🧠 Michael Cordell's Brain Dump

Team Topologies

3 min read

Brings together several concepts:

  1. Development processes evolve : storming/norming/etc
  2. Conway’s Law
  3. Systems Thinking
  4. Cognitive Load (for teams) Advocates for organization design that optimizes for flow of change and feedback from running systems.

Design software architecture that encourages team-scoped flow.

Dunbar’s number should be used to design teams and org structures: 5-8 people teams. Tribes of no more than 50. Divisions of no more than 150 or 500 people.

The organization needs to structure around a team first design. Similarly architecture should support team-first org design. Individuals need to think in the unit of teams as well. Rewards should be at the team level.

Good boundaries minimize Cognitive Load

Inverse Conway Maneuver Tuckman Teal Performance Model

Assessing domains

  1. identify distinct domains that a team has to deal with
  2. Classify the doamins:
    1. simple: work has a clear path of action
    2. complicated: changes need to be analyzed and solutions require iteration to get right
    3. complex: solutions need a large amount of discovery and experimentation
  3. Compare domains across teams

Structuring:

  • Assign each domain a team
    • If domain is to large
      • split domain in to subdomains
      • assign sub domain to team
  • A single team should be able to accomodate 2-3 simple domains
  • A team responsible for a complex domain should not have any otehr domains assigned to them
  • Avoid having a team responsible for two complicated domains

Cite

  1. Topologies, M. S. C. of C. and co-author of T., Topologies, M. P. coauthor of T. & a, R. M. A. C. Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow. (IT Revolution Press, Portland, OR, 2019).

Metadata

Title:: Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow Year:: 2019 Publisher:: IT Revolution Press Location:: Portland, OR ISBN:: 978-1-942788-81-2

Abstract

“This book will help executives and business leaders focus on the key strategies of high performance teams to effectively address the needs of today and the evolving landscape of tomorrow.” ―Barry O’Reilly, author of Unlearn and Lean EnterpriseCompanion book Remote Team Interactions Workbook now available!Effective software teams are essential for any organization to deliver value continuously and sustainably. But how do you build the best team organization for your specific goals, culture, and needs? Team Topologies is a practical, step-by-step, adaptive model for organizational design and team interaction based on four fundamental team types and three team interaction patterns. It is a model that treats teams as the fundamental means of delivery, where team structures and communication pathways are able to evolve with technological and organizational maturity.In Team Topologies, IT consultants Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais share secrets of successful team patterns and interactions to help readers choose and evolve the right team patterns for their organization, making sure to keep the software healthy and optimize value streams.Team Topologies is a major step forward in organizational design for software, presenting a well-defined way for teams to interact and interrelate that helps make the resulting software architecture clearer and more sustainable, turning inter-team problems into valuable signals for the self-steering organization.

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