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Using Enabling teams to enhance flow and diffus...

Using Enabling teams to enhance flow and diffuse practices at scale

Evolving an organization at speed requires a set of core principles and practices, with people trained up and engaged. Since the publication of the book Team Topologies in 2019, thousands of organizations worldwide have adopted Team Topologies principles for their digital operating model to help with this continuous evolution at speed.

One of the key aspects of Team Topologies is the use of Enabling teams to uplift capabilities (and detect skills gaps) in Stream-aligned teams, helping to maintain their autonomy and flow of value.

This talk covers key focus areas for Enabling teams, including:

- Enhancing flow and diffusing practices across the organization at scale
- Removing inter-team dependencies, improving financial efficiency
- Playing an active, informed role in upskilling, detecting gaps, improving platforms, and adjusting team boundaries
- Helping people to step up, embrace flow, help to nurture learning, and act as a 10x force for good

Ultimately, many roles previously focused on managing coupling & dependencies shift focus to continuously unblocking flow as part of Enabling teams, seeking out and amplifying good approaches by diffusing good practices across team and department boundaries.

[ From a talk at Agile Project Managers meetup group, Melbourne, AU - https://www.meetup.com/agile-project-managers-melbourne/events/300318237/ ]

Matthew Skelton

June 04, 2024
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  1. TeamTopologies.com @TeamTopologies Using Enabling teams to enhance flow and diffuse

    practices at scale Matthew Skelton, co-author of Team Topologies DDD and Agile PM Group - Melbourne | 2024-06-04 Talk 46
  2. Matthew Skelton 2 Co-author of the book Team Topologies Founder

    at Conflux “Ecosystem Engineering” LinkedIn: matthewskelton Mastodon: @[email protected]
  3. 3

  4. Team Topologies 4 Organizing business and technology teams for fast

    flow Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais IT Revolution Press, 2019 teamtopologies.com/book
  5. 5 “We are on a mission to make work more

    humane and more effective for everyone via Team Topologies patterns and principles.” https://teamtopologies.com/mission
  6. 6 Team Topologies ideas are now a key part of

    the AWS ‘Well-architected’ guidance https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/devops-g uidance/oa.std.1-organize-teams-into-distinct-topology-types-t o-optimize-the-value-stream.html “[OA.STD.1] Organize teams into distinct topology types to optimize the value stream”
  7. 7 Team Topologies ideas are now a key part of

    the Azure ‘Cloud Adoption Framework’ https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-adoption-fr amework/ready/considerations/devops-teams-topologies “Consider establishing an enabling team that can … support applications and platforms … ”
  8. 8 Team Topologies practices are predictive of higher organizational performance

    - SODOR https://www.puppet.com/resources/state-of-devops-report “Highly evolved organizations tend to follow the Team Topologies model”
  9. How can we use Enabling teams to enhance flow and

    diffuse practices across the organization at scale? 9
  10. Why: the cost of tangled software Effective Enabling teams Enabling

    teams - the TT approach Real-world examples + starting 11 11
  11. 15 CFO 💰 • Financial efficiency from reducing dependencies ◦

    (reshaping team and system architecture and communications) • Increased financial transparency ◦ (better cost tracking at all levels)
  12. 17 CIO/CTO 💻 • Better throughput with digital services •

    Aligning tech to business • Skills, training, capabilities • Navigating tech innovation
  13. 18 HR 󰰁 • Organizational structures that work for fast

    flow and business agility • Employee engagement and wellbeing
  14. Organizations need: • Quicker time to value • Better financial

    transparency • Increased staff engagement • Reduced coordination costs 20
  15. 21 If each engineer in the organization is blocked for

