A data-driven approach to fast flow using Team Topologies principles at EBSCO
EBSCO Information Services, a leading provider of research databases, leveraged Team Topologies with Conflux's support to optimize its organizational dynamics for software delivery.
EBSCO Information Services, a leading provider of research databases, leveraged Team Topologies with Conflux's support, Team Topologies Solution Partner, to optimize its organizational dynamics for software delivery.
What you will learn in this case study
🔵 Re-architecting teams and systems for flow
🔵 Catalyzing decision-making through Team Topologies
🔵 From ‘Ownership’ to ‘Stewardship’
🔵 Stream-aligned teams drive value flow
🔵 Team Topologies enables organizational transformation for fast flow
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!
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Secretariat of Finance of the State of Rio de Janeiro: Modernizing IT and Transforming Services with Team Topologies
The Secretariat of Finance of the State of Rio de Janeiro (SEFAZ-RJ) faced a critical bottleneck with a rigid, legacy IT structure and a backlog of over 700 projects. By adopting Team Topologies and DevOps practices, the organization restructured from functional silos into autonomous stream-aligned teams.
The Secretariat of Finance of the State of Rio de Janeiro (SEFAZ-RJ) faced a critical bottleneck with a rigid, legacy IT structure and a backlog of over 700 projects. By adopting Team Topologies and DevOps practices, the organization restructured from functional silos into autonomous stream-aligned teams. This transformation enabled the public institution to overcome bureaucratic complexity, align technology with business value, and achieve high-performance software delivery for its 17 million citizens.
What you will learn in this case study
🔵 Modernizing legacy public sector IT with Team Topologies
🔵 Shifting from functional silos to autonomous stream-aligned teams
🔵 Applying the Reverse Conway Maneuver to align organizational structure
🔵 Managing cognitive load through platform teams and standardization
🔵 Using DORA metrics to drive high-performance government services
You can read more 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!
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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
Building Africa’s Super App: Yassir’s Evolution with Team Topologies
Yassir's transformation from ride-hailing startup to 8-million-user super app demonstrates how Team Topologies can solve the unique challenges of mobile-first platforms at scale. Facing tangled team structures and delivery bottlenecks during rapid expansion across 45 cities in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, this $150M-funded company applied stream-aligned teams, platform services, and enabling teams to slash cycle time by 60% while maintaining quality. Their journey shows how the "SAUCE" principles (Small, Audience-focused, Cross-functional, Enabled teams) combined with evolutionary organizational design can support hyper-growth from 3 million to 8 million customers in just three years.
How did North Africa's leading super app scale from 50 to 400 engineers while achieving 140% deployment frequency increase using Team Topologies?
Yassir's transformation from ride-hailing startup to 8-million-user super app demonstrates how Team Topologies can solve the unique challenges of mobile-first platforms at scale. Facing tangled team structures and delivery bottlenecks during rapid expansion across 45 cities in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, this $150M-funded company applied stream-aligned teams, platform services, and enabling teams to slash cycle time by 60% while maintaining quality. Their journey shows how the "SAUCE" principles (Small, Audience-focused, Cross-functional, Enabled teams) combined with evolutionary organizational design can support hyper-growth from 3 million to 8 million customers in just three years.
What you will learn in this case study
🔵 Why traditional project-based teams created communication bottlenecks and misaligned priorities during super app consolidation
🔵 How stream-aligned teams organized around business domains (mobility, delivery, financial services) eliminated handoffs
🔵 The evolution from mobile integration platform to dedicated Super App stream-aligned team with clear business metrics
🔵 How enabling teams (Agile Coaching, Product Quality Specialists, Staff Engineering) reduced cognitive load across 400 engineers
🔵 The iterative 4-month cycles that drove continuous organizational adaptation and 230% employee satisfaction increase
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
Team Topologies at Kentucky Fried Chicken (UK&I): People-First Approach to Driving Digital Transformation
KFC UK&I’s journey from fragmented workflows and siloed teams to a digitally enabled, value-focused organisation shows how Team Topologies principles helped align business and technology, reduce dependencies, and accelerate value delivery—while reinforcing a culture rooted in people and purpose.
How did KFC UK&I transform its digital operations with Team Topologies while staying true to its people-first heritage?
KFC UK&I’s journey from fragmented workflows and siloed teams to a digitally enabled, value-focused organisation shows how Team Topologies principles helped align business and technology, reduce dependencies, and accelerate value delivery—while reinforcing a culture rooted in people and purpose.
