Newsletter (May 2024): Are you ready for fast-flow organizations competing against you?
In today's ever-evolving business landscape, organizations frequently face the dilemma of efficiently delivering value to their customers. Despite the enduring utilization of practices and frameworks like Lean, Agile, and DevOps, this challenge endures, exacerbating the growing disparity between business and IT realms.
Fast-flow and Business Excellence
Companies and teams that are adopting fast flow, across the organization, not solely in the software department are becoming more and more successful by:
Reducing costs that teams and CEOs are not even aware that there are there. ThinkingLabs has come up with “A cost-saving Case for Team Topologies”
Nailing down the true cost-generator, which is not salary costs but the "time wasted by salaried people waiting on other salaried people". The cost of coordination is in the millions or even billions of dollars according to a talk that Matthew Skelton, co-author of Team Topologies, has given at DORA 2023.
In one of his latest talks, Jacob Duijzer, a TT advocate, shares his stories from the trenches on how addressing cognitive load can shape your organization for better flow.
Are you looking for ways to optimize your business with Team Topologies?
The Success Triangle Driven by Fast Flow
According to a reinterpretation of the success triangle, that Chris Richardson, recently shared, the primary objective of two of the success triangle’s elements - DevOps and Team Topologies - is to facilitate fast flow. The initial approach of DevOps focuses on expediting the transfer of changes from development to operations.
A similar emphasis on swift progression is found in Team Topologies, as highlighted by its subtitle, "Organizing business and technology teams for rapid flow." Additionally, aligning with what was discussed earlier, the architectural component of the success triangle aims to facilitate both DevOps and Team Topologies. Hence, it is logical to interpret the overarching objective of the success triangle as ensuring the prompt and enduring flow of changes. This reinterpretation was driven by one of the talks that Sussane Kaiser, one of the Team Topologies TT Valued Practitioners, has given at Explore DDD.
Credit: Microservices.io
Stories from the Trenches
One of the most effective ways to achieve fast flow across your organization is to leverage Enabling Teams. Eduardo Da Silva has successfully used this approach to to help scale the Data Science capability at bol.com, the biggest online retailer in the Netherlands and Belgium.
The same ideas and behaviors can play a pivotal role in helping shape and evolve such well-informed Platforms. Another success story for enabling platform thinking through the lens of fast-flow and enabling teams is NAV. According to them:
Is Team Topologies the right paradigm for your organization's success?
The mission of our platforms is to enable fast flow by reducing cognitive load for our users. We had already seen the effects of making a compelling platform vs the more traditional mindset of IT operations delivering an obligatory platform. Team Topologies has strengthened our belief in thinking of our internal technology platforms as products.
If all of the above sounds exciting but you are not sure your company or team are ready for that you can take the Team Topologies readiness assessment and get a clearer picture of where you are based on the report. We are also here to help if you have any questions or if you want to fast track the process by leveraging one of our guided enabling sessions.
Fast-Flow Live Events
There will be several exciting talks about fast-flow at the upcoming Fast-Flow conference in September. The call for papers is still open, and the same is true for sponsorships and tickets.
Along the same lines, if you are interested in learning more about how Team Topologies and Platform Engineering fit together, keep an eye on Manuel Pais’ talk, co-author of Team Topologies, at PlatformCon June 2024.
If what you are looking for is a live masterclass join us in Manchester for a “Leadership Masterclass with Alex Stokes and Matthew Skelton” on fast flow.
Join the Community
If Team Topologies is already second nature to you and you’re a practitioner or promoter already, we invite you to join our Team Topologies Advocates program. Recently, several new members have joined our community, including:
We want to remind you that our community is here to support each other by sharing experiences and challenges. We believe that by working together, we can all learn and grow.
If you're passionate about Team Topologies and want to become an advocate, we would love to have you join us. Or, if you have a story to share, we would be honored to feature it on the website.
Was this newsletter useful? Please share your thoughts on how we can make it better. Send us an email.