Supporting a Sustainable Fast Flow of Change with Effective Enabling Teams

Enabling Teams is one of the fundamental Team Topologies types. They exist to help identify and address missing capabilities in Stream-aligned teams and to accelerate upskilling within those teams. When used effectively, they become a significant enabler for the organization to achieve a more sustainable fast flow of change.

However, most organizations are not yet leveraging them to their full extent. They are often seen as a "side project" that some experts do when they can spare time from their main activities. However, Enabling Teams are much more than that and can be a significant differentiator and multiplying factor that enables the organization to accelerate its learning and shaping of new capabilities.

As someone who has worked with Enabling Teams for several years, I have seen firsthand the impact they can have on organizational effectiveness. In this talk, I will share a range of considerations, patterns, anti-patterns, and real-world experiences to help develop effective Enabling Teams.

My aim is to improve the understanding of Enabling Teams, inspire people to leverage them further and move forward in the journey towards Effective Enabling Teams.

🎥 Video from talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6gLh_X0A0c
ℹ️ For more info, check: https://esilva.net/enabling-teams

Transcript

1. Supporting a Sustainable Fast Flow of Change with Effective Enabling Teams Eduardo da Silva, PhD (esilva.net | @emgsilva | eduardo@esilva.net) FastFlowConf 2023, 2023-05-24
2. 2 Enabling Teams help Stream-aligned Teams upskill and address capability gaps
3. Leveraging Enabling Teams is strategic for modern orgs to achieve a more “sustainable Fast Flow of Change” 3
4. Sustainable Fast Flow of Change ↳quickly & sustainably respond to needs from our environment 4 Photo by Simon Berger on Unsplash 4
5. 5 Kickstarting Measuring Impact Scaling Journey Towards Effective Enabling Teams
6. 6 Kickstarting Measuring Impact Scaling Journey Towards Effective Enabling Teams Starting to practice Enabling Teams behaviors and having first Enabling Teams
7. 7 Kickstarting Measuring Impact Scaling Journey Towards Effective Enabling Teams Starting to practice Enabling Teams behaviors and having first Enabling Teams Have several teams, with clear mission and continuously measuring their impact
8. 8 Kickstarting Measuring Impact Scaling Journey Towards Effective Enabling Teams Starting to practice Enabling Teams behaviors and having first Enabling Teams Have several teams, with clear mission and continuously measuring their impact Enabling teams are first class-citizen used to scale strategic capabilities and platforms
9. 9 Source: https://pers.bol.com/en/facts-figures | Figures are from March 2023 ℹ 150+ Teams ℹ Teams organized around “Products” (multi-team scopes) ℹ Several Platform Groups
10. 10 Kickstarting Measuring Impact Scaling Upscaling Data Science capability in the organization to cope with its many scaling challenges. Group of Data Leads and Data Scientists applying Enabling Teams behaviors, as they help scale Data Science in teams and org.
11. 11 Kickstarting Measuring Impact Scaling Start small and show value
12. 12 🧭 Start small & Show Value • Focus on practicing “Enabling Behaviors”
13. 13 🧭 Start small & Show Value • Focus on practicing “Enabling Behaviors” • Avoid “analysis paralysis”, focus on showing value
14. 14 🧭 Start small & Show Value • Focus on practicing “Enabling Behaviors” • Avoid “analysis paralysis”, focus on showing value • Learn & understand what you org needs
15. 15 Kickstarting Measuring Impact Scaling Start small and show value Create conditions to involve the right people
16. 16 🧭 Create conditions to involve the right people • Pioneers and experts should feel safe to do Enabling work
17. 17 🧭 Create conditions to involve the right people • Pioneers and experts should feel safe to do Enabling work • Value Enabling Work - do not penalize experts from doing that
18. 18 🧭 Create conditions to involve the right people • Pioneers and experts should feel safe to do Enabling work • Value Enabling Work - do not penalize experts from doing that • Coach & incentivize managers and leaders to embrace Enabling work
19. 19 Kickstarting Measuring Impact Scaling Start small and show value Create conditions to involve the right people Obstacles to kickstart Enabling Teams
20. 20 🧭 Other obstacles to kickstart Enabling Teams • No support from leaders and managers • Cut funding of Enabling Teams because they are not creating product features • Too much Enabling work in progress
21. 21 Kickstarting Measuring Impact Scaling Cloud adoption (& migration from own datacenter) to improve overall scalability and velocity (of teams and systems). Several Enabling Teams facilitating 150+ teams upskilling and understanding their needs.
22. 22 Kickstarting Measuring Impact Scaling High impact, hard to measure
23. 23 🧭 High impact, hard to measure • Multiplying & propagating effect • Impact cannot be fully measured • Focus on measuring the direct impact and acknowledge high ROI
24. 24 Kickstarting Measuring Impact Scaling High impact, hard to measure Refine and pivot Enabling Teams mission
25. 25 🧭 Refine and pivot Enabling Teams mission • Must have a specific and purposeful mission • Set specific targets and facilitating approach • Continuously measure and learn - pivot if needed
26. 26 Kickstarting Measuring Impact Scaling High impact, hard to measure Refine and pivot Enabling Teams mission Relevant metrics for Enabling Teams
27. 27 🧭 Relevant metrics for Enabling Teams • When starting define metrics around the mission • Use Organization Performance metrics to identify priority for Enabling Teams and Work
28. 28 Kickstarting Scaling Measuring Impact Adopting Enabling Teams at scale, in particular to scaling Data Science and other key disciplines and capabilities (such as Architecture).
29. 29 Kickstarting Scaling Measuring Impact Leveraging short & long-lived Enabling Teams
30. 30 🧭 Leveraging short & long-lived Enabling Teams • Short-lived: most common; exist with very specific mission and focus; from few weeks to months • Long-lived structural: longer-term sensing and evolving skills and capabilities for the org • Most orgs needs both!
31. 31 Kickstarting Scaling Leveraging short & long-lived Enabling Teams Enabling Teams co-evolving internal platforms Measuring Impact
32. 32 🧭 Enabling Teams co-evolving internal platforms • Sense and validating needs & capabilities for internal platforms • Reduce required cognitive load of Platform Teams to understand and prioritize platform developments
33. 33 Kickstarting Leveraging short & long-lived Enabling Teams Enabling Teams co-evolving internal platforms Measuring Impact Scaling High impact, hard to measure Refine and pivot Enabling Teams mission Relevant metrics for Enabling Teams Start small and show value Create conditions to involve the right people Obstacles to kickstart Enabling Teams Journey Towards Effective Enabling Teams
34. 34 Photo by Simon Berger on Unsplash 34 🧭Effective Enabling Teams are essential for orgs to continuously learn & improve and to achieve a sustainable fast flow of change
36. Thank you! Eduardo da Silva, PhD Independent consultant & Team Topologies Valued Practitioner (TTVP) # @emgsilva | esilva.net | eduardo@esilva.net 36