Why your Target Operating Model needs to be flow-centric - insights from Team Topologies - Project to Product Summit 2024

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Why your Target Operating Model needs to be ﬂow-centric - insights from Team Topologies Matthew Skelton Co-author of ‘Team Topologies’ Originator of Adapt Together™ by Conﬂux matthewskelton.com

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Matthew Skelton holistic innovation Originator of Adapt Together™ by Conflux Co-author of Team Topologies matthewskelton.com 3

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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 4

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Why your Target Operating Model needs to be flow-centric 6

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Flow-centric operating models shorten time-to-market, increase customer-responsiveness, reduce coupling, and increase staff engagement 8

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9 Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose

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10 Clear mission

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11 Financial eﬃciency

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12 Growth without slowdown

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13 “...using "flow" as a key organizing principle also results in more generalized business agility, mostly because we are encouraged to think about decoupling between separate "things" and the real value of what the organization provides.” Matthew Skelton https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7130519809980559360/

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14 First, a bit of background

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15 2013: Epic battles between Dev and Ops

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16 https://blog.matthewskelton.net/2013/10/22/what-t eam-structure-is-right-for-devops-to-flourish/

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17 https://web.devopstopologies.com/

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18 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) 19

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Team Topologies provides several things for organizations… 22

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23 Language for dealing with flow, boundaries, architecture, dynamics

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24 Heuristics (clues) for organizing teams and software

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25 Ways for teams to deﬁne expectations + close gaps

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26 A focus on fast ﬂow as a key driver

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27 Deliberate constraints on behaviors

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[quick overview] 28

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29 Stream-aligned team ➔ Long-lived ➔ End-to-end care and evolution of the service ➔ No hand-oﬀs to other teams ➔ Mix of skills (“cross-functional”) ➔ Small: around 8 people

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30 Stream-aligned team ➔ Long-lived ➔ End-to-end care and evolution of the service ➔ No hand-oﬀs to other teams ➔ Mix of skills (“cross-functional”) ➔ Small: around 8 people Flow of change

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31 Platform grouping

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33 Flow of value

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34 Cash Concept Flow of value

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35 User Need Flow of value

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36 Live service Version control Flow of value

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37 Flow of value Stream-aligned team Stream-aligned team

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38 Flow of value Stream-aligned team Stream-aligned team 😢

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39 Flow of value Stream-aligned team Stream-aligned team 😐 Facilitating Enabling team

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40 Flow of value Stream-aligned team Stream-aligned team 😊 Facilitating Enabling team Complicated Subsystem team XaaS

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Platform grouping 41 Flow of value Stream-aligned team Stream-aligned team Complicated Subsystem team XaaS XaaS Collaboration UX

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Platform grouping 42 Flow of value Stream-aligned team Stream-aligned team Complicated Subsystem team XaaS XaaS Stream-aligned team xN

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Platform grouping 43 Flow of change Stream-aligned team Stream-aligned team Complicated Subsystem team XaaS XaaS Collaboration Stream-aligned team xN ⚠ Team Topologies diagrams are always just “snapshots in time”, never ﬁxed designs

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The cost of tangled software 45

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46 If each person in the organization is blocked for 1 hour per working day, how much does this cost?

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47 ● Fully-loaded cost: €160k per year ● 260 paid days per year ● Total of 400 people

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48 Person fully weighted cost per year Person cost per day Hours blocked per 8-hour day Days blocked per 260-day year Cost of blockers per person per year Number of people 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 💥

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JP Morgan 49

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“How JP Morgan Applied Team Topologies to Improve Flow in a Market Leading Enterprise Platform” 50 https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=y3OL7dv2l48 Fast Flow Conf 💖 https://www.fastﬂowconf.com/

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“60% of dependencies reduced through better team design” 💥 52

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53 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]

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Untangling ≃ Decoupling 54

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Decoupling: separating things that do not need to be together 55

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Decoupling enables shorter time-to-value 57

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Decoupling enables multiple, independent flows of value, each with its own cadence 58

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59 Multiple, independent flows

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60 Multiple, independent flows, fractally

