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 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.

1. TeamTopologies.com
@TeamTopologies
Business and
Technical Agility
with Team Topologies
Manuel Pais
co-author of Team Topologies
@manupaisable
15 June 2021

2. Manuel Pais
2
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
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 do we optimize for a
fast flow of change?

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

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

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

25. Questions to answer
How do 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. 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”

29. 30
State of DevOps 2019
“The use of cloud… is
predictive of software delivery
performance and availability.”
“High performers favor
strategies that create
community structures at both
low and high levels in the
organization...”

30. 31
State of DevOps 2019
“Heavyweight change approval
processes, such as change
approval boards, negatively
impact speed and stability. In
contrast, having a clearly
understood process for
changes drives speed and
stability, as well as reductions
in burnout.”

31. 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

32. Accelerate
Building and Scaling High Performing
Technology Organizations
Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, Gene Kim
IT Revolution Press, 2018
Order via stores worldwide:
https://itrevolution.com/book/accelerate/
33

33. 34
4 key metrics: ‘Accelerate’
lead time
deployment frequency
Mean Time To Restore
change fail percentage

34. 35
Fast feedback via
deployment pipelines

35. 36
Good technical
practices (TDD, …)

36. 37
Team ownership of
software & services

37. 38
Configuration in
version control (Git)

38. 39
Cloud-native:
transparent in
operation

39. 40
Cloud-native:
designed for
automation

40. 42
Re-aligned
architecture

41. 44
Domain-driven design
(DDD)
Untangle business concepts for
faster flow

42. 46
Wardley Maps
Increase situational awareness
and apply the right techniques -
custom/product/utility

43. 48
Team Topologies
Fast flow, rapid feedback, team
interactions, org evolution, team
cognitive load, ...

44. 49
Rapid flow of change

45. 50
Rapid feedback from
running systems

46. 51
Handovers kill flow

48. 53

49. 54

50. 55
Flow of change

51. 🔍
Track dependencies and
separate as “blocking” vs
“non-blocking”
56

52. ⏳ ⏳
Blocking
Non-
Blocking

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

54. ⚠
Compliance mindset shift:
Permitting to Enabling
59

55. 60

56. “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

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

58. 63
What is business agility?
Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
Valuable: product mindset
Team Topologies examples

59. The value of a
product mindset

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

61. 66

62. 67
A product is optional to
use - no-one is forced to
use the product

63. 68

64. 69
A product is carefully
designed and curated

65. 70

66. 71
A product simplifies
something for users

67. 72

68. 73
A product evolves to take
advantage of technology
changes

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

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

71. ⚠
Product Management
for internal platforms
76

72. 77

73. 78
A platform is optional to
use - no team is forced to
use the platform

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

75. 80
A platform is a curated
experience for engineers
(the customers of the
platform).

76. 81
What is business agility?
Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
Valuable: product mindset
Team Topologies examples

77. Team Topologies
examples

78. Case studies in the TT book
83

79. 84
...

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

81. Industry examples on the
TT website
86

82. 87

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

84. 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

85. Case
Study
90

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

93. Results
● Product Mgt superpowers
● Effective comms during COVID-19
● Responsive, autonomous teams
102
https://teamtopologies.com/examples
https://teamtopologies.com/industry-examples/team-topologies-at-footasylum-platforms-flow-and-wardley-mapping

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

95. Case
Study
105

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

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

98. 108
Low-level AWS service calls before platform adoption
2015-2016: direct AWS API calls

99. 109
Low-level AWS service calls before platform adoption
2015-2016: direct AWS API calls
🤯

100. “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

101. 112
2
0
1
7
Early platform (first customer)

102. 114
Low-level AWS service calls since platform adoption
2015-2018: direct AWS API calls

103. 122
2
0
2
0

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

105. “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

106. Results
● “Curated” platform experience
● Reduced complexity for teams
● Addressed cross-team needs
129
teamtopologies.com/examples

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

108. 132

109. 133
What is business agility?
Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
Valuable: product mindset
Team Topologies examples

110. Respond rapidly to
changing external and
internal conditions

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

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

113. Real-world examples

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

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

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

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

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

119. What next?
143

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

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

122. academy.teamtopologies.com

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

124. 153
Manuel Pais
FlowOnRails
Twitter: @manupaisable
LinkedIn: manuelpais
Matthew Skelton
Conflux
Twitter: @matthewpskelton
LinkedIn: matthewskelton
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