On June 16, 2023, we completed the re-read of Team Topologies: Organizing Business And Technology Teams For Fast Flow. The crew at the Software Process and Measurement Blog and Podcast is off on a bit of an adventure. We are sharing the conclusion of Team Topologies to provide some reading while we recharge. We will return on December 7th with the next installment of How To Be A Stoic by Massimo Pigliucci.
The last chapter is titled “Conclusion: The Next-Generation Digital Operating Model. This chapter ties all of the themes of the book together and adds ideas for experimenting with adopting the four team topologies and interaction modes. My friend and colleague, Jeremy Willets, described teams as the atomic unit of Agile. I would suggest extending the metaphor to teams are the atomic unit of organizations. If teams have problems with flow the organization will struggle to deliver value. Structuring teams to enhance flow is of strategic importance. Unfortunately, team design does not get enough attention. Team design, as described in Team Topologies, requires changing how we think. Organizations need to focus on flow rather than hierarchy. If you have teams currently in place, a flow focus will mean that you have to organize people differently and to pay attention to the cognitive load placed on people.
I love the quote that opens the final chapter. The quote from John Roberts (not Supreme Court Justice) from the Modern Firm is
“The second effect on the performance of creating small and powered units is to increase the likely speed of adaptation to new information.”
The quote highlights the link between small empowered teams and the ability to change quickly. The idea at the center of that quote is that self-organizing, autonomous teams are powerful tools for generating flow and then adapting as context shifts. This is a strong reason for designing for flow. If you missed the rationale for using the word autonomous in the book (I did during my first read) remember that any time a team needs to hand work off or requires outside intervention, the flow will slow – these are bottlenecks. These hiccups in flow take away some of the team’s ability to plan and control the flow of work. Teams designed in this way can never have a predictable flow. The teams that are designed with flow problems — it is madness.
Over the last few weeks, I have had several discussions concerning the composition of teams. Given my recent re-read, I had to ask several questions about cognitive load, autonomy, hand-offs, and flow. Almost no one considers cognitive load or whether a team has all of the capabilities needed to be autonomous (deliver work to production). There are many contributing factors ranging from lack of team design knowledge to the classic “that is just the way we do it” type of fatalism. I would like to suggest that every executive commits to making the flow of customer and stakeholder value a goal for their organization. Flow, as a goal they believe in, will go a long way to making team design important.
Remember, buy a copy of Team Topologies: Organizing Business And Technology Teams For Fast Flow and read along!
Previous Installments:
Week 1: Front Matter and Logistics – http://bit.ly/3nHGkW4
Week 2: The Problem With Org Charts – https://bit.ly/3zGGyQf
Week 3: Conway’s Law and Why It Matters – https://bit.ly/3muTVQE
Week 4: Team First Thinking – https://bit.ly/3H9xRSC
Week 5: Static Team Topologies – https://bit.ly/40Q6eF2
Week 6: The Four Fundamental Team Topologies (Part 1) – https://bit.ly/3VUI7EB
Week 7: The Four Fundamental Team Topologies (Part 2) – https://bit.ly/3I70dxa
Week 8: Choose Team-First Boundaries – https://bit.ly/43i8W8A
Week 9: Team Interaction Modes – https://bit.ly/3WR49Is
Week 10: Evolve Team Structures with Organizational Sensing – https://bit.ly/3NnIa9b