    1 hour per working day, how much does this cost?
  16. 22 • Fully-loaded cost: €160k per year • 260 paid

    days per year • Total of 400 engineers
  17. 23 Engineer fully weighted cost per year Engineer cost per

    day Hours blocked per 8-hour day Days blocked per 260-day year Cost of blockers per engineer per year Number of engineers Total cost of blockers per year €160,000.00 €615.38 1 32.5 €20,000.00 400 €8,000,000.00 €8 million per year 💥
  18. Case Study “How JP Morgan Applied Team Topologies to Improve

    Flow in a Market Leading Enterprise Platform” 25 https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=y3OL7dv2l48 Fast Flow Conf 💖 https://www.fastflowconf.com/
  19. 28 Engineer fully weighted cost per year Engineer cost per

    day Hours blocked per 8-hour day Days blocked per 260-day year Cost of blockers per engineer per year Number of engineers Total cost of blockers per year €160,000.00 €615.38 1 32.5 €20,000.00 400 €8,000,000.00 €8 million per year 💥 Remember this? [Note: these are not figures from JP Morgan]
  20. 31 1 - Organizing for fast flow helps us to

    remove inter-team dependencies, improving financial efficiency
  21. Team Topologies 33 Organizing business and technology teams for fast

    flow Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais IT Revolution Press, 2019 teamtopologies.com/book
  22. Organization operating model constraints 34 1. Focus on flow 2.

    Ensure there is high trust inside teams 3. Design teams to be persistent (long-lived) 4. Limit team cognitive load 5. Enable rapid, safe changes to apps, data, infrastructure, etc. 6. Ensure that incentives are healthy for 24x7 operation and on-call 7. Encourage teams to be close to their customers - internal and external 8. Acknowledge that it is not possible to predict the behaviour of modern complex software ecosystems - design your processes to match 9. Encourage ongoing discovery and innovation at team and product levels 10. Avoid teams waiting on many other teams during delivery Learning from “DevOps” since 2008
  23. 41 7 - Encourage teams to be close to their

    customers - internal and external
  24. 42 8 - Acknowledge that it is not possible to

    predict the behaviour of modern complex software ecosystems - design your processes to match
  25. “Team Topologies is a set of coherent patterns to encourage

    emergent behaviours for fast flow” 45 Matthew Skelton
  26. The "flow of change" is the work/changes needed for a

    product or service on an ongoing basis (aka “flow of value”) 46
  27. 55 “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
  28. 57 “User Needs Mapping attempts to capture the first 4

    steps of the Wardley Mapping process … for identifying potential team [and service] boundary” https://teamtopologies.com/unm
  29. 59 “[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
  30. Team Topologies provides: • Language for dealing with flow, boundaries,

    architecture, dynamics • Heuristics (clues) for organizing teams and software • A focus on fast flow as a key driver 60
  31. 61

  32. 62

  33. TT principle #1 65 4 team types (well, 3 +

    1) grouping Image © 2019 Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais. Used with permission.
  34. TT principle #2 68 3 team interaction modes Image ©

    2019 Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais. Used with permission.
  35. The constraints on interactions provide signals to tell us when

    boundaries are not good for fast flow 69
  36. The constraints on interactions provide signals to tell us about

    intent/mission, capabilities, skills, strategy, and lots more… 70
  37. Organizing for fast flow means we are happy with: duplication,

    (a few) different versions, async + eventual consistency, ‘internal marketplace’, etc. 72
  38. Using team cognitive load as a key architectural and design

    principle means we have a humane, compassionate, and realistic workplace 74
  39. TVP avoids ‘platform bloat’ by focusing on enhancing flow and

    reducing team cognitive load - rather than technology 76
  40. Empowering teams to adjust boundaries for flow uses local knowledge

    for regular incremental gains, avoiding a dreaded ‘Re-org’ every 5 years 78
  41. 79 2 - Evolving at speed requires a set of

    core principles and practices, with people trained up and engaged
  42. 90 3 - Enabling teams play an active, informed role

    in upskilling, detecting gaps, improving platforms, and adjusting team boundaries
  43. 96 4 - Enabling teams seek out and amplify good

    approaches by diffusing good practices across team and department boundaries
  44. 101 Detect and bridge capability gaps in Stream-aligned teams (SATs)

    to help the teams become decoupled and independent through new skills Discover common problems across multiple teams Liaise with platforms to recommend and shape useful services for SATs Enabling teams
  45. 102

