Organizations that do not adapt rapidly to the modern, highly-changeable business environment are failing, and failing in large numbers. Increased regulation, pressures from climate change, shifting of energy sources, digitalization, and (recently) the COVID-19 pandemic are all driving a need for business agility in organizations of all sizes. In this talk, we’ll explore how the patterns and principles from Team Topologies promote true business agility through a rapid flow of software change, fast feedback from running systems, a strong drive for loose coupling, and an 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 agility. Matthew Skelton, co-author of Team Topologies, shares insights from organizations in several different industry sectors including banking, financial services, insurance, retail, and leisure.

1. TeamTopologies.com
@TeamTopologies
Business Agility with
Team Topologies
Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais
co-authors of Team Topologies
@matthewpskelton @manupaisable
NatWest Group - 2021-01-19

2. 2
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

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

4. [Poll - audience]

5. “innovative tools and concepts for
structuring the next generation
digital operating model”
Charles T. Betz,
Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
5

6. 6
What is business agility?
Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
Valuable: product mindset
Team Topologies examples

7. How does Team Topologies
help with business agility?
7

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

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

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

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

12. 12
What is business agility?
Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
Valuable: product mindset
Team Topologies examples

13. What is
business agility?
13

14. Business Agility: the ability
to respond rapidly* to
changing internal and
external conditions (* in hours)

15. 15Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash

16. 16Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

17. 17Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

18. digital

19. “Digital”: 1
19
Rapidly-developed
services accessed via
personal compute
devices

20. “Digital”: 2
20
Rich telemetry for
existing processes
provided via software
and sensors

21. “Digital”: 3
21
Highly effective ways of
working discovered &
evolved through 1 and 2

22. Questions to answer
How would we optimize for
a fast flow of change?

23. Questions to answer
How would we make sure
we focus on user needs?

24. Questions to answer
How would we produce the
right thing in the right way
at the right time?

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

26. Questions to answer
How would we maximize our
chances of finding new
opportunities for innovation?

27. 27
What is business agility?
Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
Valuable: product mindset
Team Topologies examples

28. Being agile,
not doing ‘Agile’

29. 29
State of DevOps reports
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
Annual survey of 1000-5000 IT
professionals worldwide using
rigorous statistical methods

30. 30
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”

31. 31
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...”

32. 32
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.”

33. 33
State of DevOps 2019
Key technical practices
● Lightweight change process
● Real DR testing
● Maintainable code
● Loosely-coupled systems
● Monitoring
● Trunk-based development
● Deployment automation

34. 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/
34

35. [Poll - Accelerate]

36. 36
4 key metrics: ‘Accelerate’
lead time
deployment frequency
Mean Time To Restore
change fail percentage

37. 37

38. 38

39. 39

40. 40

41. 41

42. 42

43. 43

44. 44

45. 45

46. 46

47. 47

48. 48

49. 49

50. 50

51. 51
What is business agility?
Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
Valuable: product mindset
Team Topologies examples

52. The value of a
product mindset

53. Product = Holistic User Experience
➔ Functionality
➔ Design
➔ Monetization
➔ Content
– Marty Cagan, 2010
53Source: https://svpg.com/defining-product/

54. 54

55. 55
A product is optional to
use - no-one is forced to
use the product

56. 56

57. 57
A product is carefully
designed and curated

58. 58

59. 59
A product simplifies
something for users

60. 60

61. 61
A product evolves to take
advantage of technology
changes

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

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

64. 64
What is business agility?
Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
Valuable: product mindset
Team Topologies examples

65. Team Topologies
examples

66. Team Topologies
66
Organizing business and
technology teams for fast flow
Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais
IT Revolution Press, 2019
teamtopologies.com/book

67. [Poll - TT book]

68. 68
Rapid flow of change

69. 69
Rapid feedback from
running systems

70. 70

72. 72

73. 73

74. 74
Flow of change

75. Remove barriers to flow:
hand-offs, approval gates,
manual inspections
Replace with self-service APIs
75

76. Compliance
as Code
(API)
76
Flow of change
Domain
experts as
Enabling
team for
compliance /
governance

77. [Before Team Topologies]

78. 78

79. 79
Challenge
Hiscox needed to increase the pace of change to
release new products quickly into a highly
competitive and fast-moving market.
Solution
Introduced DevOps practices and infrastructure
automation

80. 80
Results
● Reduced cost per release on a major app by 97%.
● Release cycle improved from 10 weeks per
deployment to 50 deployments per week.
● Reduced time per release by 89%.
● Reduced staff required to release by 75%.
https://www.uk.cdw.com/files/2515/3555/5104/Hiscox-Case-Study-20180411.pdf

81. 81
https://techbeacon.com/devops/5-lessons-how-devops-cloud-reinvented-it-ops-hiscox
Jonathan Fletcher,
CTO at Hiscox
Insurance

82. 82
data center
flooded
data storage
failures
POCs for
cloud
Infrastructure as
Code - config in
version control
New capabilities:
upskilling and
awareness
Ops: learn to code
Dev: learn infra
Migrate core UK policy
admin to cloud
Rework apps to be
more cloud-native
https://blog.weareconvivio.com/how-hiscox-insurance-adopted-agile-working-in-a-0-5bn-bet-on-the-cloud-d613955d3ef9

83. 83
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4FQjOyKwRo&feature=youtu.be&t=662

