TeamTopologies.com
@TeamTopologies
Overview of Team Topologies
Organizing business and technology teams for fast flow
Large Insurance Company - 08 Nov 2023
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Manuel Pais
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Independent IT organizational
consultant and trainer
LinkedIn instructor on CI/CD
LinkedIn: manuelpais
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Team Topologies
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Organizing business and
technology teams for fast flow
Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais
IT Revolution Press, 2019
teamtopologies.com/book
Who designs the
architecture of the
software systems?
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“Any organization that designs a
system (defined broadly) will
produce a design whose structure
is a copy of the organization's
communication structure.”
– Mel Conway, 1968
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Conway’s Law
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HR department acts
as accidental
architects of the
software system
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(reversing)
Conway’s Law
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Design the organisation
to mirror the desired
architecture (value flow)
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“if the architecture of the system and
the architecture of the organization
are at odds, the architecture of the
organization wins”
– Ruth Malan, 2008
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Managing team
cognitive load
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Handovers kill flow
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Handovers (can) kill flow
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Remember
A team is a stable, jelled, long-lived
group of 5-9 people with a shared
purposed aligned to a value stream
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Team-first approach
The team is the unit of delivery.
Plan, reward, and optimize for the
whole team, not individuals.
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Team-first thinking
Design for team cognitive load.
Choose & evolve adequate boundaries
for team ownership.
Fundamental team types
Stream-aligned team
Enabling team
Platform team
Complicated subsystem team
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enable stream-aligned teams to
deliver work with substantial
autonomy and reduced cognitive load
Platform Team Purpose
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“A digital platform is a foundation
of self-service APIs, tools, services,
knowledge and support which are
arranged as a compelling internal
product.”
– Evan Bottcher, 2018
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Fundamental team types
Stream-aligned team
Enabling team
Platform team
Complicated subsystem team
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team of experts to help
bridge capability gaps by
mentoring and coaching
teams “on the ground”
Enabling Team Purpose
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reduce dependencies on
experts by teaching rather
than executing the work
Enabling Team Purpose
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Fundamental team types
Stream-aligned team
Enabling team
Platform team
Complicated subsystem team
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building and maintaining part of a
system which requires specialist,
hard to gain knowledge
Complicated Subsystem
Team Purpose
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🔍
Track dependencies and
separate as “blocking” vs
“non-blocking”
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⏳ ⏳
Blocking
Non-
Blocking
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⚠
Compliance mindset shift:
Permitting to Enabling
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Team dependencies tracking
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https://github.com/TeamTopologies/Team-Dependencies-Tracking
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Patterns for
team
interactions
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“Problems that arise in
organisations are almost always the
product of interactions of parts,
never the action of a single part.”
Russell Ackoff
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Well-defined interactions
are key to effective teams
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Team Interaction Modes
Collaboration
X-as-a-service
Facilitation
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Team Interaction Modes
Collaboration: 2 teams working together
X-as-a-Service: 1 provides, 1 consumes
Facilitating: 1 team helps another
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Core Interaction Modes
Collaboration: 2 teams working together
X-as-a-Service: 1 provides, 1 consumes
Facilitating: 1 team helps another
Why, When, How Long
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Teams we currently interact with:
Team Name Interaction Mode Purpose Duration
Test Automation
Enabling team
Facilitating Understand test
automation and
data mgmt
examples for iOS
2 months
(from Mar 30
to May 29,
1 day per week)
Monitoring &
Telemetry
Platform team
Collaboration Store and visualize
data on product
features usage
3 weeks
(from Apr 13
to Apr 30,
2h per day)
Team API example
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Team Interaction Patterns
A
D
E
C
B
A is
collaborating
with C
C provides X
as a service to
B
D provides X
as a service to
B
E is facilitating
with A to
enable new
capabilities
Indicates the
flow of change
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Getting started
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Identify the
kind of
teams you
currently
have
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Map current teams to
fundamental team types
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Limit
cognitive
load
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Use reverse
Conway maneuver
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Define purposeful interactions
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Evolve team
structures
over time
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Use team interactions for
organizational sensing
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Getting started:
Team Topologies
Download the infographic:
https://teamtopologies.com/getting-started
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