This document summarizes Manuel Pais' presentation on accelerating flow with Team Topologies. It discusses key concepts from Team Topologies like stream-aligned teams, platform teams, and evolving team interactions. It provides an example case study of how Footasylum applied Team Topologies concepts to increase responsiveness. It concludes by discussing how Team Topologies helps organizations gain situational awareness and focus on their core mission to improve business and technical agility.

1. TeamTopologies.com
@TeamTopologies
Accelerating Flow with
Team Topologies & Friends
Manuel Pais
co-author of Team Topologies
@manupaisable
Adaptive Organizations Week - 20 Oct 2021

2. Manuel Pais
2
Independent IT organizational
consultant and trainer
Ex-dev, ex-build manager, ex-tester,
ex-team lead
LinkedIn instructor on CI/CD
Twitter: @manupaisable

3. Team Topologies
3
Organizing business and
technology teams for fast flow
Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais
IT Revolution Press, 2019
teamtopologies.com/book

4. “innovative tools and concepts for
structuring the next generation
digital operating model”
Charles T. Betz,
Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
4

5. 5
What is business agility?
Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
Valuable: product mindset
Team Topologies example

6. What is
business agility?
7

7. Business Agility: the ability
to respond rapidly* to
changing internal and
external conditions (* in hours)

8. 9
Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash
Remote-first

9. 10
Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash
Speed of change:
technology, climate,
geopolitical

10. 11
Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash
Increased
global and local
competition

11. Questions to answer
How do we optimize for a
fast flow of change?

12. Questions to answer
How do we make sure we
focus on user needs?

13. Questions to answer
How do we easily
‘course-correct’ when we
need to adjust?

14. Fast flow is a prerequisite
for business agility

15. 27
What is business agility?
Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
Valuable: product mindset
Team Topologies example

16. Being agile,
not doing ‘Agile’

17. 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/
34

18. 35
4 key metrics: ‘Accelerate’
Lead Time
Deployment Frequency
Mean Time To Restore
Change Fail Percentage

19. 36
Fast feedback via
deployment pipelines

20. 37
Good technical
practices (TDD, …)

21. 39
Cloud-native:
high observability
quick recovery

22. 40
Cloud-native:
designed for
automation

23. 41
Continuous
testing
performance
scanning
deployment
monitoring
right-sizing
integration

24. 42
https://puppet.com/resources/report/2021-state-of-devops-report

25. 43
“Organizations should not expect to
become highly evolved just because
they use cloud and automation…
They are held back by organizational
structure and dynamics”

26. 44
Team ownership of
software & services

27. 45
Re-aligned
architecture

28. 47
Domain-driven design
(DDD)
Untangle business concepts for
faster flow

29. 49
Wardley Maps
Increase situational awareness
and apply the right techniques -
custom/product/utility

30. 51
Team Topologies
Fast flow, rapid feedback, team
interactions, org evolution, team
cognitive load, ...

31. 52
Rapid flow of change

32. 53
Rapid feedback from
running systems

33. 54
Handovers kill flow

35. 56

36. 57

37. 58
Flow of change

38. 59
“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”

39. 🔍
Track dependencies and
separate “blocking” from
“non-blocking”
60

40. ⏳ ⏳
Blocking
Non-
Blocking

41. Remove barriers to flow:
hand-offs, approval gates,
manual inspections
Replace with self-service APIs
62

42. ⚠
Compliance mindset shift:
Permitting to Enabling
63

43. 64

44. “What would be needed for us to be
compliant with security/finance/PII
rules with multiple, decoupled, rapid
flows of change?”
(Self-service APIs)
Scaled Expertise
65

45. Compliance
as Code
(API)
66
Flow of change
Domain
experts as
Enabling
team for
compliance /
governance

46. 67
What is business agility?
Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
Valuable: product mindset
Team Topologies example

47. The value of a
product mindset

48. Product:
Holistic User Experience
Functionality + Design + Monetization + Content
– Marty Cagan, 2010
69
Source: https://svpg.com/defining-product/

49. 70

50. 71
A product is optional to
use - no-one is forced to
use the product

51. 72

52. 73
A product is carefully
designed and curated

53. 74

54. 75
A product simplifies
something for users

55. 76

56. 77
A product evolves to take
advantage of technology
changes

57. A strong focus on
user needs drives
good software
#UX

58. The software should
‘get out of the way’ -
design for usability

59. ⚠
Platform mindset shift:
Product Management
for internal platforms
80

60. 81

61. 82
A platform is optional to
use - no team is forced to
use the platform

62. Platforms must advocate for their
platform product and “market” it to
internal teams
(User Personas, UX, talking...)
Internal Marketing
83

63. 84
A platform is a curated
experience for engineers
(the customers of the
platform).

