#99 -Team Topologies 101 feat. Matthew Skelton, co-author of Team Topologies
Apr 18, 2024
auto_awesome
Matthew Skelton, co-author of Team Topologies, discusses value flow, team structures, continuous stewardship, and decoupling in time. He explains how Team Topologies reduces cognitive load, increases user value, and structures teams more humanely. Skelton shares insights on system design, cybernetics, and neuroscience, drawing parallels to Pilates for company goals.
Continuous stewardship ensures software evolves to meet changing business needs.
Effective team boundaries and interaction modes enhance understanding of value flows.
Decoupling in time accelerates flow and agility in software development.
Deep dives
Initiating a Mind Shift Towards Continuous Stewardship
To achieve effective humane organizations, an initial shift in mindset towards continuous stewardship is essential. This approach emphasizes the ongoing management of services, considering software as encoded business intent that requires continuous care. Continuous stewardship focuses on evolving software to align with changing business needs and enabling safe adaptations over time, ensuring organizational agility and value delivery.
Collaborative Boundary Setting for Effective Value Flow
Using group workshops and collaborative discussions, organizations can define effective boundaries for value flow while emphasizing customer needs. By bringing together diverse perspectives from technology, product, and logistics, teams can align on common goals and establish clear team boundaries and interaction modes. This collaborative approach enhances understanding of value flows and facilitates efficient organization design.
Decoupling for Agile Software Development
Decoupling in software development involves separating components that do not need to be tightly connected to enable faster flow and agility. By asynchronously managing changes across teams, organizations can prevent delays caused by interdependent dependencies. Amazon Web Services' principle of decoupling in time has exemplified how this approach enhances scalability and operational agility, diverging from traditional project management coordination.
Exploring the Four Team Types
The book discusses four main team types, including Stream-Aligned Teams that are cross-functional, focused on specific value flows, and have no handoffs in their work. Enabling Teams provide expertise across different value streams, supporting other teams in improving their capabilities. Complicated Subsystems Teams handle complex and specialized aspects to reduce cognitive load, while Platforms facilitate the grouping of teams and resources for effective collaboration.
Avoiding Handoffs for Improved Flow in Organizations
Handoffs in organizations introduce delays and synchronization issues, hindering flow. By minimizing handoffs and having individuals on call, organizations can ensure quicker value delivery. A mix of skills within teams helps in building and running services, preventing dependency on external sources. Efficient flow of value requires a balance between self-sufficiency and avoiding cognitive overload.
Enhancing Team Dynamics through Different Team Types
Enabling teams support streamline teams by enhancing capabilities without creating dependencies. Complicated subsystem teams handle specialized tasks as services, reducing cognitive load in streamline teams. Platforms, akin to complicated subsystems, offer multiple services to streamline teams, emphasizing flow improvement over cost-saving. Collaboration, facilitation, and X-as-a-service interaction modes offer dynamic team relationships for effective value delivery.
A CTO’s Primer to Value Flow, Continuous Stewardship and Decoupling in Time
Lead a more humane and effective organisation with inspiration from Matthew Skelton, co-author of Team Topologies. Inspired by system design💠, cybernetics🤖 and neuroscience 🧠, Team Topologies allows CTOs to structure their teams in a more humane way that reduces cognitive load 🤯 while increasing user value 🎯.
Listen to find out:
Value Flow💦: What, why and how to find it
Team Topologies🪢: The 3 team types,1 grouping, and 3 interaction modes
Why Continuous Stewardship 🛞 is important in software
Decoupling🧩 in Time: Amazon’s Secret Source
+Why Team Topologies is like Pilates 🏋️ for your company goals🦸
(00:00) Intro
(00:56) Welcome
(02:11) Matthew Skelton's Personal Nerd Journey
(06:44) System Thinking for Effective Humane Organisations
(08:18) Team Cognitive Load
(08:48) Team Interaction Modes
(09:59) The Complexity and Chaos of Human Nature in Organisational Design
(10:31) The Influence of Neuroscience on Team Topologies
(13:52) How team topologies is influenced by cybernetics, neuroscience and systems
(15:40) Getting Started with Team Topologies
(16:45) Continuously Adapting
(17:55) Then vs. Now: Structuring around Value Flows
(22:24) Continuous Stewardship: Responsibility of Software Orgs
(26:03) How to have everyone work together
(26:45) Workshopping to find Value Flow
(30:04) Value Flow: Work Backwards from User Needs, Wardley Maps and Existing Team Structure
(33:49) Decoupling in Time and why you become less agile when you rely on PMs
(38:30) Amazon's Secret to Scaling and Efficiency
(39:58) 4 TEAM TYPES
(40:23) Stream Aligned Team
(42:54) Enabling Team
(43:38) Complicated Subsystem Team
(44:34) Platform - grouping of teams
(45:34) 3 INTERACTION MODES
(45:42) Collaboration
(45:49) Facilitation
(45:57) X-as-a-Service
(46:08) How the Dynamic nature and adaptation to change is the Secret Sauce of Team Topologies
(49:28) Ditch Hierarchy for Better Value Flow
(54:26) Team Topologies as Pilates for Your Organization
(1:01:05) Have the confidence to listen: To Yourself and Others
About Matthew Skelton#
Matthew Skelton is co-author of the award-winning and ground-breaking book Team Topologies, and Founder & Principal at Conflux. The Team Topologies book was rated one of the ‘Best product management books of all time’ by Book Authority and is widely used by organisations worldwide to transform the way they deliver value. Matthew is one of the foremost leaders in modern organisational dynamics for fast flow, drawing on Team Topologies and related practices to support organisations with transformation towards a sustainable fast flow of value and true business agility.
With Shopify, you’re already running the internet’s best-converting checkout.
So, how do you boost your performance and sales further? Checkout Extensibility.
With fourteen NEW and EVEN MORE POWERFUL API and UI components, Checkout Extensibility makes it simple to customise your checkout experience.
Join the thousands of German businesses enjoying significant boosts in performance and conversion results with Checkout Extensibility.
Learn more at shopify.de/editionsdigest
Remember Everything You Learn from Podcasts
Save insights instantly, chat with episodes, and build lasting knowledge - all powered by AI.
