In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, organizations face constant pressure to adapt and transform. Traditional hierarchical structures often prove inadequate in fostering agility and driving meaningful change. To address this challenge, leaders are increasingly exploring innovative approaches to team organization and collaboration. One such approach is leveraging the principles of Team Topologies, specifically the enabling team type and Facilitation mode.

Leadership teams do not see themselves as enabling team types. They often see the potential of enabling teams, but the default approach is to delegate the tasks to other teams, either by assembling new temporary enabling teams or asking a current team to behave as an enabling team to help other teams.

We have seen various types of enabling teams depending on the missing capability identified. Like agile coaches, SREs, testing specialists, you name it. Yet, we consider that leadership teams are in a unique position to behave as enabling teams to drive meaningful change in key strategic areas.

The true power of Team Topologies emerges not in academic discussion but in its practical application across diverse organizational contexts. In this newsletter series, we bring together the voices of several practitioners from the CNCF Platforms Working Group who have implemented Team Topologies principles in their organizations. Through their experiences—ranging from Bryan Ross' restaurant analogy for platform teams to Matt Menzenski's connection with Deep Work philosophy—a comprehensive picture emerges of how Team Topologies transforms organizational effectiveness by focusing on team cognitive load, clear interaction patterns, and service-oriented platforms. These complementary perspectives demonstrate that whether you're restructuring platform teams, mapping team interactions, or connecting individual and organizational productivity, Team Topologies provides a cohesive framework for driving meaningful improvement in how technology organizations deliver value.

As organizations, we want to minimize inter-team dependencies. However, there are specific moments where strategic temporary interactions are essential to help teams learn faster and more effectively from each other to address capability gaps and other blockers to flow.. In this issue, we will explore the facilitating interaction mode, which can support such situations.

The X-as-a-Service (XaaS) interaction mode from Team Topologies offers a fundamental pattern to help organizations avoid the trap of creating unnecessary “blocking dependencies” between their teams. This is essential to support organizations to scale while achieving a fast flow of value.

Team Topologies - the leading approach to organization dynamics for fast flow - is entering a new phase of operations to better support its core mission, opening the door to wider participation from the ecosystem of partners, sponsors, supporters, and the community at large.  As part of this new phase,  the core operations of Team Topologies will move to a not-for-profit approach. This transition marks an exciting new phase in the Team Topologies journey as we deepen our commitment to making work more humane and effective for everyone.

This article explores how Team Topologies provides practical lens for understanding the varying autonomy needs across different team types. Rather than seeking "maximum autonomy for all," organizations should match each team's decision-making authority to its purpose, tailoring Product Ownership models and financial accountability accordingly for optimal flow of value.

In the complex landscape of organizational transformation, companies often struggle to move beyond surface-level changes to achieve genuine agility. Through the lens of Telenet's journey, we explore how one of Belgium's leading telecom providers evolved from rigid structural models in 2019 to its now fluid, value-oriented operating system. This discussion draws from an in-depth interview with Barbara Arnst, VP of agile transformation at Telenet, who shared her insights with Team Topologies co-author, Matthew Skelton.

Discover how modeling team interactions correctly can transform your organization. By optimizing collaboration, teams can adapt faster, tackle challenges more effectively, and drive greater success. Learn how structured collaboration helps unlock agility, improve flow, and ensure your teams work at their best—fueling growth and innovation. This is part of our ongoing series to help you build high-performing teams and achieve organizational excellence.

This edition was curated by Eduardo da Silva

The organizations I've seen succeed with Team Topologies share one trait: they commit to the journey and don't expect overnight transformation. They start small, show results and gradually expand.

Team Topologies isn't a silver bullet. It's an approach for thinking clearly about how work flows through your organization. Applied with intelligence and patience, it's the most effective approach for building organizations that deliver consistently without burning out.

Most organizations will continue plugging along with broken structures, wondering why they can't keep up with more nimble competitors. The smart ones will recognize that how they organize their teams is as important as which technology they use or what products they build.

Many companies are looking at Team Topologies when trying to improve organizational efficiency and delivery speed. However, the three fundamental interaction modes - Collaboration, X-as-a-Service, and Facilitating - are often overlooked, misunderstood and misapplied, leading to decreased effectiveness and increased organizational friction rather than the intended benefits.

This edition was curated by Eduardo da Silva

Financial institutions today face unprecedented pressure to become more agile and customer-centric, yet many struggle with deeply entrenched organizational patterns that resist change. Through insights from Luke McManus, Team Topologies Asia Pacific lead, we explore how design thinking and modern team organization principles can help break through these barriers.

Debunking common myths about organizational design! Discover how effective team structures drive sustainable success & innovation. Read the newsletter, subscribe to get more and let us know if we have missed anything.

Kudos to Brian Graham for this edition.