How to use ‘Economies of Empowerment’ to get the benefits of both speed and scale - AgileAus 2025

Many organizations struggle to scale nimble ways of working as the organization or department grows, stifling innovation and delivery effectiveness. What worked at a small scale appears expensive at larger scales, where drive for deduplication and efficiency begins to couple together previously separate initiatives, slowing them down.

The traditional management approach of “Economies of Scale” - taken from manufacturing - does not work well for knowledge work and continuously evolving digital services that are the foundation of many organizations today because digital services are not the mass-production of identical widgets. However, “Economies of Speed” - where time-to-market is the overriding factor - are often not sustainable beyond a funding round, deadline, or acquisition.

Instead of a back and forth ‘flip-flop’ between organizing for scale and organizing for speed, organizations can get the best of both approaches by organizing for empowerment. Using “Economies of Empowerment” as the organizing principle drives clarity of mission, purposeful boundaries that work for flow, continuous adaptation to new technologies, and rapid innovation via cross-team learning & sharing.

In this talk, Matthew Skelton - co-author of the groundbreaking book Team Topologies and CEO/CTO at Conflux - shares insights from helping hundreds of organizations to apply principles and practices from Team Topologies, Adapt Together™, and related approaches in order to scale nimble value delivery via empowered teams and “Economies of Empowerment”.

Key take-aways:
- Operating effectively at scale and speed requires us to look beyond structures, frameworks, and processes
- Focus on empowering teams to be effective stewards of long-lived services using principles from Team Topologies
- Drive engagement, trust, and alignment via active knowledge diffusion and cross-team learning
- Meet the needs of COO, CFO and other ExCo roles with a clear narrative around both value delivery and financial performance

