Newsletter ( august 2025): Why Agile Isn’t Enough (And What’s Really Slowing You Down) - Part 3
This is part 3 of a 3-part newsletter series on ‘Why Agile Isn’t Enough’.
This newsletter was written by Rich Allen.
While Agile has improved how teams plan and collaborate, it hasn’t always addressed the deeper structures and interactions that shape how work actually flows. In this follow-up to ‘Why Agile isn’t enough (and what’s really slowing you down) - Part 1', I explore two less visible frictions, overloaded platform teams and overly collaborative operating models, that quietly slow delivery. Instead of more process, we may need better questions about how our teams are structured, how they interact, and whether we’ve designed the organisation for clarity, autonomy, and flow.
Agile gave us a better way to manage work. However, many teams are still working within structures never designed for flow. Legacy systems, old reporting lines, or the last big reorg often shape team boundaries. And while the way we deliver has evolved, the shape of the organisation usually hasn’t. When that happens, friction persists, not because Agile isn’t working, but because the environment within which it’s working isn’t supporting it. In this follow-up to my previous two articles ‘Why Agile isn’t enough (and what’s really slowing you down), I look at how structures shape outcomes. If your org chart hasn’t evolved with your delivery needs, it may be time to revisit. Not reorg, but realign.
Creating an environment for change
Every org chart reflects a set of assumptions about ownership, value and how decisions get made. These assumptions shape how work flows (or doesn’t) and they influence how teams prioritise, how they interact, and how long it takes for an idea to reach a user. So when teams are structured around internal capabilities rather than end-to-end outcomes, no amount of agility at the team level can fully compensate for the slowdown.
Many organisations hesitate to revisit structure because it feels disruptive. But this isn’t about wholesale re-organisations. It’s about creating conditions where structure is seen as a strategic lever, something to evolve over time, based on real signals from the work. If value is hard to trace, teams are constantly stepping on each other’s toes, and delivery depends more on coordination than clarity, those are signs that structure may need to shift.
Design for what’s next, not just what was
The structures that made sense five years ago may no longer reflect how value is delivered today. Markets change, customer expectations shift, and products and technology evolve. Your structure (and team dynamics) should evolve with them, and that evolution doesn’t need to be dramatic; it just needs to be deliberate.
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Flow doesn’t just depend on good practices. It depends on good design. More than any methodology, your team structure and dynamics determine whether teams can move with purpose, clarity, and speed. Helpful questions to reflect on might include “What are our current structures optimising for?” “Where are we seeing signs of misalignment between outcomes and ownership?” “What would it take to treat our team boundaries as flexible design choices, rather than fixed containers?”
Many of the frictions we attribute to delivery problems are actually signals that our structures and interactions need rethinking. Agile gave us better tools for managing the work, but achieving real flow often means stepping back to ask whether our organisation is designed to support it. That reflection doesn’t require a wholesale reorg; it just requires the willingness to treat structure, ownership, and interaction patterns as design choices we can evolve with intent.
From structural signals to strategic action
If this structural friction sounds familiar - teams stepping on each other's toes, value that's hard to trace, and delivery that depends more on coordination than clarity —you might benefit from a tool that Conflux has developed. Their fast flow benchmark helps organizations identify exactly where structural misalignment is constraining flow, and more importantly, which organizational design changes will deliver the most significant impact.
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Rather than another reorg, discover which deliberate design choices could unlock the flow your teams are capable of by benchmarking your organization.
Rethinking change to unlock flow
In Why Agile Isn’t Enough (And What’s Really Slowing You Down), I’ve tried to surface a pattern many organisations quietly recognise: Agile has helped teams plan, adapt, and collaborate more effectively, but delivery friction remains. Not because the ceremonies are broken, but because the environment they’re operating in hasn’t evolved to support faster flow.
I’ve explored how delivery delays often stem from structural friction. Work doesn’t stall inside the team, but between teams, where unclear ownership, excessive coordination, and dependency-driven delivery quietly slow things down. These frictions are hard to spot on a Kanban board, but they show up in cycle times, missed outcomes, and the growing sense that everyone is busy but not aligned.
I’ve looked more closely at the role of structure itself, how outdated team boundaries, overloaded platforms, and interaction models shaped by habit rather than intent can limit our ability to adapt. When platform teams become bottlenecks, or every relationship defaults to collaboration, it's a sign that we’re trying to solve structural problems with process. And it rarely works.
Structure, when treated as a fixed artefact, quietly constrains progress. But when approached as a design lever, something we can evolve based on what the work tells us, it becomes a tool for unlocking clarity, autonomy, and speed. This doesn’t require a dramatic reorganisation. Often, it starts with small, deliberate shifts: clarifying ownership, reducing coordination points, and aligning teams to outcomes.
However, noticing these patterns is only part of the challenge. Acting on them, making space to change, requires something more. It requires an environment where change is not only allowed but expected. Where the organisation knows how to listen to signals from the work. Where leaders support teams in making local adjustments without needing top-down permission, and where it’s safe to experiment with structure, and to step away from what no longer serves.
The Team Topologies Academy offers courses that go beyond delivery practices and focus on evolving organizational structures. By learning how to design team boundaries, choose the right interaction modes, and create an environment optimized for fast flow, leaders and practitioners can finally remove the friction that Agile alone can’t solve. If you’ve ever felt that your teams are “doing Agile” but still struggling against invisible constraints, the Academy courses provide actionable approaches to realign—not just reorg—your organization for lasting impact.
What’s coming up next?
We are gathering all Team Topologies events on our Events page and would love to hear your feedback about the ones you have attended or the ones that we have missed.
Online, Sep 25 Book launch: Team Topologies Second Edition - meet the authors and discover success stories
LIVE in London, Oct 14-15 Fast Flow Conf 2025 - Everything about Team Topologies (Talks)
LIVE in Paris, NewCrafts Conferences - Team Topologies in Practice: A Journey of Re-Teaming Using Architecture for Flow with Nina Siessegger & Susanne Kaiser (Talk)
Online, The Summit Brazil - How AI impacts team cognitive load with Manuel Pais (Keynote)
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 happy to feature it on the website.
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