Organizations that do not adapt rapidly to the modern, highly-changeable business and technical environment are failing, and failing in large numbers. Increased regulation, pressures from climate change, shifting of energy sources, digitalization, cloud-native, and (recently) the COVID-19 pandemic are all driving a need for business and technical agility in organizations of all sizes. In this talk, we’ll explore how the patterns and principles from Team Topologies promote true business and technical agility through a rapid flow of software change, fast feedback from running systems, a strong drive for loose coupling, and an awareness of sociotechnical mirroring. Combined with a product mindset and techniques from Domain-driven Design, the Team Topologies approach is helping organizations around the world to adapt to the “new normal” and achieve true business and technical agility. From a talk at QCon Plus on 2021-05-26

1. TeamTopologies.com
@TeamTopologies
Business and
Technical Agility
with Team Topologies
Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais
co-authors of Team Topologies
@matthewpskelton @manupaisable
QCon Plus - 26 May 2021

2. 2
Manuel Pais
Independent IT organizational
consultant and trainer
Ex-dev, ex-build manager,
ex-tester, ex-QA lead
Twitter: @manupaisable
LinkedIn: manuelpais
Matthew Skelton
Founder at Conflux
Experience as: software developer,
technical director, change enabler,
conference organizer...
Twitter: @matthewpskelton
LinkedIn: matthewskelton

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 examples

6. How does Team Topologies
help with business &
technical agility?
6

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

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

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

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

11. 11
What is business agility?
Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
Valuable: product mindset
Team Topologies examples

12. What is
business agility?
12

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

14. 14
Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash
Remote-first

15. 15
Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash
Speed of change:
technology, climate,
geopolitical

16. 16
Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash
Increased
global and local
competition

17. digital

18. “Digital”: 1
18
Rapidly-developed
services accessed via
personal compute
devices

19. “Digital”: 2
19
Rich telemetry for
existing processes
provided via software
and sensors

20. “Digital”: 3
20
Highly effective ways of
working discovered &
evolved through 1 and 2

21. Questions to answer
How would we optimize for
a fast flow of change?

22. Questions to answer
How would we make sure
we focus on user needs?

23. Questions to answer
How would we produce the
right thing in the right way
at the right time?

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

25. Questions to answer
How would we maximize our
chances of finding new
opportunities for innovation?

26. 26
What is business agility?
Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
Valuable: product mindset
Team Topologies examples

27. Being agile,
not doing ‘Agile’

28. 28
State of DevOps reports
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
Annual survey of 1000-5000 IT
professionals worldwide using
rigorous statistical methods

29. 29
State of DevOps 2019
Analysis from responses of
over 31,000 IT professionals
worldwide over 6 years
“an independent view into the
practices and capabilities that
drive high performance”
+ “Four Key Metrics”

30. 32
State of DevOps 2019
Key technical practices
● Lightweight change process
● Real DR testing
● Maintainable code
● Loosely-coupled systems
● Monitoring
● Trunk-based development
● Deployment automation

31. 34
4 key metrics: ‘Accelerate’
lead time
deployment frequency
Mean Time To Restore
change fail percentage

32. 35
Fast feedback via
deployment pipelines

33. 36
Good technical
practices (TDD, …)

34. 37
Team ownership of
software & services

35. 38
Configuration in
version control (Git)

36. 39
Cloud-native:
transparent in
operation

37. 40
Cloud-native:
designed for
automation

38. 42
Re-aligned
architecture

39. 44
Domain-driven design
(DDD)
Untangle business concepts for
faster flow

40. 46
Wardley Maps
Increase situational awareness
and apply the right techniques -
custom/product/utility

41. 48
Team Topologies
Fast flow, rapid feedback, team
interactions, org evolution, team
cognitive load, ...

42. 49
Rapid flow of change

43. 50
Rapid feedback from
running systems

44. 51
Handovers kill flow

46. 53

47. 54

48. 55
Flow of change

49. 🔍
Track dependencies and
separate as “blocking” vs
“non-blocking”
56

50. ⏳ ⏳
Blocking
Non-
Blocking

51. Remove barriers to flow:
hand-offs, approval gates,
manual inspections
Replace with self-service APIs
58

52. ⚠
Compliance mindset shift:
Permitting to Enabling
59

53. 60

54. “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
61

55. Compliance
as Code
(API)
62
Flow of change
Domain
experts as
Enabling
team for
compliance /
governance

56. 63
What is business agility?
Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
Valuable: product mindset
Team Topologies examples

