Blog Team Topologies Blog Team Topologies

Dunbar's Numbers and Communities of Practice - Q and A with Emily Webber

Emily Webber is the author of the book Building Successful Communities of Practice and recently did extensive research (with anthropologist Professor Robin Dunbar) into the size and engagement dynamics of various communities of practice with a particular focus on how the group dynamics change as the group size crosses certain thresholds. The research was published in the academic publication PLOS ONE.

We spoke to Emily about her research and what the implications are for designing and evolving organizations.

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Blog Matthew Skelton Blog Matthew Skelton

Deployment pipelines and service abstractions for Stream-aligned teams

Deployment pipelines can really help Stream-aligned teams to deliver software changes independently:

  1. Deployment pipelines can help to reinforce an independent flow of change for a Stream-aligned team. Don’t forget to enable rapid feedback via telemetry!

  2. Define the endpoints external to the team - these represent the “outside world” from team perspective. These external endpoints should be outside or at the domain boundary.

  3. There can be huge value in managing your deployment pipeline “as a Service or as a proper product, with product management approaches.

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