This guest lecture at the Masters of Software Engineering graduate program covers common organizational challenges to achieve fast flow and high performing teams. Key aspects of Team Topologies that are covered include the four fundamental team types, the team API, cognitive load, and the three core team interaction modes.

1. TeamTopologies.com
@TeamTopologies
Fast Flow &
Organizational Evolution
with Team Topologies
Manuel Pais
@manupaisable

2. Manuel Pais
2
Co-author of the book Team Topologies
IT organizational consultant and trainer
Ex-dev, ex-build manager, ex-tester,
ex-team lead, ex-DevOps lead
MSE 2010 Alumni

3. Team Topologies
3
Organizing business and
technology teams for fast flow
Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais
IT Revolution Press, 2019
teamtopologies.com/book

4. 4
Philip Fisher-Ogden,
Director of Engineering at
Netflix:
“thanks for your insightful
articulations of devops
topologies. They inspired
many discussions and
helped us to think about
what model Netflix teams
could be/are using.”
https://twitter.com/philip_pfo/status/999074792123740160

5. topology
the way in which constituent parts are
interrelated or arranged
Greek: τοπολογία (τόπος == ‘place’)
5

6. 6

7. 7
Rapid flow of change

8. 8
Rapid feedback from
running systems

9. Origins - DevOps Topologies
9
CC BY-SA devopstopologies.com
@TeamTopologies

10. 10
https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/devops-sre/the-2019-accelerate-state-of-
devops-elite-performance-productivity-and-scaling

13. 13
There’s a limit to
the scalability
of product teams alone

18. 18
Handovers kill flow

21. “Great products emerge from
empowered, fully cross-functional
teams.”
– John Cutler, 2019
21

22. “Despite striving to be
cross-functional, one of the thornier
problems product teams often face is
lacking some necessary
competence.”
– Peter Neumark, 2015
22

23. arch &
design
coding
testing
deploying

24. coding
testing
deploying
infra
arch &
design

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

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

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

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

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

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

31. 31
autonomy

32. 32
competences

33. 33
How to alleviate the tension between:
team autonomy (increases flow)
and
lack of competences (decreases flow)

35. 35
blocking dependencies
based on work handovers
non-blocking dependencies
based on growing capabilities

36. Team Types
36

37. 37

38. 38

40. “Cognitive load is the total amount
of mental effort being used in the
working memory”
- John Sweller
40

41. 41
Cognitive load
Intrinsic: “How is a class defined in Java?”

42. 42
Cognitive load
Intrinsic (skills)

43. 43
Cognitive load
Intrinsic (skills)
Extraneous: “How do I deploy this app again?”

44. 44
Cognitive load
Intrinsic (skills)
Extraneous (mechanics)
Germane: “How do bank transfers work?”

45. 45
Cognitive load
Intrinsic (skills)
Extraneous (mechanics)
Germane (business focus)

46. 46
Cognitive load
Intrinsic (skills)
Extraneous (mechanics)
Germane (business focus)

47. 47
Cognitive load
Intrinsic (skills)
Extraneous (mechanics)
Germane (business focus)

48. 48
Cognitive load
Intrinsic (skills)
Extraneous (mechanics)
Germane (business focus)

49. 4 key metrics: ‘Accelerate’
49
lead time
deployment frequency
mean time to restore (MTTR)
change fail percentage

50. 50

52. “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
52

53. “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
53

54. A good platform is
treated as a product
(reliable, usable,
fit for purpose)
54

55. 55

57. 57

58. 58

60. “Problems that arise in
organisations are almost always the
product of interactions of parts,
never the action of a single part.”
Russell Ackoff
60

61. Team API
61

62. “For effective team-first ownership
of software, teams need to
continuously define, advertise, test,
and evolve their Team API”
Team Topologies, p.48
62

63. Team API
63
● Code & artifacts owned by the team
● Versioning & testing approach
● Wiki and documentation
● Ways of working
● Roadmap & priorities
● Communication preferences (when/how)

64. 64
https://github.com/TeamTopologies/Team-API-template

65. Explicit team
interaction modes
65

66. 66
Well-defined interactions
are key to effective teams

67. 67

68. 68
Collaboration: 2 teams working together
X-as-a-Service: 1 provides, 1 consumes
Facilitating: 1 team helps another

69. 69

70. 70
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.

71. 71

72. Also important
72
Team-sized software architecture
Conway’s Law (mismatches)
Organizational sensing
Thinnest Viable Platform (TVP)

73. Free Resources
82
teamtopologies.com/resources
(links, slides, video)
github.com/teamtopologies
(templates, assessments, etc)

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

76. Thank you!
85
Matthew Skelton, Conflux
@matthewpskelton
Manuel Pais, Independent
@manupaisable
teamtopologies.com
@teamtopologies