Transcript

1. ‘Economies of Empowerment’ get the benefits of both speed and scale Matthew Skelton Co-author of ‘Team Topologies’ Originator of Adapt Together™ by Conflux matthewskelton.com K306 Agile Aus 2025 - Sydney | 24 June 2025
2. Economies of Scale 🐘 versus Economies of Speed 🏎 2
3. Economies of Scale 🐘 versus Economies of Speed 🏎 3
4. Challenge: How can organizations navigate away from a binary choice between speed and scale and instead get the benefits of both? 4
6. Example: Scale-up reaches market fit, gets acquired by BigCorp … but then loses its effectiveness as BigCorp approaches take over 6
8. Example: New service line or product within a large corp or GOV dept has initial success but now must become “enterprise”-y 8
10. Example: Previous funding shrinks and there is push towards operational efficiency 10
11. Matthew Skelton empowering and augmenting teams using technology Originator of Adapt Together™ by Conflux Co-author of Team Topologies matthewskelton.com 11
12. Recent work with: • Insurance group • Established bank • Scaleup bank • Gaming & betting company • Telecoms companies 12
13. Instead of a back and forth ‘flip-flop’ between operating for scale and operating for speed, organizations can get the best of both approaches by ‘economies of empowerment’. 13
14. 14 economies of empowerment: operating for agency of individuals, teams, departments… for outsized outcomes
15. ❏ ‘Infrastructure for agency: in the form of Team Topologies ❏ ‘Vending Machine’ self-service discipline via APIs ❏ Treat compliance as enhancing agency via automation to empower teams ❏ Use active knowledge diffusion to uplift engagement, trust, alignment, and awareness 15
16. Scale 🐘 Speed 🏎 Empowerment 💪 16
18. Economies of Scale 🐘 18 Cost Efficiency Simpler technology landscape Negotiation power Interdependencies Lower adaptability Single Points of Failure
19. 19 Minimize variation Minimize duplication Drive down costs Prefer manageability
21. Economies of Speed 🏎 21 Faster time-to-market Operational agility Higher responsiveness Higher costs Regulatory complexity Non-traditional management
22. 22 Welcome variation Accept duplication Accept higher costs Prefer accountability
23. 23 Importance of economies of scale Importance of economies of speed 🐘 🏎 💪 ⁉
24. 24 Importance of economies of scale Importance of economies of speed 🐘 🏎 💪 ⁉
27. Economies of Empowerment 💪 27 Fast time-to-market Operational agility Responsiveness Technology as enabler Focus on outcomes Regulation acts as a differentiator Thriving workplaces
28. 28 Organize and operate for agency Convergence to a few solutions Diversity of supply and services Innovation around compliance API / ecosystem mindset
30. 30 Importance of economies of scale Importance of economies of speed 🐘 🏎 💪 ⁉ What’s needed to make a transition to Economies of Empowerment?
31. ❏ Team Topologies ❏ Self-service APIs discipline ❏ Compliance as enhancing agency ❏ Active Knowledge Diffusion 31
32. ‘Infrastructure for agency’ via Team Topologies 32
33. Team Topologies paraphrased: “Given the need for ongoing stewardship of long-lived services, how can we realistically arrange the flow of value to be rapid, safe, sustainable?” 33
34. Team types Team interaction modes Heuristic for boundaries Long-lived stewardship Architecture for value flow Evolution patterns … 34
35. 35 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Flow of value
36. 36 EBSCO Information Services, a leading provider of research databases, leveraged Team Topologies with Conflux's support to optimize its organizational dynamics for software delivery. • $9.1M recurring annual cost reduction • 26% faster feature delivery • Dependency-related blockers decreased by 45% • Repeatable enterprise capability playbook • Significantly higher team satisfaction https://confluxhq.com/ebsco
37. 37 More at: teamtopologies.com/examples
38. What about Agentic AI? 🤖 38
39. Tom Peperkamp 39 “... The organizations poised to win [with Agentic AI] are not necessarily those with the most advanced models, but those whose operating models are already built for trust, clarity, and bounded autonomy … Team Topologies provides the blueprint for creating the bounded autonomy and clear interfaces that agents need to thrive.” https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tompeperkamp_agentic-ai-is-coming-but-it-wont-b e-the-activity-7337585782481711105-hzy0/
40. Stuart Winter-Tear 40 “... Team Topologies [...] offers something Agentic AI desperately needs - but cannot invent on its own: Clear boundaries, Stable interfaces, Aligned domains, A culture of collaborative ownership. [Team Topologies is] … the infrastructure for agency itself.” https://www.linkedin.com/posts/stuart-winter-tear_orgs-that-have-worked-out-ho w-to-empower-activity-7339513909151719425-teiT/
41. Mission-driven not-for-profit core + entrepreneurial ecosystem Join in: 41 ➡ teamtopologies.com/mission
42. Team Topologies provides the organizational ‘infrastructure for agency’ and empowerment 42
43. ‘Vending Machine’ self-service discipline via APIs 43
44. “As-a-Service” 44
46. Butler / white glove • Custom requirements • Immediate attention • Highly personal • Does not scale
48. Vending machine • Transactional and scalable • Compose new products from vending machine products • Negotiate asynchronously
49. Vending machine Example: Take products from a vending machine, add to a bag, sell as ready meal
50. 50 Book: Unbundling the Enterprise https://itrevolution.com/product/unbundling-the-enterprise/ By Stephen Fishman, Matt McLarty APIs, Optionality, and the Science of Happy Accidents (Includes value dynamics calculations)
51. 51 Unbundling the Enterprise: OOOps Example: Amazon • Create optionality by unbundling core infrastructure capabilities into API-enabled digital services • Business [and tech] leaders identify opportunities by aligning tech innovation with the … need for … services • Drive optimization and continuous improvement through … “sense and respond” across every team and activity p.133, UtE
