Product Teams Need a Family Too! @ Product Camp Brazil, Dec 2021

1. TeamTopologies.com
@TeamTopologies
Product Teams
Need a Family Too!
Manuel Pais
@manupaisable
Product Camp - 8 Dec 2021

2. Team Topologies
3
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
4

4. “Great products emerge from
empowered, fully cross-functional
teams.”
– John Cutler, 2019
5

5. 6
https://puppet.com/resources/report/2021-state-of-devops-report

6. “Organizations should not expect to
become highly evolved just because
they use cloud and automation…
They are held back by organizational
structure and dynamics”
– State of DevOps Report, 2021
7

7. “need to address organizational and
team aspects, namely helping teams
clarify their mission, primary
customers, interfaces, and what makes
for healthy interactions with others.”
– State of DevOps Report, 2021
8

8. 9
Handovers kill flow

10. “Great products emerge from
empowered, fully cross-functional
teams.”
– John Cutler, 2019
12

11. “Despite striving to be
cross-functional, one of the thornier
problems product teams often face
is lacking some necessary
competence.”
– Peter Neumark, 2015
13

12. arch &
design
coding
testing
deploying

13. coding
testing
deploying
infra
arch &
design

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

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

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

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

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

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

20. 22
autonomy

21. 23
capabilities

22. 24
How to alleviate the tension between:
team autonomy (increases flow)
and
lack of capabilities (decreases flow)

24. 26
in-flow blocking dependencies
based on handovers
out-of-flow non-blocking dependencies
based on capabilities

25. 27

26. “Highly evolved firms have a small
number of team types whose role
and responsibilities are clearly
understood by their adjacent teams.”
– State of DevOps Report, 2021
28

27. 29

29. “Cognitive load is the total amount
of mental effort being used in the
working memory”
- John Sweller
31

30. 32
Cognitive load
Intrinsic: “How is a class defined in Java?”

31. 33
Cognitive load
Intrinsic (skills)

32. 34
Cognitive load
Intrinsic (skills)
Extraneous: “How do I deploy this app again?”

33. 35
Cognitive load
Intrinsic (skills)
Extraneous (mechanics)
Germane: “How do bank transfers work?”

34. 36
Cognitive load
Intrinsic (skills)
Extraneous (mechanics)
Germane (customer focus)

35. 39
Cognitive load
Intrinsic (skills)
Extraneous (mechanics)
Germane (customer focus)

36. 4 key metrics: ‘Accelerate’
40
lead time
deployment frequency
mean time to restore (MTTR)
change fail percentage

37. 41

38. “Highly evolved firms use a
combination of stream-aligned teams
and platform teams as the most
effective way to manage team
cognitive load at scale”
– State of DevOps Report, 2021
42

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
44

41. “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
45

42. A good platform is
treated as a product
(reliable, usable,
fit for purpose)
46

43. ⏳ ⏳
Blocking
Non-
Blocking

44. “Not every platform team is
automatically successful, but the
successful ones treat their
platform as a product.”
– State of DevOps Report, 2021
48

45. 49

47. 51

48. 52

50. 54

51. 55
Collaboration: 2 teams working together
X-as-a-Service: 1 provides, 1 consumes
Facilitating: 1 team helps another

52. 56

53. 57
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.

54. Also important
59
Team-sized software
Avoid Conway mismatches
Organizational sensing
Thinnest Viable Platform (TVP)

55. Free Resources
62
teamtopologies.com/learn
(slides, videos, articles)
teamtopologies.com/infographics
(templates, assessments, etc)

56. Workbook
coming in 2022...
Remote team
interactions
63
Resources: teamtopologies.com/remote-first

57. academy.teamtopologies.com

58. Thank you!
67
Matthew Skelton, Conflux
@matthewpskelton
Manuel Pais, FlowOnRails
@manupaisable
teamtopologies.com
@teamtopologies