How to fail at Team Topologies - lessons for fast flow success - Matthew Skelton - DevOpsDays Oslo

The book Team Topologies points the way to profound changes for the operating model for organizations building and running software-enriched services. These changes take months or years, but many organizations have underestimated the effort, skills, and dedication needed to adopt a fast flow approach.

In this talk, Matthew Skelton - founder at Conflux and co-author of the book Team Topologies - explores some of the pitfalls that organizations stumble into when trying to adopt the Team Topologies ideas, together with principles and effective techniques that work well when moving towards fast flow with Team Topologies:

- Working backwards from required outcomes
- Encouraging healthy and humane organization dynamics
- Using group insights to find and reshape boundaries for flow
- Investing in team and system architectures that work for flow
- And using one or more dedicated Enabling teams to guide and catalyze the changes needed

Ultimately, becoming proficient with fast flow and Team Topologies means becoming good at small, continuous changes to the teams and organization.

---

From a keynote talk at DevOpsDays Oslo 2023 https://devopsdays.org/events/2023-oslo/program

Transcript

1. 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’
2. Lessons learned about TT from working with 100s of organizations since 2019… (we made the mistake so you don’t have to!) 2
3. … inspired by Frozen II 3
4. 4 Wandering Oaken
5. Who am I? Matthew Skelton Founder at Conflux - confluxhq.com Co-author of the book ‘Team Topologies’ “Ecosystem engineering” Social media: @matthewskelton 5
6. 💖 Success with Team Topologies 📖 Origin story of Team Topologies 6 ⚔ The quest: what do we want from TT 🐉 Obstacles: things to avoid with TT
7. 📖 Where did Team Topologies come from and what’s involved? 7
8. 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. 8 teamtopologies.com
10. 10 2013
11. 11 Epic battles between Dev and Ops
12. 12 https://blog.matthewskelton.net/2013/10/22/what-team-structure-is-right-for-devops-to-flourish/
13. 13 https://web.devopstopologies.com/
14. 14 https://web.devopstopologies.com/ Used by Netflix, Condé Nast, Accenture, etc. etc.
15. Thanks to Gene Kim and IT Revolution Press (and many other inspiring people) 15
16. 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 16
17. Team Topologies is a set of constraints to encourage emergent behaviours for fast flow 17 (Matthew Skelton)
18. TT constraint #1 18 4 team types (well, 3 + 1) grouping Image © 2019 Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais. Used with permission.
19. Each team type (or grouping) has specific expected behaviors 19
20. Each team type (or grouping) has a specific relation to flow and team cognitive load 20
21. TT principle #2 21 3 team interaction modes Image © 2019 Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais. Used with permission.
22. The constraints on interactions provide signals to tell us when boundaries are not good for fast flow 22
23. The constraints on interactions provide signals to tell us about intent/mission, capabilities, skills, strategy, and lots more… 23
24. TT principle #3 24 fast flow
25. Organizing for fast flow means we are happy with: duplication, (a few) different versions, async + eventual consistency, ‘internal marketplace’, etc. 25
26. TT principle #4 26 team cognitive load
27. Using team cognitive load as a key architectural and design principle means we have a humane, compassionate, and realistic workplace 27
28. TT principle #5 28 thinnest viable platform (TVP)
29. TVP avoids ‘platform bloat’ by focusing on enhancing flow and reducing team cognitive load - rather than technology 29
30. TT principle #6 30 empower teams to adjust boundaries to enhance flow
31. Empowering teams to adjust boundaries for flow uses local knowledge for regular incremental gains, avoiding a dreaded ‘Re-org’ every 5 years 31
32. ⚔ The quest: what do we want from Team Topologies? 32
33. CEO 33 Elsa
34. CEO: break the spell of “busywork” 34
35. • “Why does everything take so loooooooooong?” • More predictable results 35 CEO
36. CFO 36 Anna
37. CFO: increase financial efficiency 37
38. • Financial efficiency from reducing dependencies ◦ (reshaping team and system architecture and communications) • Increased financial transparency ◦ (better cost tracking at all levels) 38 CFO
39. Head of HR 39 Olaf
40. HR: healthy organization for fast flow 40
