Erica Engelen - Team Topologies Advocate
Erica Engelen - Team Topologies Advocate
Erica is a Business Agility Coach, driven by a deep passion for both people and technology. She is an early adopter of Team Topologies and experienced how easy it was to establish a common language with organizations based on the concepts in the book. She has vast experience in supporting organizations in increasing their agility, resilience, and innovative power by using Team Topologies alongside other practices covering the sociotechnical system.
Working in technology for over 20 years – and especially her experience in Open Source organizations – shaped her holistic approach to business agility. True agility necessitates simultaneous improvements on technology, structure, culture, and the work itself if you aspire sustainable and impactful results.
From her personal perspective, organisations wield substantial influence over society, serving as not only role models but also impacting individual well-being. Erica firmly believes that organisations can make a more positive contribution by fostering ownership, purpose, and fulfilment among their people, by promoting collaboration and embracing diverse viewpoints, and by aligning their vision with employees’ core values. With a collective of independent experts called ‘The Flow Hive’, she empowers progressive organizations to unleash team potential and optimal Flow, driving innovation and resilient growth.
Having incorporated Team Topologies into her toolkit, Erica discovered that the concept of Team Cognitive Load is pivotal when introducing new tools, platforms, shift left or changes in work methodologies within an organisation. Erica specialized in supporting organization in the adoption and scaling of Cloud technology. By focusing on how Cloud could reduce the cognitive load on developer teams - rather than just focusing on increasing velocity – the organization directly witnessed accelerated delivery because developers just loved the new platform.
Team Topologies advocacy
Erica has been inspired by Team Topologies ever since she read the book. When she supported MIVB (public transport Brussels) in 2021, Erica took the opportunity to use TT vocabulary & insights to give a “Cloud Team” focus, build a Platform as a Product and align first Stream Aligned Teams to attain faster flow of value in the organization. After the first few months, Erica wrote an article on her findings:
The blockers Erica faced during her work with customers and using Team Topologies, inspired her to post the following video on the prerequisites for sustainable agility.