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Decoupling of teams & technology vs Diffusing of ideas for alignment & engagement 61

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Decoupling: teams, software, technology, deployments, data, business concepts, ... 62

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Diffusing: principles, practices, learning, techniques, approaches, ... 63

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64 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Diffusion of ideas for alignment

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DORA metrics & Team Topologies to the rescue! 66

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🔍 Use the 4 Key Metrics from Accelerate and add “blocker count” 67

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Accelerate Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, Gene Kim IT Revolution Press, 2018 Order via stores worldwide: https://itrevolution.com/book/accelerate/ 68

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4 key metrics: ‘Accelerate’ lead time deployment frequency Mean Time To Restore change fail percentage

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4 key metrics: ‘Accelerate’ lead time deployment frequency Mean Time To Restore change fail percentage Encourage fast ﬂow

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4 key metrics: ‘Accelerate’ lead time deployment frequency Mean Time To Restore change fail percentage Encourage operability

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What % of lead time is actual work? Example: 120 hours / (120+630) x 100 = 16% Flow Efficiency 72

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Measure ‘wait time’? https://www.isixsigma.com/methodology/lean-methodology/identify-constraints-and-reduce-wait-time-processes/ 73

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Measuring ‘wait time’ is hard Count the number of blocking waits as a proxy ✨ 74

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4 key metrics & ‘blocker count’ lead time deployment frequency Mean Time To Restore change fail percentage ‘blocker count’ as a proxy for flow efficiency 75

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Use 4 key metrics 📊 + “blocker count” to assess and find better service & team boundaries for flow 76

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“If we adjusted the service & team boundary here, would it improve the 4 key metrics?” 💓 77

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“If we adjusted the service & team boundary here, reduce the blocker count?” 📉 78

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Techniques from the Team Topologies community 79

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80 Independent Service Heuristics (ISH)

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81 “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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82 User Needs Mapping (UNM)

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83 “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

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84 Team Interaction Modeling (TIM)

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85 “[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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● Financial advice ● Founded 2009 ● Consumers & companies ● 'Explainable AI' ● Increasingly successful 93

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< 2019: growth x 6 94

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Mid-2019 HALT! 95

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September 2019 96

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Independent Service Heuristics https://github.com/TeamTopologies/Independent-Service-Heuristics Rules-of-thumb for identifying candidate value streams and domain boundaries by seeing if they could be run as a separate SaaS/cloud product. 97

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2020: New arch 98

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“Team Topologies ... has given us the tools we were looking for and have helped us to build a plan and have conﬁdence that we know where we’re going and how to get there.” Richard Marshall, CTO, Wealth Wizards 99

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Concepts ● Stream-aligned: build & run ● Boundaries that help ﬂow ● Supporting team types: reduce cognitive load on Stream teams 100

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Results ● Clear patterns and language ● Framework for design decisions ● Conﬁdence in scaling approach 101 https://medium.com/ww-engineering/to-monolith-or-to-microservice-f8c3f967e63c

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Thanks to: Richard Marshall CTO, Wealth Wizards (to 2021) 102 Further details: https://teamtopologies.com/wealthwizards

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GOV.UK Home Office 103

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“How the Home Office’s Immigration Technology department reduced its cloud costs by 40%” 104 https://www.gov.uk/government/case-studies/how-the-home-oﬃces- immigration-technology-department-reduced-its-cloud-costs-by-40

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Making service owners accountable for the $ spend for their service helps to clarify service boundaries 💡 106

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Use cost metrics as a “financial scalpel” 🔪 to split services apart for fast flow 107

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Architectures for flow 108

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110 Multiple, independent flows, fractally

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Respect Conway’s Law (aka ‘sociotechnical mirroring’) 112

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Clear ongoing ownership of services and systems 113

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Stream-aligned teams have end-to-end responsibility for a service (You Build It, You Run It) 114

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Platforms improve flow and reduce extraneous cognitive load 115

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Teams are small (~9), slowly changing, with ‘aligned autonomy’ 116

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Teams are empowered to sense and adjust boundaries to improve flow on a frequent basis 117

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118 Flow of value grouping

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119 Architecture for fast flow resembles an ecosystem of loosely-coupled independently-viable services with clear boundaries and ownership aligned to the flow of business value.

