modeling
    stuff with regards to the
    business folks as well

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  45. Real World Example: Salary Bands
    Software Architect Level 1
    60 - 80k EUR
    Software Architect Level 2
    75 - 95k EUR
    Software Architect Level 3
    90 - 120k EUR
    •Leads team of architects
    •Responsible for overall architecture
    •Gives architectural instructions to
    other teams
    •Responsible for those instructions
    •Designs architectures being reviewed
    by senior folks

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  46. You have to address this
    Software Architect Level 1
    60 - 80k EUR
    Software Architect Level 2
    75 - 95k EUR
    Software Architect Level 3
    90 - 120k EUR
    •Leads team of architects
    •Responsible for overall architecture
    •Gives architectural instructions to
    other teams
    •Responsible for those instructions
    •Designs architectures being reviewed
    by senior folks

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  47. HR
    Senior Management
    Workers Council
    Readjust salary bands
    Review career paths
    Maybe: update contract

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  48. German Version of
    Team Topologies
    translated by me
    November 2023

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  49. Krischerstr. 100
    40789 Monheim
    +49 2173 3366-0
    Ohlauer Str. 43
    10999 Berlin
    Ludwigstr. 180E
    63067 Offenbach
    Kreuzstr. 16
    80331 München
    Hermannstrasse 13
    20095 Hamburg
    Erftstr. 15-17
    50672 Köln
    Königstorgraben 11
    90402 Nürnberg
    innoQ Deutschland GmbH
    www.innoq.com
    Thank you!
    Michael Plöd
    E-Mail: [email protected]
    Socials: @[email protected]
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-ploed/
    German version of Team Topologies incl. the Remote Team Interactions Workbook
    Translated by me
    Release through O’Reilly Germany in approx. November 2023

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