How Team Topologies helped to boost agile for greater impact: ING Netherlands’ evolving agile transformation
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
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!
