Upgrade of the "Product Teams Need A Family Too!" talk with new insights and techniques from the last few years.

1. TeamTopologies.com
@TeamTopologies
Product Teams
Need a Family Too!
Manuel Pais
@manupaisable
30 Mar 2023 @ IAGTech SWE Fest Madrid

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
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/manuelpais

4. Team Topologies
4
Organizing business and
technology teams for fast flow
Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais
IT Revolution Press, 2019
teamtopologies.com/book

5. “innovative tools and concepts for
structuring the next generation
digital operating model”
Charles T. Betz,
Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
5

6. Remote Team Interactions
Workbook
6
Using Team Topologies
Patterns for Remote Working
Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais
IT Revolution Press, 2022
teamtopologies.com/workbook

7. Fast Flow
doesn’t mean a
“feature factory” !
9

8. 10
Rapid flow of change

9. 11
Rapid feedback from
running systems

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

11. Business Agility requires
modern engineering,
autonomous teams,
alignment to value streams

13. coding
testing
deploying
security
infra
ops
CI/CD
arch &
design

14. coding
testing
deploying
security
infra
ops
CI/CD
arch &
design
building the
product right

15. coding
testing
deploying
security
infra
ops
UX
monitor
metrics
product
viability
experiment
CI/CD
arch &
design

16. coding
testing
deploying
security
infra
ops
UX
monitor
metrics
product
viability
experiment
CI/CD
arch &
design
building the
right product

17. “Great products emerge from
empowered, fully cross-functional
teams.”
– John Cutler, 2019
32

18. 33
a) mission

19. 34
https://teamtopologies.com/key-concepts-content/finding-good-stream-boundari
es-with-independent-service-heuristics

20. 37
https://teamtopologies.com/key-concepts-content/exploring-team-and-s
ervice-boundaries-with-user-needs-mapping

21. 38
b) autonomy

22. 39
Autonomy as the capacity
to be self-sufficient
delivering value to
customers (with guardrails)

23. Team API
41
● Code & artifacts owned by the team
● Versioning & testing approach
● Wiki and documentation
● Ways of working
● Roadmap & priorities
● Communication preferences (when/how)
https://github.com/TeamTopologies/Team-API-template

24. Team dependencies tracking
42
https://github.com/TeamTopologies/Team-Dependencies-Tracking

25. 44
c) capabilities

26. 45
How to alleviate the tension between:
team autonomy (increases flow)
and
lack of capabilities (decreases flow)

28. 47

29. 48
Handovers kill flow

30. 49
Handovers (can) kill flow

31. 50
in-flow blocking dependencies
based on handovers & coordination
out-of-flow non-blocking dependencies
based on capabilities & independent streams

32. 51

33. 52
https://puppet.com/resources/report/2021-state-of-devops-report

34. “Highly evolved firms have a small
number of team types whose role
and responsibilities are clearly
understood by their adjacent teams.”
– State of DevOps Report, 2021
53

35. 54

38. “Cognitive load is the total amount
of mental effort being used in the
working memory”
- John Sweller
57

39. 65
Cognitive load
Intrinsic (core skills)
Extraneous (distractions)
Germane (customer focus)

40. 4 key metrics: ‘Accelerate’
66
lead time
deployment frequency
mean time to restore (MTTR)
change fail percentage

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

42. 68

43. “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”
– State of DevOps Report, 2021
69

45. “A digital platform is a foundation of
self-service APIs, tools, services,
knowledge and support which are
arranged as a compelling internal
product.”
– Evan Bottcher, 2018
71

46. “A digital platform is a foundation of
self-service APIs, tools, services,
knowledge and support which are
arranged as a compelling internal
product.”
– Evan Bottcher, 2018
72

47. A good platform is
treated as a product
(reliable, usable,
fit for purpose)
73

48. ⏳ ⏳
Blocking
Non-
Blocking

49. 75
A platform is a curated
experience for engineers
(the customers of the
platform).

50. 76
Platform as Shared Services
based on standardization
Platform as a Product
based on reducing cognitive load

51. 78

53. 81
Experts as ivory tower
based on top-down guidance
Experts as enablers
based on mentoring and teaching

54. 82
Enabling teams help teams
on the ground + sense for
organizational challenges +
co-drive platform evolution

55. 83
Enabling teams can work
well in tandem with CoP,
CoE, Guilds, etc (the “glue
factor”)

56. 84

57. 85

59. 87

60. 88
Collaboration: 2 teams working together
X-as-a-Service: 1 provides, 1 consumes
Facilitating: 1 team helps another

61. Stream-aligned Team API
89
Example: Teams we currently interact with
Team Name Interaction Mode Purpose Duration
Test Automation
Enabling team
Facilitating Understand test
automation and
data mgmt
examples for iOS
2 months
(from Mar 30
to May 29,
1 day per week)
Monitoring &
Telemetry
Platform team
Collaboration Store and visualize
data on product
features usage
3 weeks
(from Apr 13
to Apr 30,
2h per day)

62. 90

63. When used with care, these are the only
four fundamental team types
and three core interaction modes
needed to build, run & evolve
modern software-enriched services.
91

64. Also important
94
Team-sized software
Avoid Conway mismatches
Organizational sensing
Thinnest Viable Platform (TVP)

65. Free Resources
95
teamtopologies.com/learn
(infographics, slides, video)
teamtopologies.com/examples
(uSwitch, WealthWizards & more)

66. Infographics
● Getting Started
● In a Nutshell
96
teamtopologies.com/infographics

67. academy.teamtopologies.com

68. Copyright © 2022-2023 Team Topologies Ltd. All rights reserved.
teamtopologies.com
98