In this case study you’ll learn
🔵 Why digitalisation was essential for KFC UK&I to stay competitive in the quick-service restaurant industry
🔵 How Team Topologies principles helped restructure teams for autonomy, ownership, and flow of value
🔵 The role of leadership in balancing heritage, people-first values, and modern digital transformation
🔵 How reducing cognitive load and breaking down knowledge silos accelerated customer-facing innovation
🔵 The measurable impact: digital sales growth from 20% to 65%, a 29% reduction in blocking dependencies, and a 33% faster cycle time
This is an exclusive case study that you can read in full in the second edition of Team Topologies.
Summary
KFC United Kingdom & Ireland utilized the Team Topologies approach to address a fractured, project-centric environment that had left staff struggling with organizational silos, resource bottlenecks, and fragmented knowledge. By focusing on team health and optimal workflows, KFC achieved a people-first transformation through several key initiatives:
Prioritizing Cognitive Load: A primary trigger for KFC's transformation was the need to reduce the mental workload on its staff. By identifying and minimizing excessive cognitive load, KFC created a working environment that promoted sustainable productivity and continuous innovation.
Shifting from Components to Value Streams: Originally, KFC's teams were organized around technical components (such as mobile, web, or kiosk), which forced staff to navigate complex handoffs, leading to decision-making delays and frequent rework. KFC reorganized its staff into value stream-oriented teams—such as "Acquisition & Retention" and "Payment & Fulfillment"—which gave teams clear end-to-end ownership over customer journeys and drastically reduced the need to wait on other departments.
Building Stable, Long-Lived Teams: Moving away from a model where people were treated as temporary project resources, the new structure allowed teams to stay together longer, develop deep domain expertise, and foster a greater sense of purpose and stability.
Establishing Chapters and Guilds: To support professional development and prevent the new value stream teams from becoming isolated, KFC introduced supporting social structures. "Chapters" were created to connect people with similar skill sets across different teams to drive standards and support career growth, while "Guilds" formed cross-functional communities where employees could collaborate on shared interests and improve their ways of working.
Removing Friction to Improve Flow: The heavy inter-team dependencies of the past meant staff were frequently blocked from progressing their work. By re-evaluating team boundaries, KFC successfully reduced blocking dependencies by 29% across all value streams.
Ultimately, this people-centric restructuring empowered the teams to work more seamlessly, resulting in a 33% reduction in delivery cycle times (dropping from 9 to 6 days on average) and helping drive a massive increase in digital sales from 20% to 65% of the company's sales mix.
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!
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Reorganizing for Success: Capra Consulting’s Journey Applying Team Topologies Beyond IT Roles
Capra Consulting, a Norwegian IT consultancy, underwent a reorganization to address challenges in communication and decision-making brought about by growth. At 50 employees and a hierarchical organizational model, we wanted to mitigate the risks of reduced employee participation in our operation and reduced autonomy that might come with growth. We sought inspiration from the Team Topologies book to create a networked organizational structure that emphasized employee engagement, autonomy, and flexibility. By dissolving the Top Management Group and introducing specialized teams, we fostered distributed decision-making and collaborative problem-solving.
How did a Norwegian IT consultancy transform from dysfunctional hierarchy to network organization while growing from 50 to 100 employees?
Capra Consulting's bold transformation journey demonstrates how Team Topologies principles can revolutionize organizational structure beyond software teams. Facing the classic scaling challenge of maintaining their core value that "every employee should be able to voice their opinion," this 100-person Norwegian consultancy dissolved their entire management team and rebuilt from the ground up using network-centric principles. Their story shows how the four fundamental team types and three interaction modes from Team Topologies can create a more engaging, autonomous, and psychologically safe workplace while achieving measurable business results including increased employee engagement (8.2 to 8.4 on Officevibe) and enhanced decision-making speed.
What you will learn in this case study
🔵 Why their traditional management team became a bottleneck consuming 20% of leadership time without adding value
🔵 How dissolving the management team created urgency that accelerated the formation of specialized teams
🔵 The Team Topologies vocabulary that provided a common language for organizational design
🔵 How team APIs and value streams (recruiting, competency building, service delivery) structured their network approach
🔵 The challenges of cognitive load, unclear responsibilities, and team lifecycle management in practice
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
Adidas: Transforming Through Team Topologies and Platform Engineering
Adidas's journey from vendor-dependent operations to internal platform engineering excellence demonstrates how Team Topologies principles can drive massive digital transformation and business resilience at enterprise scale.
