It's teams all the way down - Design patterns for technology organizations

Kevin Goldsmith, CTO @ Anaconda / Principal @ Nimble Autonomy
It’s teams all the
way down
Design pa
tt
erns for technology organizations

@KevinGoldsmith 0111 Conference, November 2022
Nimble Autonomy
Org structure is hard

Nimble Autonomy
Books

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Systems

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Tools

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Frameworks

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CTO
client
director
client
manager
client
manager
client
manager
client
manager
server
director
core manager infra director
server
manager
server
manager
The power of defaults

@KevinGoldsmith Nimble Autonomy
Things to consider
when considering your organization
• Company culture (or desired culture)
• Business/industry (regulated/unregulated, contract-driven/B2C/etc)
• Size (size of the team/company)
• Budget
• Team growth (near/mid term)
• What else?
0111 Conference, November 2022

Glossary
From Team Topologies
• Stream-aligned team: aligned to a
fl
ow of work from (usually) a
segment of the business domain
• Enabling team: helps a Stream-aligned team to overcome obstacles.
Also detects missing capabilities.
• Complicated Subsystem team: where signi
fi
cant mathematics/
calculation/technical expertise is needed.
• Platform team: a grouping of other team types that provide a
compelling internal product to accelerate delivery by Stream-aligned
teams

Nimble Autonomy
Engineering org lifecycle
Think amoeba!
• Single team
• Cross-functional • Very fast
• Good communication
• Empowered individuals

Nimble Autonomy
Think amoeba!
• Two teams
• Cross-functional
• Split by
• Product area
• Customer needs
• Architecture
• Avoid dependencies
• Still fast
• Pre
tt
y Good communication
• Mostly Empowered individuals

Nimble Autonomy
Think amoeba!
• A few teams
• Cross-functional?
• Split by
• Product area
• Architecture
• Good time to start thinking
about a platform team
• Tech debt becoming an issue
• Communication issues arising
• Individuals becoming more
specialized

Splitting teams
Grow/subdivide pa
tt
ern
• Onboard people to existing teams
• Split when the team is too big to get things done
• Spli
tt
ing too early borrows trouble
• When spli
tt
ing, try to preserve experience/skills mix in new teams
• Other ways?

Splitting teams
Centralize -> distribute skills
• Create centralized individuals/complicated-systems teams for
dif
fi
cult/new skills/capabilities (ie: data science, data engineering)
• Distribute when centralized team has suf
fi
cient staf
fi
ng, but it
starting to become a bo
tt
leneck or single point of failure for other
teams
• Other ways?

Splitting teams
Distributed -> centralized skills
• Use distributed skillset individuals or enabling teams when there is
not enough need or funding to staff a centralized team for the
organization (ie: Devops)
• Centralize when there is suf
fi
cient staf
fi
ng to create tools for teams
to self-support without the dedicated skillset, or when the distributed
nature of the skillset starts to generate its own tech debt
• Other ways?

When do you need a platform team?
• When your infrastructure has become the bo
tt
leneck for the stream-
aligned teams
• When your scaling your enabling teams/individuals becomes
inef
fi
cient as a way to solve issues
• When you are in a regulated industry and need dedicated enabling or
complicated subsystem teams to support your business
• When else?

Nimble Autonomy
Team of teams
• Split by
• Product area
• Customer persona
• Parts of funnel
• Make sure that the interfaces
between teams of teams are
well de
fi
ned
• Avoid as long as possible
• Silos breed communication and
mission con
fl
ict issues
• Team scope becomes narrower
• Organization size requires
dedicated organization support
roles

Nimble Autonomy
Alliance

Nimble Autonomy
Platform Platform Platform Platform
Infrastructure
Feature
Feature
Feature
Feature
Feature
Feature
Feature
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Nimble Autonomy

References
• Books
• Team Topologies - Ma
tt
hew Skelton & Manuel Pais
• Scaling Teams - Axelander Grosse & David Lo
ft
iness
• Reinventing Organizations - Fredric Laloux
• Frameworks
• Spotify Model
• Fast Agile
• Sociocracy / Holocracy

@KevinGoldsmith
@NimbleAutonomy
h
tt
ps://nimbleautonomy.com
h
tt
ps://kevingoldsmith.com
@kmg@mastodon.social

Images
• Leyla Acaroglu - h
tt
ps://medium.com/disruptive-design/tools-for-
systems-thinkers-the-6-fundamental-concepts-of-systems-
thinking-379cdac3dc6a
• Anders Gill - h
tt
ps://medium.com/raa-labs/part-1-domain-driven-
design-like-a-pro-f9e78d081f10
• h
tt
ps://twi
tt
er.com/swardley/status/1041658298427211778
• h
tt
ps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyne
fi
n_framework

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