Feature teams aim to deliver higher business value by organizing teams around end-to-end delivery of features rather than component teams. Feature teams are composed of full stack engineers who work on all aspects of a feature from analysis to coding to testing. This allows teams to learn together, avoid handoffs, prioritize work flexibly based on business needs, and reduce management overhead compared to the typical component team structure. Organizing around feature teams can help IT deliver value to the business incrementally and with greater flexibility.

1. Using feature teams to deliver
higher business value
Sameer Deans @ThoughtWorks

2. How can IT organize to deliver
higher value to the business?

3. The role of business is to maximize
customer experience
and revenue
or to reduce costs
Any software project aims to achieve at least one of these

4. Once a business idea emerges,
time to market is critical
Can value be delivered to the business incrementally?

5. So what does the business expect from IT?
Visibility into progress
Flexibility to change requirements
Ability to change priorities of requirements
Expectation that domain knowledge will be retained in the
organization for future development

6. So how does IT set themselves up to deliver?
Typical team organization is around component teams
formed around architecture modules of the system
User Account Transaction
Security
management Maintenance Processing

7. Quite often organized by layer of the application
UI team
UI team
Business Number of UI team
logic team applications in Business UI team
logic team Business
the system logic team Business
Services Services
under team logic team
team development
Services
team Services
Database
team Database team
Database
team Database
team
team

8. What do component teams lead to?

9. Handoff and Delay
Consider a requirement from the customer that needs
to be developed by 3 component teams
Handoff Handoff
Team A Team B Team C
Waste due to Waste due to
rework and delays
handling
partially
finished work

10. Duplication
Team A Team B Team C
Writes method to Writes method to Writes method to calculate
calculate interest so it calculate interest so interest so totals can be
can show this in the UI it create a reusable updated in database
class SimpleInterestCalculator
service class SimpleInterestCalculator3
def initialize(principal, interestRate, Class InterestCalculator def initialize(options = {})
numberOfYears) @loan_amount =
def self.compute(loan_amount, options[:loan_amount] ||
@principal = principal rate_of_interest, term_in_years)
@interestRate = interestRate @rate_of_interest =
(loan_amount * options[:rate_of_interest] ||
@numberOfYears = rate_of_interest *
numberOfYears @term_in_years =
term_in_years) /100 options[:term_in_years] ||
end end end
def compute end
(@principal * @interestRate * def compute
@numberOfYears) /100 @loan_amount * @term_in_years *
end rate_of_interest_in_fraction
end end
private
def rate_of_interest_in_fraction
@rate_of_interest / 100
end
end

11. Bad code and design
Work with the same code month after month
Acceptance of bad design
No outside eyes look at the codebase
Do not seek to refactor

12. Coordination and Integration
Team A
Team C
Requirement
that spans
several
component
teams
Team B

13. Extra management

14. Sequential development
Requirements analysis Planning
Testing

 




UI team UI team
UI team
Business Business
logic team logic team
Business
Services logic team Services
team team
Services
Database team Database
team team
Database
team

15. Do the easy work
A A A A Team A
B B B B Team B
C C C C Team C
This comprises a
customer
requirement

16. Promotes specialization

 




17. Another response from IT : feature projects
Spin up a project to deliver a particular
feature of the larger system
Component Component Component
A B C

 
 

Feature touches 3 different components
Unfortunately this has its drawbacks too

18. New team : lower productivity
Component Component Component
A B C

 
 


19. Resource allocation team uses key people as
Band-Aids
Component Component Component
A B C

 
 

Component
C


20. Over allocation
Component Component Component
A B C

 
 

100%
Component

 C
25%  Impact to
existing
team
Component Component Component
X B C

 


21. Low motivation and job satisfaction

22. Introducing : Feature Teams
What is a feature?
Functionality that delivers usable value to the customer

23. Features : examples
Adding a new service
provider to eCom site Internationalization
Ability to
grant and
service loans

24. What does a feature team look like?

25. Not all generalists
    
   

26. Ideally would be co-located

27. Team members work on
analysis, coding and testing
Requirements analysis Coding Testing


28. How does a feature get delivered
Analysis & Planning Analysis & Planning
A A A A A B B B C S S S S S S S
B B B B
C C C C
UI task
Business
logic task
This comprises S
a customer Services
requirement task
Database
task

29. What are the advantages of feature teams?

30. Learn and jell together

31. No hand offs
UI task
Business
logic task
S
Services
task
Database
task

32. Valuable work can be prioritized
UI task
Analysis & Planning
Business
logic task
8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Services
task
Business Idea
Database
task
This gets channeled
into two features and UI task
two feature teams
Analysis & Planning
Business
logic task
8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Services
task
Database
task

33. Valuable work can be prioritized
UI task
Analysis & Planning Analysis & Planning
Business
logic task
8 7 6 5 4 3 2 6 5 4 3 B A 2 1
Services
task
Database
task
The business wants a change
and re-prioritizes the backlog
UI task
Analysis & Planning Analysis & Planning
Business
logic task
8 7 6 5 4 3 2 7 6 5 4 3 2 A 1
Services
task
Database
task

34. Less management overhead

35. So, can IT now organize differently to
deliver higher value to the business?

36. Thank you