  46. 103 Agile Coach Scrum Leader / Scrum Master Program Manager

    / Project Manager Product Delivery Manager Architect / Senior Staff Engineer
  47. 109 “How would this approach affect flow, cognitive load, stewardship,

    architecture, product viability, boundaries, … both inside and outside the ~8-person team?”
  48. How can we bring some coherence to different Enabling team

    activities across the organization? 110
  49. 112 Expect a few different approaches at the same time,

    but not tens or 100s. Learn quickly, diffuse the learning, adopt the most effective approaches.
  50. Internal Tech Conferences 114 Accelerate Multi-team Learning Victoria Morgan-Smith and

    Matthew Skelton Conflux Books, 2019 internaltechconf.com
  51. 115 5 - Many roles previously focused on managing coupling

    & dependencies shift focus to continuously unblocking flow
  52. Case Study 119 “We at RBI have established a successful

    team of Engineering Coaches based on this ideas that help teams to improve their development process and their testing and test automation approach” https://rruzitschka.medium.com/team-topologies-as-an-organizational-pattern-language-part-3-8a84704e218a
  53. Case Study 120 “It is crucial not to see this

    team as a resource pool as this would severely impact the autonomy of the stream aligned team.”
  54. Case Study 121 “The engineering coaches are a team of

    Senior Engineers with … (practical) experience in the area of CI/CD and Testing/Test Automation. Their task is … work with the hosting teams and coach them …”
  55. Case Study 122 “Coaches work ideally around 50% of their

    time with the team. The rest of their time is used for self-training, training others and community work in guilds and chapters.”
  56. Case Study 123 “The coaches are also expected to be

    ambassadors for our central engineering platform and must be able to explain the benefits of good engineering practices. ”
  57. Case Study 127 Fintech scale-up, HQ in NL Open Banking

    APIs - SaaS 150+ bank customers 50+ countries
  58. Case Study 128 “colleagues interested in a common topic can

    form a book club and … attend various conferences and workshops.” https://mambu.com/insights/articles/leading-dynamic-teams-autonomy-and-alignment
  59. Case Study 129 “new and valuable learnings are usually presented

    during internal workshops boosting team knowledge and improving alignment.” https://mambu.com/insights/articles/leading-dynamic-teams-autonomy-and-alignment
  60. Case Study 130 [ Agile Coaches formed a community to

    help facilitate rapid adoption of practices from Team Topologies ]
  61. 132 7 - Enabling teams play a key role in

    developing and sustaining a ‘generative’ culture (a learning organization)
  62. Internal Tech Conferences 135 Accelerate Multi-team Learning Victoria Morgan-Smith and

    Matthew Skelton Conflux Books, 2019 internaltechconf.com
  63. Why: the cost of tangled software Effective Enabling teams Enabling

    teams - the TT approach Real-world examples + starting 136 136
  64. How can we use Enabling teams to enhance flow and

    diffuse practices across the organization at scale? 137
  65. 138 1 - Organizing for fast flow helps us to

    remove inter-team dependencies, improving financial efficiency
  66. 139 2 - Evolving at speed requires a set of

    core principles and practices, with people trained up and engaged
  67. 140 3 - Enabling teams play an active, informed role

    in upskilling, detecting gaps, improving platforms, and adjusting team boundaries
  68. 141 4 - Enabling teams seek out and amplify good

    approaches by diffusing good practices across team and department boundaries
  69. 142 5 - Many roles previously focused on managing coupling

    & dependencies shift focus to continuously unblocking flow
  70. 144 7 - Enabling teams play a key role in

    developing and sustaining a ‘generative’ culture (a learning organization)