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120 Architecture for fast flow resembles an ecosystem of loosely-coupled independently-viable services with clear boundaries and ownership aligned to the flow of business value.

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121 Architecture for fast flow resembles an ecosystem of loosely-coupled independently-viable services with clear boundaries and ownership aligned to the flow of business value.

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122 Architecture for fast flow resembles an ecosystem of loosely-coupled independently-viable services with clear boundaries and ownership aligned to the flow of business value.

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123 Async messaging

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124 Separate data stores

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125 Domain-centric services

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126 Event-driven, async messaging Separate data stores Domain-centric services

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127 Adaptive Systems with Domain-Driven Design, Wardley Mapping, and Team Topologies: Architecture for Flow – 08 February 2025 Susanne Kaiser See https://www.infoq.com/presentations/ddd-wardley- mapping-team-topology/

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128 Architecture for fast flow resembles an ecosystem of loosely-coupled independently-viable services with clear boundaries and ownership aligned to the flow of business value.

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129 “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.” Adrian Cockcroft https://mastodon.social/@adrianco/111174832280576410 Technology strategy advisor, Partner at OrionX.net (ex Amazon Sustainability, AWS, Battery Ventures, Netﬂix, eBay, Sun Microsystems, CCL)

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130 “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.” Adrian Cockcroft https://mastodon.social/@adrianco/111174832280576410 Technology strategy advisor, Partner at OrionX.net (ex Amazon Sustainability, AWS, Battery Ventures, Netﬂix, eBay, Sun Microsystems, CCL) It’s co pli ate !

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132 organize for fast ﬂow of value We help product, technology and engineering leaders design high-impact team-of-teams organizations. teamtopologies.com

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Alignment and engagement for flow 133

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134 Multiple, independent flows, fractally

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If we have clear boundaries for flow, with limited interactions, how do we create alignment? How do we learn from each other at pace? 135

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136 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Diffusion of ideas for alignment

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137 Active diﬀusion of knowledge across team boundaries

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138 Alignment and engagement “High performers favor strategies that create community structures at both low and high levels in the organization...”

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139 internal conferences guilds Communities of Practice lunch & learn public blogs

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140 https://internaltechconf.com/ Internal Tech Conferences Victoria Morgan-Smith and Matthew Skelton

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141 “This initiative around internal conferences has been the single most eﬀective thing to align business and technology that I have seen in this organization” – Murray Hennessey, CEO, (UK retail co)

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142 https://internaltechconf.com/ Internal Tech Conferences Victoria Morgan-Smith and Matthew Skelton It’s co pli ate !

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143 “The way that the Conﬂux crew used their active knowledge diﬀusion approach to seek out and champion good practices was a real revelation to us at TELUS and helped to shift thinking around how we innovate and share successes.” – Steven Tannock, Director, Architecture (Platform Technology & Tools) at TELUS Digital

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144 Thriving organizations, delivering at speed™ Create alignment, trust, and engagement across your organization whilst delivering at pace with fast flow. adapttogether.info

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Why your Target Operating Model needs to be flow-centric 164

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166 Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose

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167 Clear mission

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168 Financial eﬃciency

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169 Growth without slowdown

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170 “...using "flow" as a key organizing principle also results in more generalized business agility, mostly because we are encouraged to think about decoupling between separate "things" and the real value of what the organization provides.” Matthew Skelton https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7130519809980559360/

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Flow-centric operating models shorten time-to-market, increase customer-responsiveness, reduce coupling, and increase staff engagement 175

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… but operating safely and humanely at speed needs flow-centric architectures via Team Topologies and flow-centric alignment via Adapt Together™ from Conflux 176

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Diffusing of ideas for alignment & engagement Decoupling of teams & technology 178

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179 The Adapt Together™ approach from Conflux creates alignment, trust, and engagement across your organization whilst delivering at pace with fast flow. adapttogether.info 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. teamtopologies.com

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thank you 180 matthewskelton.com