84. 84
“DevOps has meant big
improvements in reliability and
visibility, and those lead directly
to improved productivity and
speed of releases. With more
reliability in your delivery
process, you get a faster pace
of change.”
Jonathan Fletcher,
CTO at Hiscox
Insurance
https://www.uk.cdw.com/files/2515/3555/5104/Hiscox-Case-Study-20180411.pdf

85. 85
“We decided to limit
DevOpsifying to our
crown jewels: the five
applications we care
about most.”
Jonathan Fletcher,
CTO at Hiscox
Insurance
https://www.uk.cdw.com/files/2515/3555/5104/Hiscox-Case-Study-20180411.pdf

86. 86
“We moved people into roles that were more
aligned with the business unit — “product
focused” is probably the right term, as I
mentioned earlier. Each product team has its
own business analysts, developers, testers and
other functions as needed. These teams are the
masters of their own destiny, rather than trying
to beg and borrow capacity from a big group
function.”
Jonathan Fletcher,
CTO at Hiscox
Insurance
https://www.uk.cdw.com/files/2515/3555/5104/Hiscox-Case-Study-20180411.pdf

87. 87
“We needed a team to evangelize and support
the adoption of DevOps. … We created a
platform services team (which I run). That team
learned continuous delivery and other
DevOps practices...”
Jonathan Fletcher,
CTO at Hiscox
Insurance

88. 88
Results
● Reduced cost per release on a major app by 97%.
● Release cycle improved from 10 weeks per
deployment to 50 deployments per week.
● Reduced time per release by 89%.
● Reduced staff required to release by 75%.
https://www.uk.cdw.com/files/2515/3555/5104/Hiscox-Case-Study-20180411.pdf

89. Case studies in the TT book

90. 90

91. January 2021:
16 months since
publication of TT
Photo by noor Younis on Unsplash 91

92. 92

93. CaseStudy
93

94. ● Founded in 1847
● Insurance sector
● Norway and Baltics
● 4000 employees
● Cloud/DevOps
transformation 2015-now
94

95. 2015
95
Project-based
Waterfall

96. Now: Stream-aligned
96

97. Supporting topologies
97
Design Platform, Analytics Platform, Web
Application Platform, CRM platform,
Infrastructure platform
Mainframe core system
Architecture, Information Security

98. Concepts
● Stream-aligned: build & run
● Supporting team types: clarity
● Platform teams have customers:
Stream-aligned teams
98

99. Results
● Digital sales: 40% growth (5 yrs)
● Customer service: 2x digital
● Claims handling: 80%+ online
99
teamtopologies.com/examples

100. Thanks to:
Christian Moe
Chief Digital Officer
Gjensidige Insurance
100

101. CaseStudy
135

102. ● UK's leading comparison
and switching service
● Founded in 2000
● ~250 staff, £140m+ revenue
● > 2010: Autonomous teams
● > 2017: Platformization
136

103. Autonomous stream-aligned
teams
137
2015
...

104. 138
Low-level AWS service calls before platform adoption

105. “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
139

106. 140
2017
Infra platform
started with few
services
First customer
(centralized
logging, metrics,
auto scaling)

107. 141
2017
Early platform (first
customer)

108. 142
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

109. 143
Low-level AWS service calls since platform adoption

110. 144
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

111. 145
2019

112. 151
2020

113. “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
155

114. Concepts
● Platforms to reduce cognitive load
● Platform as a product / MVP
● Discover good boundaries & APIs
● Clear team interaction modes
156

115. Results
● “Curated” platform experience
● Reduced complexity for teams
● Addressed cross-team needs
157

116. Results
● From autonomy to self-sufficiency
● Patterns applied beyond IT
● Balancing fast flow with reliability
158
teamtopologies.com/examples

117. Thanks to:
Paul Ingles
Chief Technology Officer
RVU / Uswitch
Tom Booth
Head of Infrastructure & Security
RVU / Uswitch
159

118. CaseStudy
160

119. ● Financial advice
● Founded 2009
● Consumers & companies
● 'Explainable AI'
● Increasingly successful
161

120. < 2019: product growth
162
x 6

121. Mid-2019
163
HALT!

122. September 2019
164

123. Independent Service Heuristics
165
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.

124. 2020: New architecture
166

125. “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
167

126. Concepts
● Stream-aligned: build & run
● Boundaries that help flow
● Supporting team types: reduce
cognitive load on Stream teams
168

127. Results
● Clear patterns and language
● Framework for design decisions
● Confidence in scaling approach
169
https://medium.com/ww-engineering/to-monolith-or-to-microservice-f8c3f967e63c

128. Thanks to:
Richard Marshall
CTO
Wealth Wizards
170

129. 171

130. 173
What is business agility?
Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
Valuable: product mindset
Team Topologies examples

131. Respond rapidly to
changing external and
internal conditions

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

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

134. Real-world examples from
insurance, financial,
consumer, etc.

135. How does Team Topologies
help with business agility?
178

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

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

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

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

140. What’s next?
183

141. Workbook
coming soon...
Team Topologies
for Remote Teams
184
for Remote
Teams
Resources: teamtopologies.com/remote-first
FREE

142. Free Resources
185
Free resources and tools
teamtopologies.com/resources
Free tools & templates (GitHub)
github.com/teamtopologies

143. 186
🠊 teamtopologies.com/shop

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

145. Remote-
Friendly
Training
teamtopologies.com/training
188

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

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