Historical Context
The panel discusses the origins of the book Team Topologies. The project started with a blog post.
Matthew: “Back in 2013, I actually wrote a blog post in my personal blog. I actually wrote it in a rage.”
In 2015, Manuel joined the team to help expand on the ideas from that blog post and create Devops Toplogies.
Manuel: “What the hell are you calling a DevOps team? DevOps is not about creating a new team called DevOps.”
DevOps Topologies
The panel discusses the impact of DevOps Topologies and some of the companies that have used it, including Netflix and Conde Nast.
Matthew and Manuel explain how the project has evolved over time as DevOps Topologies was being deployed in the real world.
Matthew: “It’s not just a set of patterns or templates. We wanted to provide an organizational capability for detecting when things have changed and have gone wrong.”
The panel discusses Conway’s Law and its implications for DevOps.
Manuel: “Teams are the means of delivering value.”
Flow!
The panel discusses the importance of flow in both living systems and organizations.
Manuel: “It’s a more experiment driven approach where we have this goal or this need we need to meet and then allowing the teams to find the right solution.”
Jessica: “In modern systems, the flow is of changes to the flow of the product. It’s a very different level of work.”
The panel discusses the need for different team configurations that are constantly evolving.
Matthew: “It seems quite important to understand different kinds of dynamics in the organization at different times.”
Three Team Interaction Modes
The panel discusses the three team interaction modes laid out in the book: collaboration, as-a-service, and facilitation.
Four Team Topologies
The panel discusses the four team topologies in the book: value stream aligned teams, enabling teams, platform teams, and complicated subsystem teams.
Jessica: “The limitation of a team is cognitive load. It’s not resources, it’s not pizza.”
Manuel: “Although pizza is very appealing.”
Manuel discusses Dunbar’s Number and how that concept can put useful constraints on teams.
Episode images by Jessica Kerr. Show notes by Tyler Wilson.