creditas - Managing Team Cognitive Load for a Fast Flow of Value
Founded in 2012, Creditas, a Brazilian fintech, is a consumer lending startup that operates a digital platform providing secured loans and low interest rates. By 2022, Creditas had over 3.000 employees and was serving a broad range of products related to consumer loans, with B2C and B2B2C models.
Two years earlier, Creditas started a multi-product initiative to offer a single credit card that connected multiple existing and new products, to help clients access better loans. The goal was to verify fast product market fit for those product initiatives, but things didn't go according to plan.
In this case study, we will deep drive into how we evolved from a single team with multiple products, to a full product tribe with a platform team to support internal stream-aligned teams for fast flow of value.
How did a Brazilian fintech transform from a struggling single team to high-performing product teams delivering weekly increments?
Creditas's journey from cognitive overload and delivery paralysis to Team Topologies-driven success shows how measuring and managing team cognitive load can unlock fast flow of value in complex multi-product environments.
What you will learn in this case study
🔵 Why a single team handling multiple products led to burnout and delivery failures
🔵 How cognitive load assessment revealed hidden bottlenecks in both teams and leadership
🔵 The role of enabling teams in reducing task complexity and improving processes
🔵 When and how to introduce a platform team to address technical bottlenecks
🔵 How continuous cognitive load monitoring guided successful organizational evolution
This case study will soon be available on the website, and you can read it in full in the second edition of Team Topologies.
The Team Topologies Success Toolkit™ is a carefully curated collection of trusted tools that work seamlessly with Team Topologies patterns and principles. These aren’t just any tools - they’re specifically designed and enhanced to bring Team Topologies concepts to life at scale. Start here!
more Case studies
How Team Topologies helped to boost agile for greater impact: ING Netherlands’ evolving agile transformation
ING's journey from DevOps pioneers to Team Topologies-guided product organization shows how enabling teams, platform productization, and outcome-focused metrics can align 60,000+ employees with strategic vision across global operations.
How did ING Netherlands evolve its decade-long agile transformation using Team Topologies to boost strategic impact?
ING's journey from DevOps pioneers to Team Topologies-guided product organization shows how enabling teams, platform productization, and outcome-focused metrics can align 60,000+ employees with strategic vision across global operations.
What you will learn in this case study
🔵 Why incremental innovation wasn't enough to meet ING's Horizon 28 strategic vision
🔵 How Team Topologies principles shaped their approach to team structure and architecture integration
🔵 The role of global enabling teams in scaling "ways of working" across multiple countries
🔵 How platform productization reduced cognitive load and accelerated internal innovation
🔵 The "performance cockpit" approach to measuring product maturity and team effectiveness
This is an exclusive case study that you can read in full in the second edition of Team Topologies.
Summary
Authors: Paul Wolhoff (Agile Transformation Consultant) and Jan Rijkhoff (Agile Transformation Consultant)
ING Netherlands integrated the principles of Team Topologies between 2022 and 2023 to revitalize its agile practices, optimizing team flow and moving from output-focused delivery to an outcome-driven product model. Although ING had been using agile practices for over a decade, the bank utilized this framework to address coordination complexities and better align product teams with overall organizational goals.
The application of Team Topologies boosted agility at ING through several key strategic initiatives:
Defining Clear Boundaries and Team Types:Team Topologies helped ING better understand the necessity of different team types and the critical role architecture plays in product development. By integrating architectural considerations early in the lifecycle, ING was able to clearly define its digital products, organize its "tribes" around these products, and establish focused teams with clear boundaries.
Empowering Through Enabling Teams: Rather than enforcing rigid top-down standards, ING deployed specialized enabling teams at multiple levels to share knowledge and build local self-sufficiency. For example, a small, global "ways of working" team temporarily embeds its members into local entities to transfer expertise and empower local product teams to deliver value more effectively.
Treating Platforms as Consumable Products: To accelerate innovation, ING heavily emphasized the "productization" of its internal tools. By developing well-documented platform products that function much like external cloud services, ING significantly reduced the cognitive load on primary product teams. These platforms are highly discoverable via a central marketplace, allowing primary teams to easily consume them without being bogged down by complex technical operations.
Elevating Platform Product Managers: To maintain the efficiency of these internal services, ING elevated the role of the platform product manager. These managers are dedicated to understanding the needs of internal consumers, managing stakeholders across different tribes, and ensuring that the platforms evolve organically to support overarching strategic objectives.
Shifting Conversations from Output to Outcome: Supported by this new team structure, ING deliberately changed its terminology—such as swapping the word "epics" for "innovations"—to focus team discussions on strategic impact rather than mere output. Teams are now structured to prioritize long-term value, connecting their specific objectives and key results (OKRs) directly to the organization's broader goals.
To ensure these changes effectively boosted agility and flow, ING introduced a "performance cockpit" to measure team performance using DORA metrics, product maturity, and backlog health. Importantly, these metrics are used to spark meaningful dialogue and share best practices across the newly organized teams, driving continuous improvement rather than serving as strict performance targets.
The Team Topologies Success Toolkit™ is a carefully curated collection of trusted tools that work seamlessly with Team Topologies patterns and principles. These aren’t just any tools - they’re specifically designed and enhanced to bring Team Topologies concepts to life at scale. Start here!