Business and Technical Agility with Team Topologies

Organizations that do not adapt rapidly to the modern, highly-changeable business environment are failing, and failing in large numbers. Obviously the emergence of AI is a strong driver of change but increased regulation, pressures from climate change, digitalization, and demand for flexible working environments are also driving a need for business agility in organizations of all sizes.

In this talk, we’ll explore how the patterns and principles from Team Topologies promote true business agility through a rapid flow of software change, fast feedback from running systems, a strong drive for loose coupling, and an awareness of sociotechnical mirroring.

Team Topologies is helping organizations around the world achieve true business agility and a balance between team autonomy and accountability. We will look at concrete examples of organizations in different industries that have adopted the ideas and patterns from Team Topologies, and how to transition to a network-oriented organization.

Transcript

2. Business & Technical Agility with Team Topologies
3. Manuel Pais 4 Team Topologies co-author and trainer Past: developer, release manager, tester, team lead, DevOps & CI/CD consultant
4. 9 Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash Speed of change: technology, regulations, climate, geopolitical
5. 10 Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash Increased global and local competition
6. 11 Augmented capabilities with AI
7. 12 Why business agility? Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’ Required: product mindset Real-world examples
8. Why business agility? 13
9. Business Agility (1): the ability to respond rapidly* to changing internal and external conditions (* in hours)
10. Business Agility (2): the ability to thrive in complex environments
11. How do we optimize for a fast flow of change?
12. How do we make sure we focus on user needs?
13. How do we easily ‘course-correct’ when we need to adjust?
14. Fast flow is a prerequisite for business agility
15. Flow (1): to move in one direction, especially continuously and easily
16. Flow (2): how value* moves through a value stream or product from one end to the other end (* customer value)
17. “fast flow means multiple ongoing parallel streams of value to customers via software services done rapidly, safely, and sustainably” 29
18. 37 Why business agility? Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’ Required: product mindset Real-world examples
19. Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
20. 43 State of DevOps 2019 Key technical practices • Lightweight change process • Real DR testing • Maintainable code • Loosely-coupled systems • Monitoring & observability • Trunk-based development • Deployment automation
21. Accelerate Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, Gene Kim IT Revolution Press, 2018 Order via stores worldwide: https://itrevolution.com/book/accelerate/ 44
22. 45 4 key metrics: ‘Accelerate’ Lead Time Deployment Frequency Mean Time To Restore Change Fail Percentage
23. 46 Fast feedback via deployment pipelines
24. 47 Good technical practices (TDD, …)
25. 49 Cloud-native: high observability quick recovery
26. 51 Continuous testing performance scanning deployment monitoring right-sizing integration
27. 52 https://puppet.com/resources/report/2021-state-of-devops-report
28. 53 “Organizations should not expect to become highly evolved just because they use cloud and automation… They are held back by organizational structure and dynamics”
29. 54 Team ownership of software & services
30. Re-aligned architecture(s) software, teams, business
31. 57 Domain-driven design (DDD) Untangle business concepts for faster flow
32. 59 Wardley Maps Increase situational awareness and apply the right techniques - custom/product/utility
33. 61 Dynamic Reteaming Reshape orgs using proven patterns and a socially minded approach to team changes
34. 63 Team Topologies Fast flow, rapid feedback, team interactions, continuous org evolution, team cognitive load ...
35. 64 Rapid flow of change
36. 65 Rapid feedback from running systems
37. 66 Handovers kill flow
39. 🔍 Limit team responsibilities (including software size) to match their cognitive capacity 68
42. 71 Flow of change
43. 72 “Highly evolved firms use a combination of stream-aligned teams and platform teams as the most effective way to manage team cognitive load at scale”
44. 🔍 Track dependencies and separate “blocking” from “non-blocking” 73
45. ⏳ ⏳ Blocking Non- Blocking
46. Remove barriers to flow: hand-offs, approval gates, manual inspections Replace with self-service APIs 75
47. Adaptive Systems With DDD, Wardley Mapping, & Team Topologies By Susanne Kaiser
48. 81 Why business agility? Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’ Required: product mindset Real-world examples
49. Required: product mindset
50. Product: Holistic User Experience Functionality + Design + Monetization + Content – Marty Cagan, 2010 83 Source: https://svpg.com/defining-product/
51. 84 A product is optional to use - no-one is forced to use the product
53. 86 A product is carefully designed and curated
55. 88 A product simplifies something for users
57. 90 A product evolves to take advantage of technology changes
59. A strong focus on user needs drives good software #UX
60. The software should ‘get out of the way’ - design for usability
61. ⚠ Platform mindset shift: Product Management for internal platforms 94
63. 96 A platform is optional to use - no team is forced to use the platform
64. Platforms must advocate for their platform product and “market” it to internal teams (User Personas, UX, talking...) Internal Marketing 97
65. 98 A platform is a curated experience for engineers (the customers of the platform).
66. 99 Why business agility? Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’ Required: product mindset Real-world examples
67. Real-world examples
68. Case Study 108 teamtopologies.com/examples
69. • Founded 2005 • 70 stores in the UK • £260m revenue • 2500 employees • 2019: changes to make IT more responsive 109
70. High fragmentation of work and focus 110 Jan 2019
71. Identify boundaries - business domain 111 m id-2019
72. Align to Team Topologies concepts 114 Aug 2019
73. Combine with Wardley Mapping 116 Jan 2020
74. Clarity of purpose from team types 118 Feb 2020
75. Case Study JP Morgan [Finance] 151
76. Slow time-to-market due to high coupling between teams
77. Case Study “How JP Morgan Applied Team Topologies to Improve Flow in a Market Leading Enterprise Platform” 153 How JP Morgan Applied Team Topologies to Improve Flow in a Market Leading Enterprise Platform Fast Flow Conf 💖 https://www.fastflowconf.com/
78. Case Study 154 Business aligned value streams
79. Case Study 155
80. Case Study ➔ Understanding nature of dependencies ➔ Making teams more cross-functional ➔ Better interactions between teams 156
81. Case Study “60% of dependencies reduced through better team design” 🎉 157
82. 2023-2024 2019-2020 2021-2022 BBC Telenet JP Morgan Uswitch Puregym Footasylum Gjensidige Visma ING NAV Docker IF Natwest Group NHS Digital Stripe Zalando Ikea Wendy’s GfK Workhuman Adidas ClearBank Fidelity BT Group Trainline KPMG Red Hat LEGO Raiffeisen Bank Capra SAP teamtopologies.com/examples
83. 164 Why business agility? Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’ Required: product mindset Real-world examples
84. Respond rapidly to changing external and internal conditions
85. Situational awareness, clarity of business purpose, good technical practices, localised decisions
86. Strong focus on user needs and User Experience (UX), clear costs, viability, mission, ...
87. Team Topologies helps the organization to focus tightly on its core mission via streams and limiting team cognitive load
88. 180 Copyright © Team Topologies Ltd 2019-2025. All rights reserved. teamtopologies.com
89. Thank you