41. • Organizational structures that work for fast flow and business agility • Employee engagement and wellbeing 41 Head of HR
42. • Better productivity - yesterday! 42 CFO and Head of HR
43. PMO 43 Kristoff
44. PMO: avoid coordination nightmare 44
45. • Increased effectiveness • Increased financial efficiency • Increased productivity • Better wellbeing and engagement • Enhanced business agility & adaptiveness 45 Overall, what do leaders want?
46. Team Topologies provides increased effectiveness, financial efficiency, wellbeing, productivity, and agility 46 (with the right approach and mindset)
47. 🐉 Obstacles: things to avoid with Team Topologies 47
49. 49 Earth Wind Fire Water
50. 50 Fast Flow Team Cognitive Load Intent and Purpose Humanity The four spirits of Team Topologies
51. #1 Expect the changes to take “about 3 weeks” 51 How to fail at Team Topologies
52. 52 We’re calling this controlling what you can when things feel out of control.
53. #2 Expect the amount of learning and change to be small 53 How to fail at Team Topologies
54. 54 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.
55. #3 Seeing the solution as “structure”, not org dynamics 55 How to fail at Team Topologies
56. 56 [The surface of the street starts to heave and ripple]
57. #4 Making a ‘big bang’ change rather than incremental 57 How to fail at Team Topologies
58. 58 [Massive wall of water about to destroy the city]
59. 59 You are allowed to do a change freeze ONLY if you are Disney princess!
60. #5 Coupling things together for ease of management 60 How to fail at Team Topologies
61. 61 Promise me we’ll do this together, okay? I promise
62. #6 Seeking “following orders”, rather than empowered people 62 How to fail at Team Topologies
63. 63 Magic TT makes people feel too powerful, too entitled. It makes them think they can defy the will of a king PMO.
64. #7 Not having the right foundations and skills 64 How to fail at Team Topologies
65. 65 Fear is what can’t be trusted
66. 💖 Tips for success with Team Topologies (and fast flow in general) 66
67. 67 When one can see no future, all one can do is the next right thing.
68. 68 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)
69. #1 Expect the change to take months or years 69 How to succeed at Team Topologies
70. 70 34 years, 5 months, and 23 days
71. #2 Work backwards from outcomes 71 How to succeed at Team Topologies
72. Outcome: spell broken How: stone giants destroy dam with rocks 🤷 72
73. #3 Think about healthy, humane organization dynamics 73 How to succeed at Team Topologies
74. Advancing technologies as both our savior and our doom 74
75. #4 Use group insights to find boundaries for flow 75 How to succeed at Team Topologies
76. Finding boundaries can be fun! 76
77. Techniques from the Team Topologies community 77
78. 78 Independent Service Heuristics (ISH)
79. 79 “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
80. 80 User Needs Mapping (UNM)
81. 81 “User Needs Mapping [is] the first 4 steps of the Wardley Mapping process … for identifying potential team [and service] boundary” https://teamtopologies.com/unm
82. 82 Team Interaction Modeling (TIM)
83. 83 “[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
84. #5 Invest in architectures and processes for fast flow 84 How to succeed at Team Topologies
85. Eventual consistency for all 85
86. “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.” 86 Adrian Cockcroft https://mastodon.social/@adrianco/111174832280576410
87. #6 Use a dedicated internal Enabling team for TT & flow 87 How to succeed at Team Topologies
88. “I’m here. How can I help?” 88
89. 89 Fast Flow Team Cognitive Load Intent and Purpose Humanity The four spirits of Team Topologies
90. ALL STAKEHOLDERS HAPPY 🎉 90 CEO CFO HR PMO
91. Team Topologies provides increased effectiveness, financial efficiency, wellbeing, productivity, and agility 91 (with the right approach and mindset)
92. I wish this could last forever, and yet change mocks us with her beauty. 92
93. Thank you Matthew Skelton Conflux - confluxhq.com Team Topologies - teamtopologies.com 93 Copyright (c) 2017-2023 Conflux group of companies. All Rights Reserved. The name “Conflux” and the filled C device are Registered Trademarks ® in multiple jurisdictions. The Team Topologies “tt” logo (in color, greyscale, and both with and without the words “Team Topologies”) is a Registered Trademark ® in multiple jurisdictions. Not to be used without express written permission. All Rights Reserved. Some images taken from the movie Frozen II. Copyright © Disney Corporation.