The key predictive IT delivery metrics uncovered by the book Accelerate and the State of DevOps Reports - aka “DORA metrics” - point the way towards flow-centric operating models for every modern enterprise building and running software-enriched services. However, improving flow of value within an organization is often difficult due to cross-team dependencies and coupling: everything is tangled. In an organization with 700 software engineers, if 60% of the time is spent waiting on other teams - a typical industry flow efficiency - the financial penalty of dependencies and coupling is high. It is vital, therefore, to invest in decoupling and removing team dependencies - untangling - to enable value to flow better and more efficiently.
In this talk, Matthew Skelton - founder at Conflux and co-author of the book Team Topologies - explores techniques and metrics to help you untangle your software delivery, together with real-world examples of organizations successfully applying Team Topologies and related approaches to decouple teams and improve flow:
- Independent Service Heuristics (ISH)
- User Needs Mapping (UNM)
- The 4 key metrics (Accelerate/DORA)
- Flow efficiency and proxy measures
Increasingly, the ideas and patterns in Team Topologies (TT) are being applied worldwide not just in software/IT but increasingly in non-IT contexts like legal services, healthcare, education, and HR, resulting in quicker time-to-market and better ROI. These applications of TT point the way to an operating model for fast flow organizations.
Decoupling for flow is complimented by diffusion of knowledge for alignment and engagement using Adapt Together™️. Adapt Together™️ encourages and promotes flow-centric, humane, team-based ways of working that increase operational efficiency and staff engagement, leading to elevated customer and business outcomes.
Devised by the visionary leader in holistic innovation, Matthew Skelton - co-author of the award-winning book Team Topologies - together with insights and experience from colleagues and peers across multiple industries, Adapt Together™️ is an engaging, actionable way to produce lasting results in knowledge-work for bold, innovative organizations.
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From a talk given at Agile Yorkshire meetup on 04 September 2024 | Talk K28