64. 85
What is business agility?
Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
Valuable: product mindset
Team Topologies example

65. Team Topologies
example

66. Case studies in the TT book
87

67. 88
...

68. Oct 2021:
25 months since
publication of TT
Photo by noor Younis on Unsplash 89

69. Industry examples on the
TT website
90

70. 91

71. Organizations that
Matthew and Manuel have
worked with since 2019...
92

72. A large European banking group
A major cloud technology company
GOV: Brazil, Canada, Norway, UK, US
Several major telecoms companies
A scale-up in Open Banking
An aerospace laboratory
Healthcare providers
Several mortgage companies
93

73. Case
Study
94

74. ● Founded 2005
● 70 stores in the UK
● £260m revenue
● 2500 employees
● 2019: changes to make IT
more responsive
95

75. High fragmentation of work and focus
96
J
a
n
2
0
1
9

76. Identify boundaries - business domain
97
m
i
d
-
2
0
1
9

77. Team Topologies for Product Managers
99
J
u
n
2
0
1
9
“The Product Managers from each team took
special interest in the team interaction types as
it helped them to have useful, directed
conversations about upcoming work, they could
essentially fact-check their different roadmaps
and make sure that the interactions required
were lined up in advance. “
-- Andy Norton,
Software Development Manager, Footasylum

78. Align to Team Topologies concepts
100
A
u
g
2
0
1
9

79. Combine with Wardley Mapping
101
J
a
n
2
0
2
0

80. Adopt the Thinnest Viable Platform
103
F
e
b
2
0
2
0
Static data fine
to begin with:
shops rarely
move!

81. Clarity of purpose from team types
104
F
e
b
2
0
2
0

82. Concepts
● Stream-aligned (business domain)
● Thinnest Viable Platform
● Evolving teams and interactions
● Combine with Wardley Mapping
105
teamtopologies.com/examples

83. Results
● Product Mgt superpowers
● Effective comms during COVID-19
● Responsive, autonomous teams
106
https://teamtopologies.com/examples
https://teamtopologies.com/industry-examples/team-topologies-at-footasylum-platforms-flow-and-wardley-mapping

84. “the interaction modes defined
by Team Topologies gave us real
insight into how we could
maintain effective practices,
and also cross-team
collaboration.“
-- Andy Norton,
Software Development Manager,
Footasylum
107

85. Thanks to:
Paul Martin
IT Director, Footasylum
Andy Norton
Software Development
Manager, Footasylum
108

86. 137
What is business agility?
Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
Valuable: product mindset
Team Topologies example

87. Respond rapidly to
changing external and
internal conditions

88. Situational awareness,
clarity of business purpose,
good technical practices,
localised decisions

89. Strong focus on user needs
and User Experience (UX),
clear costs, viability,
mission, ...

90. Real-world example

91. How does Team Topologies
help with business and
technical agility?
142

92. Team Topologies
encourages decoupling of
business concepts to help
make the organization
more responsive

93. Team Topologies patterns
help to turn blocking
compliance checks into
self-service, flow-aligned,
API-driven checks

94. Team Topologies is partly a
sense-making approach to
help organizations gain
situational awareness and
therefore agility

95. Team Topologies helps the
organization to focus
tightly on its core mission
via streams and limiting
team cognitive load

96. What next?
147

97. Workbook
coming soon...
Remote interactions
with Team Topologies
148
for Remote
Teams
Resources: teamtopologies.com/remote-first

98. Free Resources
149
teamtopologies.com/learn
(links, slides, video)
teamtopologies.com/tools
(templates, assessments, etc)

99. Infographics
● Getting Started
● In a Nutshell
150
teamtopologies.com/infographics

100. academy.teamtopologies.com

101. 157
Manuel Pais
FlowOnRails
Twitter: @manupaisable
LinkedIn: manuelpais
Matthew Skelton
Conflux
Twitter: @matthewpskelton
LinkedIn: matthewskelton
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