An enabling team is composed of specialists in a domain and help bridge a capability gap1. This are referred to as “Technical Consulting teams” and itneract mostly through collaboration.
Heuristic
A good check for an enabling team is “Do those served grow as persons? Do they becomes healthier, wiser, freer, and more autonomous?”
- Enabling teams proactively seek to understand the needs of stream-aligned team, aligning with them on when more collaboration is needed
- An enabling team stays ahead of best practices and tooling in their area.
- An enabling team can act as a proxy for external or internal services that are too difficult for a stream aligned team to use.
- Enabling teams promote learning by being a curator for appropriate knowledge sharing within an organization.
1. Skelton, M., Pais, M. & Malan, R. Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow. (IT Revolution Press, Portland, OR, 2019).