57. The value of a
product mindset

58. Product = Holistic User Experience
➔ Functionality
➔ Design
➔ Monetization
➔ Content
– Marty Cagan, 2010
65
Source: https://svpg.com/defining-product/

59. 66

60. 67
A product is optional to
use - no-one is forced to
use the product

61. 68

62. 69
A product is carefully
designed and curated

63. 70

64. 71
A product simplifies
something for users

65. 72

66. 73
A product evolves to take
advantage of technology
changes

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

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

69. ⚠
Product Management
for internal platforms
76

70. 77

71. 78
A platform is optional to
use - no team is forced to
use the platform

72. Platforms must advocate for their
platform product and “market” it to
internal teams
(User Personas, UX, talking...)
Internal Marketing
79

73. 80
A platform is a curated
experience for engineers
(the customers of the
platform).

74. 81
What is business agility?
Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
Valuable: product mindset
Team Topologies examples

75. Team Topologies
examples

76. Case studies in the TT book
83

77. 84
...

78. May 2021:
20 months since
publication of TT
Photo by noor Younis on Unsplash 85

79. Industry examples on the
TT website
86

80. 87

81. Organizations that
Matthew and Manuel have
worked with since 2019...
88

82. 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
89

83. Case
Study
90

84. ● Founded 2005
● 70 stores in the UK
● £260m revenue
● 2500 employees
● 2019: changes to make IT
more responsive
91

85. High fragmentation of work and focus
92
J
a
n
2
0
1
9

86. Identify boundaries - business domain
93
m
i
d
-
2
0
1
9

87. Combine with Wardley Mapping
97
J
a
n
2
0
2
0

88. Adopt the Thinnest Viable Platform
99
F
e
b
2
0
2
0
Static data fine
to begin with:
shops rarely
move!

89. Clarity of purpose from team types
100
F
e
b
2
0
2
0

90. Concepts
● Stream-aligned (business domain)
● Thinnest Viable Platform
● Evolving teams and interactions
● Combine with Wardley Mapping
101
teamtopologies.com/examples

91. Thanks to:
Paul Martin
IT Director, Footasylum
Andy Norton
Software Development
Manager, Footasylum
104

92. Case
Study
105

93. ● UK's leading comparison
and switching service
● Founded in 2000
● ~250 staff, £140m+ revenue
● > 2010: Autonomous teams
● > 2017: Platformization
106

94. Autonomous stream-aligned teams
107
2
0
1
5
...

95. 108
Low-level AWS service calls before platform adoption
2015-2016: direct AWS API calls

96. 109
Low-level AWS service calls before platform adoption
2015-2016: direct AWS API calls
🤯

97. “people were spending more
time having to interact with
relatively low-level services thus
spending their time on relatively
low-value decisions”
Paul Ingles, CTO at RVU / Uswitch
110

98. 112
2
0
1
7
Early platform (first customer)

99. 114
Low-level AWS service calls since platform adoption
2015-2018: direct AWS API calls

100. 122
2
0
2
0

101. infoq.com/articles/kubernetes-successful-adoption-foundation

102. “Engineering principles guided the
way we organise teams:
loosely-coupled and highly
cohesive. Team Topologies is great
for tying a lot of those ideas
together, and most importantly
giving it some language.“
Paul Ingles, CTO at RVU / Uswitch
127

103. Results
● “Curated” platform experience
● Reduced complexity for teams
● Addressed cross-team needs
129

104. Results
● From autonomy to self-sufficiency
● Patterns applied beyond IT
● Balancing fast flow with reliability
130
teamtopologies.com/examples

105. Thanks to:
Paul Ingles
Chief Technology Officer
RVU / Uswitch
Tom Booth
Head of Infrastructure & Security
RVU / Uswitch
131

106. 132

107. 133
What is business agility?
Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
Valuable: product mindset
Team Topologies examples

108. Respond rapidly to
changing external and
internal conditions

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

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

111. Real-world examples

112. How does Team Topologies
help with business and
technical agility?
138

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

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

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

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

117. What’s next?
143

118. Free Resources
145
teamtopologies.com/resources
(links, slides, video)
teamtopologies.com/tools
(templates, assessments, etc)

119. Infographics
● Getting Started
● In a Nutshell
146
teamtopologies.com/infographics

120. academy.teamtopologies.com

121. TeamTopologies.com
@TeamTopologies
Team Topologies
Partner Program
🤝
partners@teamtopologies.com

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

123. 153
Manuel Pais
FlowOnRails
Twitter: @manupaisable
LinkedIn: manuelpais
Matthew Skelton
Conflux
Twitter: @matthewpskelton
LinkedIn: matthewskelton
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