Since the book Team Topologies was published in 2019, organizations around the world have started to adopt Team Topologies principles and practices like Stream-aligned teams, modern platforms, well-defined team interactions, and team cognitive load as a key driver for fast software delivery and operations. We will look at examples from these organizations: - Footasylum gives fashion-focused youth a multi-branded retail experience mixing global sportswear household names with emerging brands and its own stable of in-house labels. Founded in 2005, Footasylum now has 70 stores across the UK and a thriving ecommerce platform, with revenue of £260m per annum and over 2500 employees. Footasylum used Team Topologies patterns to revolutionize their ecommerce platform. - PureGym is Britain’s largest gym chain - the first to gain over 1 million members. As PureGym expanded, so did the need for software to enable their members to book and manage gym sessions. Since 2019, PureGym has re-aligned its teams and team interactions based on Team Topologies patterns, helping to scale the engineering teams and improve flow. - uSwitch / RVU, one of the UK’s leading consumer price comparison websites, has grown a modern platform from scratch, allowing stream-aligned teams to focus on consumers needs, offloading infrastructure provisioning concerns to the platform which also provides cross-cutting services around scalability, security and data management - Wealth Wizards is a UK company making financial advice affordable and accessible to everyone through online tools and apps. The engineering division at Wealth Wizards has used the Team Topologies ideas around team cognitive load to help right-size their teams and align teams to the most important flows of business change. For each of these examples, we explore how the ideas and patterns in Team Topologies were useful to the organization and the results of the changes.

2. TeamTopologies.com
@TeamTopologies
Team Topologies in action
early results from industry - October 2020
Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais
co-authors of Team Topologies
@matthewpskelton @manupaisable
DOES Las Vegas Virtual - 13 October 2020

3. 3
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

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. PROBLEMS TO SOLVE
with Team Topologies

7. Why is our transformation
not achieving fast flow?

8. What’s our purpose and
mission as a team within
the wider organization?

9. Why are our teams not
able to respond quickly to
business needs?

10. How can we safely remove
low-level complexity from
customer-facing teams?

11. TODAY
Team Topologies
in action

12. October 2020:
13 months since
publication
Photo by noor Younis on Unsplash 12

13. 13

14. 14

15. 15

16. 16
Flow of change

17. CaseStudy
17

18. ● Founded 2005
● 70 stores in the UK
● £260m revenue
● 2500 employees
● 2019: changes to make IT
more responsive
18

19. High fragmentation of work and focus
Jan
2019

20. Identify boundaries - business domain
m
id-2019

21. Team Topologies at DOES London 2019
Jun
2019

22. Team Topologies for Product Managers
Jun
2019
“The Product Managers from each team took
special interest in the team interaction types as
it helped them to have useful, directed
conversations about upcoming work, they could
essentially fact-check their different roadmaps
and make sure that the interactions required
were lined up in advance. “
-- Andy Norton,
Software Development Manager, Footasylum

23. Align to Team Topologies concepts
Aug
2019

24. Combine with Wardley Mapping
Jan
2020

25. Focus on bounded contexts in Platform
Feb
2020

26. Adopt the Thinnest Viable Platform
Feb
2020
Static data fine
to begin with:
shops rarely
move!

27. Clarity of purpose from team types
Feb
2020

28. Concepts
● Stream-aligned (business domain)
● Thinnest Viable Platform
● Team Interaction Modes
● Combine with Wardley Mapping
28

29. Results
● Product Mgt superpowers
● Effective comms during COVID-19
● Responsive, autonomous teams
29
https://teamtopologies.com/examples
https://teamtopologies.com/industry-examples/team-topologies-at-footasylum-platforms-flow-and-wardley-mapping

30. “the interaction modes defined
by Team Topologies gave us real
insight into how we could
maintain effective practices,
and also cross-team
collaboration.“
-- Andy Norton,
Software Development Manager,
Footasylum
30

31. Thanks to:
Paul Martin
IT Director, Footasylum
Andy Norton
Software Development
Manager, Footasylum
31

32. CaseStudy
32

33. ● Launched in 2009
● Now 230 gyms in the UK
● > 1 million members
● Largest operator in UK
● Expanding into DK PL CH
33

34. 34

35. ● 2015-2020
● Huge growth in members
● Joining (mobile app)
● Bookings, payments
● “Online-first” experience
35

36. 2015

37. 2017

38. 2019

39. 2019

40. …
2019

41. …… … …
…
…
2020

42. 2020

43. 2020

44. 2020+

45. “Team Topologies helped us at
PureGym to evaluate the
relationship between our teams
and the business strategy, to
increase team efficiency, and
evolve away from a monolith.“
-- John Kilmister,
Principal Software Architect, PureGym
46