How did Adidas transform from outsourced IT to a platform-powered digital leader achieving 53% revenue growth during the pandemic?
Adidas's journey from vendor-dependent operations to internal platform engineering excellence demonstrates how Team Topologies principles can drive massive digital transformation and business resilience at enterprise scale.
What you will learn in this case study
🔵 Why Adidas moved from outsourced development to building internal engineering capabilities
🔵 How platform teams enabled self-service and reduced cognitive load across the organization
🔵 The 50/50 effort allocation strategy that balanced platform development with user enablement
🔵 How business-focused metrics guided platform evolution and demonstrated value
🔵 Lessons from surviving and thriving during COVID-19 with platform-powered agility
This is an exclusive case study that you can read 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
Singapore GovTech: Driving Public Sector Digital Transformation through Team Topologies
Singapore GovTech's Smart Nation initiative demonstrates how platform teams and enabling teams can drive digital transformation across complex government environments while reducing cognitive load and improving developer experience for better citizen outcomes.
How did Singapore GovTech transform public sector digital services for 6 million inhabitants using Team Topologies principles?
Singapore GovTech's Smart Nation initiative demonstrates how platform teams and enabling teams can drive digital transformation across complex government environments while reducing cognitive load and improving developer experience for better citizen outcomes.
What you will learn in this case study
🔵 Why traditional government IT approaches created cultural inertia and adoption challenges
🔵 How platform teams and the "inside-out" approach validated solutions before scaling and a central platform team reduced cognitive load through self-service capabilities
🔵 The role of Forward Deployed Teams as enabling teams for knowledge transfer across agencies
🔵 How SPACE and DORA frameworks measured developer experience and productivity
🔵 The "golden path" strategy that drove emergent standardization without mandates
This is an exclusive case study that you can read in full in the second edition of Team Topologies.
Summary
Team Topologies provided the Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech) with a powerful conceptual framework to overcome cultural inertia and transform public sector digital services. By applying these principles to optimize team structures, interactions, and boundaries, GovTech successfully supported Singapore's visionary Smart Nation initiative, which serves over 6 million citizens.
The transformation was driven by several key implementations of the Team Topologies model:
Building Robust Platform Teams to Reduce Cognitive Load: GovTech created a central platform team to administer the Government on Commercial Cloud (GCC) and develop the Singapore Government Tech Stack (SGTS). Emphasizing automation and self-service, this platform team provided essential underlying services that significantly reduced the cognitive load on government development teams, allowing them to focus on delivering citizen value. This platform-centric approach successfully facilitated the migration of over 70% of eligible workloads to the cloud by the end of 2023.
Deploying "Enabling Teams" to the Edge: To upskill various government agencies and drive digital adoption, GovTech utilized Forward Deployed Teams (FDTs). These FDTs explicitly functioned as enabling teams within the Team Topologies model, temporarily embedding within partner agencies to demonstrate best practices, transfer knowledge, and foster technical autonomy before eventually disengaging. Crucially, these teams provided a vital feedback loop by bringing insights from the agencies back to the central platform teams, informing continuous tool improvements.
Establishing "Golden Paths" Over Mandates: Because central tools were not strictly mandated across government branches, GovTech focused on "emergent standardization" by creating a golden path of preferred, pre-supported tools and practices. By making the platform highly convenient and cost-effective, the platform team naturally guided consuming teams toward efficient technologies without needing to enforce rigid mandates.
Prioritizing Developer Experience (DevEx) and Flow: Recognizing that empowered developers build better solutions, GovTech shifted away from traditional productivity metrics to adopt the SPACE framework—measuring satisfaction, performance, activity, communication, and efficiency—alongside DORA metrics. Team Topologies structurally supported this data-driven approach by organizing teams in a way that naturally drove faster flow, reduced interruptions, and supported DevOps best practices.
Utilizing an "Inside-Out" Validation Strategy: Before scaling changes across the wider public sector, GovTech tested these strategies on itself. They internally validated the technologies, standards, and Team Topologies principles to build expertise and ensure their effectiveness before rolling them out to external partner agencies.
Ultimately, the application of Team Topologies helped GovTech transition from a fragmented technological landscape to a streamlined, developer-empowered environment. This structural transformation enabled tangible success metrics, including reduced time to market for citizen-centric services, overall government cost savings, and significantly improved developer productivity and satisfaction.
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!
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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
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!