How to fail at Team Topologies
- lessons for fast flow success
DevOpsDays Oslo - 11 October 2023
Matthew Skelton
Founder at Conflux & co-author of ‘Team Topologies’
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Lessons learned about TT
from working with 100s of
organizations since 2019…
(we made the mistake so you don’t have to!)
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… inspired by Frozen II
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Wandering Oaken
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Who am I?
Matthew Skelton
Founder at Conflux - confluxhq.com
Co-author of the book ‘Team Topologies’
“Ecosystem engineering”
Social media: @matthewskelton
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💖 Success with Team Topologies
📖 Origin story of Team Topologies
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⚔ The quest: what do we want from TT
🐉 Obstacles: things to avoid with TT
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📖
Where did Team Topologies
come from and what’s
involved?
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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.
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teamtopologies.com
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https://web.devopstopologies.com/
Used by Netflix, Condé Nast,
Accenture, etc. etc.
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Thanks to Gene Kim and
IT Revolution Press
(and many other inspiring people)
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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
Over 100k copies sold
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Team Topologies is a set of
constraints to encourage
emergent behaviours for fast flow
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(Matthew Skelton)
The constraints on interactions
provide signals to tell us when
boundaries are not good for
fast flow
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The constraints on interactions
provide signals to tell us about
intent/mission, capabilities,
skills, strategy, and lots more…
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TT principle #3
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fast flow
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Organizing for fast flow means
we are happy with: duplication,
(a few) different versions,
async + eventual consistency,
‘internal marketplace’, etc.
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TT principle #4
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team cognitive load
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Using team cognitive load as a
key architectural and design
principle means we have a
humane, compassionate, and
realistic workplace
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TT principle #5
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thinnest viable platform
(TVP)
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TVP avoids ‘platform bloat’ by
focusing on enhancing flow
and reducing team cognitive
load - rather than technology
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TT principle #6
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empower teams to
adjust boundaries to
enhance flow
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Empowering teams to adjust
boundaries for flow uses local
knowledge for regular
incremental gains, avoiding a
dreaded ‘Re-org’ every 5 years
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⚔
The quest: what do we want
from Team Topologies?
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CEO
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Elsa
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CEO: break the spell of “busywork”
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● “Why does everything take so loooooooooong?”
● More predictable results
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CEO
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CFO
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Anna
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CFO: increase financial efficiency
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● Financial efficiency from reducing dependencies
○ (reshaping team and system architecture and
communications)
● Increased financial transparency
○ (better cost tracking at all levels)
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CFO
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Head of HR
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Olaf
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HR: healthy organization for fast flow
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● Organizational structures that work for fast flow
and business agility
● Employee engagement and wellbeing
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Head of HR
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● Better productivity - yesterday!
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CFO and Head of HR
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PMO
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Kristoff
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PMO: avoid coordination nightmare
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● Increased effectiveness
● Increased financial efficiency
● Increased productivity
● Better wellbeing and engagement
● Enhanced business agility & adaptiveness
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Overall, what do leaders want?
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Team Topologies provides
increased effectiveness,
financial efficiency, wellbeing,
productivity, and agility
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(with the right approach and mindset)
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🐉
Obstacles: things to avoid
with Team Topologies
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Earth Wind Fire Water
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Fast Flow
Team
Cognitive
Load
Intent
and
Purpose
Humanity
The four spirits of Team Topologies
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#1
Expect the changes to take
“about 3 weeks”
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How to fail at Team Topologies
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We’re calling this controlling what you
can when things feel out of control.
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#2
Expect the amount of learning
and change to be small
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How to fail at Team Topologies
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Did you know that an enchanted forest is
a place of transformation? I have no
idea what that means, but I can’t wait to
see what it’s gonna do to each one of us.
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#3
Seeing the solution as
“structure”, not org dynamics
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How to fail at Team Topologies
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[The surface of the street starts to
heave and ripple]
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#4
Making a ‘big bang’ change
rather than incremental
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How to fail at Team Topologies
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[Massive wall of water about to
destroy the city]
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You are allowed to do a change freeze
ONLY if you are Disney princess!
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#5
Coupling things together for
ease of management
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How to fail at Team Topologies
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Promise me we’ll do this together,
okay?
I promise
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#6
Seeking “following orders”,
rather than empowered people
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How to fail at Team Topologies
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Magic TT makes people feel too powerful,
too entitled. It makes them think they can
defy the will of a king PMO.
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#7
Not having the right
foundations and skills
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How to fail at Team Topologies
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Fear is what can’t be trusted
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💖
Tips for success with
Team Topologies
(and fast flow in general)
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When one can see no future, all
one can do is the next right thing.
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When one can see no future, all
one can do is the next right thing.
A good way to approach VUCA!
(volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity)
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#1
Expect the change to take
months or years
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How to succeed at Team Topologies
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34 years, 5 months, and 23 days
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#2
Work backwards from
outcomes
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How to succeed at Team Topologies
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Outcome: spell broken
How: stone giants destroy dam
with rocks 🤷
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#3
Think about healthy, humane
organization dynamics
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How to succeed at Team Topologies
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Advancing
technologies as
both our savior
and our doom
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#4
Use group insights to find
boundaries for flow
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How to succeed at Team Topologies
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Finding boundaries can be fun!
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Techniques from the
Team Topologies community
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Independent Service
Heuristics (ISH)
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“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
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User Needs Mapping
(UNM)
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“User Needs Mapping [is] the first 4 steps of the
Wardley Mapping process … for identifying potential
team [and service] boundary”
https://teamtopologies.com/unm
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Team Interaction
Modeling (TIM)
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“[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
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#5
Invest in architectures and
processes for fast flow
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How to succeed at Team Topologies
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Eventual consistency
for all
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“The work is delivered in many small
changes that are uncoordinated to enable
flow. … Management’s job is to provide
context, prioritization and to coordinate
across teams. Lending resources if needed
across teams to unblock things. … It works
well within a high trust culture.”
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Adrian Cockcroft https://mastodon.social/@adrianco/111174832280576410
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#6
Use a dedicated internal
Enabling team for TT & flow
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How to succeed at Team Topologies
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“I’m here. How can I help?”
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Fast Flow
Team
Cognitive
Load
Intent
and
Purpose
Humanity
The four spirits of Team Topologies
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ALL STAKEHOLDERS HAPPY 🎉
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CEO CFO HR PMO
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Team Topologies provides
increased effectiveness,
financial efficiency, wellbeing,
productivity, and agility
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(with the right approach and mindset)
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I wish this could last forever, and yet
change mocks us with her beauty.
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