46. Concepts
● ‘Fracture Planes’ for splitting code
● Cognitive Load for boundaries
● Interaction Modes for clarity
● Team Types for purpose
47

47. Results
● More business-responsive
● Projects+BAU → Streams
● Separate services: Join / Book / ...
48

48. Results
● Balanced ownership of services
● Improved team morale
● Better long-term architecture
49

49. Thanks to:
John Kilmister
Principal Software Architect
PureGym
Rich Allen
Head of Consulting
Conjurer Solutions
50

50. CaseStudy
51

51. ● UK's leading comparison
and switching service
● Founded in 2000
● ~250 staff, £140m+ revenue
● > 2010: Autonomous teams
● > 2017: Platformization
52

52. 2015

53. 54
Low-level AWS service calls before platform adoption

54. “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
55

55. 56
2017
Infra platform
started with few
services
First customer
(centralized
logging, metrics,
auto scaling)

56. 2017

57. 58
2017
Infra platform
started with few
services
First customer
(centralized
logging, metrics,
auto scaling)
2018
Started using SLAs
and SLOs, clarifying
reliability/latency/etc
Growing traffic in
platform vs AWS

58. 59
Low-level AWS service calls since platform adoption

59. 60
2019
Addressed critical
cross-functional
needs (GDPR,
security, alerts +
SLOs as a service)
Adoption by HMRT
(Highest Maturity
& Revenue Team)
2017
Infra platform
started with few
services
First customer
(centralized
logging, metrics,
auto scaling)
2018
Started using SLAs
and SLOs, clarifying
reliability/latency/etc
Growing traffic in
platform vs AWS

60. 61
2019

61. 2020

62. 2020

63. 2020

64. “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
71

65. Concepts
● Platforms to reduce cognitive load
● Platform as a product / MVP
● Discover good boundaries & APIs
● Clear team interaction modes
72

66. Results
● “Curated” platform experience
● Reduced complexity for teams
● Addressed cross-team needs
73

67. Results
● From autonomy to self-sufficiency
● Patterns applied beyond IT
● Balancing fast flow with reliability
74
teamtopologies.com/examples

68. Thanks to:
Paul Ingles
Chief Technology Officer
RVU / Uswitch
Tom Booth
Head of Infrastructure & Security
RVU / Uswitch
75

69. CaseStudy
76

70. ● Financial advice
● Founded 2009
● Consumers & companies
● 'Explainable AI'
● Increasingly successful
77

71. < 2019: product growth
78
x 6

72. Mid-2019
79
HALT!

73. September 2019
80

74. Independent Service Heuristics
81
https://github.com/TeamTopologies/Independent-Service-Heuristics
Rules-of-thumb for identifying
candidate value streams and
domain boundaries by seeing if
they could be run as a separate
SaaS/cloud product.

75. 2020: New architecture
82

76. “Team Topologies ... has
given us the tools we were
looking for and have helped
us to build a plan and have
confidence that we know
where we’re going and how
to get there.”
Richard Marshall, CTO, Wealth Wizards
83

77. Concepts
● Stream-aligned: build & run
● Boundaries that help flow
● Supporting team types: reduce
cognitive load on Stream teams
84

78. Results
● Clear patterns and language
● Framework for design decisions
● Confidence in scaling approach
85
https://medium.com/ww-engineering/to-monolith-or-to-microservice-f8c3f967e63c

79. Thanks to:
Richard Marshall
CTO
Wealth Wizards
86

80. Summary:
Team Topologies
in action
87

81. 88

82. The Stream-aligned team is
the starting point:
fast flow and feedback
from running systems

83. Team Topologies provides
a common language and
set of patterns for the
whole IT organization

84. Explicitly design for
team cognitive load

85. A platform is a curated
experience for engineers
to accelerate and simplify
software delivery

86. What’s next?
93

87. Workbook
coming soon...
Team Topologies
for Remote Teams
94
for Remote
Teams
Resources: teamtopologies.com/remote-first
FREE

88. Free Resources
95
Remote-first interactions
teamtopologies.com/remote-first
Free tools & templates
github.com/teamtopologies

89. 96
🠊 teamtopologies.com/shop

90. TeamTopologies.com
@TeamTopologies
Feedback:
info@teamtopologies.com
@TeamTopologies

91. Remote-
Friendly
Training
teamtopologies.com/training
98

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

93. TeamTopologies.com
@TeamTopologies
Q&A: Slack, now
AMA: [TBC]

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