Talk and Q&A at Stockholm Engineering Leadership meetup on product teams, ownership, autonomy, cognitive load, types of teams and interactions.

1. TeamTopologies.com
@TeamTopologies
Product Teams
Need a Family Too!
Manuel Pais
@manupaisable

2. Team Topologies
2
Organizing business and
technology teams for fast flow
Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais
IT Revolution Press, 2019
teamtopologies.com/book

3. “innovative tools and concepts for
structuring the next generation
digital operating model”
Charles T. Betz,
Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
3

4. “Great products emerge from
empowered, fully cross-functional
teams.”
– John Cutler, 2019
4

5. 5
https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/devops-sre/the-2019-accelerate-state-of-
devops-elite-performance-productivity-and-scaling

6. 6

9. “Great products emerge from
empowered, fully cross-functional
teams.”
– John Cutler, 2019
9

10. “Despite striving to be
cross-functional, one of the thornier
problems product teams often face is
lacking some necessary
competence.”
– Peter Neumark, 2015
10

11. arch &
design
coding
testing
deploying

12. coding
testing
deploying
infra
arch &
design

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

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

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

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

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

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

19. 19
autonomy

20. 20
competences

21. 21
How to alleviate the tension between:
team autonomy (increases flow)
and
lack of competences (decreases flow)

23. 23
hard team dependencies
based on handovers
soft dependencies
based on capabilities

24. 24

25. 25

27. “Cognitive load is the total amount
of mental effort being used in the
working memory”
- John Sweller
27

28. 28
Cognitive load
Intrinsic: “How is a class defined in Java?”

29. 29
Cognitive load
Intrinsic (skills)

30. 30
Cognitive load
Intrinsic (skills)
Extraneous: “How do I deploy this app again?”

31. 31
Cognitive load
Intrinsic (skills)
Extraneous (mechanics)
Germane: “How do bank transfers work?”

32. 32
Cognitive load
Intrinsic (skills)
Extraneous (mechanics)
Germane (business focus)

33. 33
Cognitive load
Intrinsic (skills)
Extraneous (mechanics)
Germane (business focus)

34. 34
Cognitive load
Intrinsic (skills)
Extraneous (mechanics)
Germane (business focus)

35. 35
Cognitive load
Intrinsic (skills)
Extraneous (mechanics)
Germane (business focus)

36. 4 key metrics: ‘Accelerate’
36
lead time
deployment frequency
mean time to restore (MTTR)
change fail percentage

37. 37

39. “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
39

40. “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
40

41. A good platform is
treated as a product
(reliable, usable,
fit for purpose)
41

42. 42

44. 44

45. 45

47. 47

48. 48
Collaboration: 2 teams working together
X-as-a-Service: 1 provides, 1 consumes
Facilitating: 1 team helps another

49. 49

50. 50
When used with care, these are the only
four fundamental team topologies
and three core interaction modes
needed to build and run
modern software systems.

51. 51

52. Also important
52
Team-sized software
Avoid Conway mismatches
Organizational sensing
Thinnest Viable Platform (TVP)

53. Team Topologies for Managers
53
ascent.pmi.org
self-paced 4h course
TT4PM20
20% discount code
More courses from Peter
Drucker, Jeff Gothelf &
Josh Seiden, and others

54. teamtopologies.com/news
Team Topologies
Essentials Live Training
teamtopologies.com/training

55. Free workbook coming soon
Team Topologies
for Remote Teams
55
for Remote
Teams
Sign up for news: teamtopologies.com/newsletter
Remote-first Team Interactions video:
youtube.com/watch?v=iQ6JfBt_rc4

56. Free Resources
56
teamtopologies.com/resources
(links, slides, video)
github.com/teamtopologies
(templates, assessments, etc)

57. 57
teamtopologies.com/community
teamtopologies.com/Community
New! Community Page

58. TeamTopologies.com
@TeamTopologies
Sign up for news and tips:
TeamTopologies.com

59. Thank you!
59
Matthew Skelton, Conflux
@matthewpskelton
Manuel Pais, Independent
@manupaisable
teamtopologies.com
@teamtopologies