52. APIs (vending mindset) Empowers teams and groups - inside and outside the org - to innovate autonomously without need for central control: “distributed innovation”
53. APIs (vending mindset) Use of external APIs (public) drives significantly bigger growth (UtE, p.166) Use of internal APIs provides the discipline and ideas to “harvest”
55. Vending Machine (API) model provides agency, empowering teams to deliver and innovate autonomously 55
56. Treat compliance as enhancing agency via automation to empower teams 56
57. 57 https://olympic.ca/sports/slalom/
58. 58 Use the compliance requirements as “guide-poles” on a slalom course - plot the quickest route to success. Competitors will also be struggling.
59. 59 Use the compliance requirements as a “map” of business opportunities to exploit with externalized API services. If it’s hard, make it easy for new customers to navigate.
60. 60 Turn Compliance from a Bottleneck into a Competitive Advantage Kosli automates governance by recording every change, enforcing policies, and proving compliance instantly kosli.com
61. 61 Clearly defined and illuminated compliance controls empower teams to delivery rapidly and safely. Don’t expect teams to kayak slalom in the dark!
62. Reframe compliance as a way to empower teams with more agency 62
63. Use active knowledge diffusion to uplift engagement, trust, alignment, awareness 63
64. If we have clear boundaries for flow, with limited interactions, how do we create alignment? How do we learn from each other at pace? How do we deduplicate and increase financial efficiency? 64
65. 65 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Flow of value
66. 66 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Flow of value Unintentional duplication
67. 67 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Flow of value Active knowledge diffusion
68. 68 Active diffusion of knowledge across team boundaries
69. 70 internal conferences guilds Communities of Practice lunch & learn public blogs
70. 71 internaltechconf.com Internal Tech Conferences Victoria Morgan-Smith and Matthew Skelton
71. 72 Innovation & Practices Enabling team
73. 74 Creating a deep ‘mechanical sympathy’ with the technology to navigate opportunities and limitations
74. 75 Seeking out and spotlighting currently-good practices is a kind of Kai-Zen (continunous improvement)
75. 77 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Flow of value Unintentional duplication
76. 78 “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
77. 79 “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)
79. 81 adapttogether.info Create alignment, trust, engagement, and awareness across your organization whilst delivering at speed.
80. 82 loosely-coupled, learning organization
81. Active knowledge diffusion empowers teams to share, learn, and align at speed and scale, driving innovation and efficiencies 83
82. Summary 84
83. 85 Importance of economies of scale Importance of economies of speed 🐘 🏎 💪 ⁉ What’s needed to make a transition to Economies of Empowerment?
84. ❏ ‘Infrastructure for agency: in the form of Team Topologies ❏ ‘Vending Machine’ self-service discipline via APIs ❏ Treat compliance as enhancing agency via automation to empower teams ❏ Use active knowledge diffusion to uplift engagement, trust, alignment, and awareness 86
85. 87 Organize and operate for agency Convergence to a few solutions Diversity of supply and services Innovation around compliance API / ecosystem mindset
86. 88 economies of empowerment: operating for agency of individuals, teams, departments… for outsized outcomes
87. 89 WE CAN DO THIS! 💪
88. let’s work together 90 matthewskelton.com
89. Resources 91
90. Mission-driven not-for-profit core + entrepreneurial ecosystem Join in: 92 ➡ teamtopologies.com/mission
91. 93 • Architecture for Flow 📕 ◦ susannekaiser.net/books/ • Collaborative Software Design 📙 ◦ collaborative-software-design.com • TT modeling shapes 💡 ◦ teamtopologies.com/shapes • User Needs Mapping 🗺 ◦ userneedsmapping.com • Value Dynamics Mapping 🕸 ◦ valuedynamicsmapping.com Resources
92. 94 • Join the TT Community 🧑 🤝 󰘉 ◦ community.teamtopologies.com • Becomes a TT Advocate 📢 ◦ teamtopologies.com/tta • Become a TT Partner 󰹿 󰺄 ◦ teamtopologies.com/partners Resources
93. 95 • Transformation and consulting help via key trusted TT partners 💼 ◦ teamtopologies.com/enablement Resources
94. 96 Resources Book: Team Topologies https://teamtopologies.com/book By Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais Organizing Business and Technology for Fast Flow of Value Second Edition: September 2025
95. 97 Resources Book: Internal Tech Conferences https://internaltechconf.com/ By Victoria Morgan-Smith and Matthew Skelton Accelerating Multi-team Learning
96. 98 Resources Book: Unbundling the Enterprise https://itrevolution.com/product/unbundling-the-enterprise/ By Stephen Fishman, Matt McLarty APIs, Optionality, and the Science of Happy Accidents (Includes value dynamics calculations)
97. 99 Resources Book: Empowered Agile Transformation https://www.alexandrastokes.com/store/p/empowered-agi le-transformation-beyond-the-framework By Alex Stokes Beyond the Framework
98. 100 Resources Book: Product Operations https://www.productoperations.com/ By Melissa Perri and Denise Tilles How successful companies build better products at scale
99. 101 Resources Book: Empowered https://www.svpg.com/books/empowered-ordinary-peopl e-extraordinary-products/ By Marty Cagan with Chris Jones Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products
100. 102 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
101. 103 adapttogether.info Create alignment, trust, engagement, and awareness across your organization whilst delivering at speed.
102. let’s work together 104 matthewskelton.com