The document discusses Team Topologies, an organizational framework for structuring business and technology teams to enable fast flow. It covers key concepts like operational constraints, trust boundaries, cognitive load, Conway's Law, and organizational patterns. It also outlines triggers for sensing and evolving an organization as its ecosystem changes. The framework provides a shared language and common patterns to help organizations explore solutions for designing and evolving their structure.

1. TeamTopologies.com
@TeamTopologies
Organizational trends & patterns
with Team Topologies
Manuel Pais
co-author of Team Topologies
@manupaisable
LPCx Meetup - 15 July 2021

2. Manuel Pais
4
Independent IT organizational
consultant and trainer
Ex-dev, ex-build manager, ex-tester,
ex-team lead
LinkedIn instructor on CI/CD
Twitter: @manupaisable

3. Team Topologies
5
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
6

5. 7
The Spotify model has
been hugely helpful to
100s of organizations

6. 8
The Spotify model helps to
Encourage flow of change
Establish and clarify team responsibilities
Promote good kinds of team collaboration
Plan and budget for cross-team enablers

7. 9
We also need to address
Trust boundaries and cognitive load
Heuristics for Conway’s Law
Patterns for team interactions
Triggers for change and evolution

8. Overview of
Team Topologies
10

9. Team Topologies for fast flow
Sensing for
Evolution
Organizational
Patterns
Operational
Constraints
Shared Language
for Org Design
11

10. Operational Constraints

11. Trust Boundaries

12. “an individual’s social network
(meaningful relationships)
is typically in the order of
100–200 individuals”
- Robin Dunbar
14
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsos.150292

13. 15

14. Team Cognitive Load

15. COGNITIVE LOAD:
The total amount of mental
effort being used in the
working memory
- John Sweller
17

16. (Intrinsic)
] Extraneous [
Germane
18

17. Conway’s Law

18. “if the architecture of the system and
the architecture of the organization
are at odds, the architecture of the
organization wins”
– Ruth Malan, 2008
20

19. 21
Organization design
is a constraint on the
“solution search space”

20. 22
HR department acts as
accidental architects of
the software system

21. 23

22. Organizational Patterns

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

24. 26
Handovers kill flow

26. Four Fundamental Team Types

27. 29

28. Three Team Interaction Patterns

29. 31

30. 32
Flow of change

31. 33

32. ⏳ ⏳
Blocking
Non-
Blocking

33. 35
Flow of change

34. 36
Other patterns & tools
Team as unit of delivery
Team API
Team dependencies tracking
(Minimum Viable) Platform as a Product
teamtopologies.com/tools

35. ⚠
Product Management
for internal platforms
(as a product)
42

36. 43
A platform is a curated
experience for engineers
(the customers of the
platform).

37. 44

38. Industry examples
https://teamtopologies.com/examples

40. Triggers for
Sensing & Evolving

41. 48
Sensing for Evolution
Not all teams in the org look the same
Enabling as sense making
Discover, then push to Platform
Awkward team interactions are signals
Evolve the org with changing ecosystem

42. 49
Organizations need more
situational awareness, at the
risk of constraints becoming
“silent killers“ of growth

43. Team Topologies:
shared language
for org design
57

44. Shared language, common
patterns, and operating
constraints can help orgs to
explore the solution space

45. Clear language and
well-defined concepts
59

46. Team Topologies is “...a DSL* for org
design and evolution”
Eduardo da Silva, PhD, esilva.net
* Domain-specific language
60

47. Kathy Keating
@kathkeating
So thankful today for the book
@TeamTopologies
. Gave me just the framework I needed
to build a really clear operational
growth plan. Thanks! #Leadership
#GrowthMindset #technology
https://twitter.com/kathkeating/status/1356783493481549827
61

48. “Thank you again for the workshop in
January. The long term effect has been
remarkable. It has helped us to agree on
a common vocabulary for describing
teams, has been adopted as the natural
successor of Accelerate. Thank you!”
62

50. Solid engineering and
sociotechnical foundation
64

51. Engineers/Architects “get it”
Advocating from the ground up
65

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

53. Resources
69
teamtopologies.com/resources
(links, slides, video)
teamtopologies.com/tools
(templates, assessments, etc)

54. academy.teamtopologies.com

55. Team Topologies Distilled
3h self-paced course Matthew
Skelton
Manuel
Pais
10% discount: LAUNCH10OFF

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

57. 76
Manuel Pais
FlowOnRails
Twitter: @manupaisable
LinkedIn: manuelpais
Matthew Skelton
Conflux
Twitter: @matthewpskelton
LinkedIn: matthewskelton
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