Team Topologies is a leading approach to organizing teams for fast flow of value, focusing on team-based organizations and applicable to all knowledge work. It emphasizes decoupling flows of value, small team sizes for high trust, managing cognitive load, and aligning with system and organizational architectures.
Synchronization doesn't scale and leads to significant inefficiencies, such as teams waiting on each other, which costs organizations millions annually. Desynchronization allows for faster delivery of value by decoupling teams and using techniques like feature flags to deliver incremental value over time.
The four team types are stream-aligned teams (aligned to a value stream), enabling teams (experts who uplift other teams), complicated subsystem teams (handle highly specialized work), and platform teams (provide internal services to streamline teams).
Cognitive load is managed by ensuring teams are small enough to maintain high trust and focus on their core mission. Complicated subsystems and enabling teams help reduce cognitive load by handling specialized tasks, allowing stream-aligned teams to focus on delivering value.
Platform teams provide internal services and abstractions to streamline teams, reducing their cognitive load and enabling them to focus on delivering value. They act as a grouping of teams that offer simplified access to infrastructure, security, and other shared services.
Organizations should start with a pilot project focusing on an end-to-end value stream, such as improving a specific user journey. They should form a small stream-aligned team, identify necessary supporting teams (like platform or enabling teams), and use the pilot to learn and iterate on the approach.
Common pitfalls include taking a shallow understanding of the approach, focusing only on team structures without understanding the underlying principles, and failing to align processes, architecture, and funding with the value streams. Organizations often underestimate the cultural and organizational changes required.
Organizations can use techniques like dynamic reteaming to reshape teams healthily. They should monitor for friction in interactions between teams, which signals the need to adjust boundaries or responsibilities. This approach avoids blame and focuses on continuous improvement.
Matthew Skelton joins host Giovanni Asproni) to talk about team topologies—an approach to organizing teams for fast flow of value. The episode starts with a description of the underlying principles before exploring the approach in more detail. From there, they discuss when to consider implementing the approach; keys to a successful implementation; and some common mistakes to avoid. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society) and IEEE Software magazine).