People should look at Team Topologies as a way of thinking or a pattern language. Team Topologies aims to help leaders design for a fast flow of value. It allows you to design a team-of-teams organization, which, combined with a relevant decoupled architecture of products and the appropriate processes (think Continuous Delivery as one example), allows even big organizations to achieve fast flow of value. Unlike organizational charts, the resulting diagrams are just a starting point and must continuously evolve as the organization grows and changes along with the environment in which it operates. This is why we often tell people to consider Team Topologies more like Design Thinking, i.e., an iterative and continuous process that helps you understand complex challenges and find optimal solutions.

This article explores the synergy between the Kanban method and Team Topologies to enhance work processes in knowledge work organizations. By making policies explicit, both methodologies facilitate clearer team interactions and improved workflow management. Discover how integrating these approaches can lead to evolutionary change and greater business agility.

This short case study describes a personal journey undertaken as a Team Topologies Advocate at a global financial services organization.

Key takeaways:

• Most organizations never get the desired results from a reorganization

• The 3-day offsite “reorg” is almost guaranteed to be a costly failure

• A better approach is adaptive, continuous adjustment

• Use open techniques from Team Topologies to shift and adapt the organization

I (João Rosa) recently created an online cohort-based course, Effectively Manage Team Cognitive Load. Since the release of Team Topologies book, I have adopted its language and principles in my consultancy practice, supporting organizations in their digital transformation journey. I’ve noticed in the field that more people are aware of the effects of unmanaged Team Cognitive Load in their teams and organizations, using the concept presented in the Team Topologies book to drive changes in their organizations.

With the help of the wider community the Team Topologies team shapes library is now available in many common diagramming tools including Miro, Lucid Chart, Figma, Diagrams.net, Google Draw, Google Slides and PowerPoint.

We spoke to Darren Murph - Head of Remote at GitLab - about the opportunities and challenges presented by remote working for organizations building software-based systems and services. We were keen to get his insights into team-centric approaches to remote work.

Matthew Skelton und Manuel Pais haben mit ihrem Buch “Team Topologies” eine ausgezeichnete Beschreibung der Herausforderungen moderner Enterprise IT vorgelegt und bieten ein Modell an, das in vielen Fällen als Vorlage für eine effiziente Organisation herangezogen werden kann.

Robert Ruzitschka erklaert.

During the DevOps Enterprise Summit 2019 in Las Vegas, the authors of the “Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow” book - Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais were interviewed by SolutionIQ’s Stas Zvinyatskovsky for the Agile Amped Podcast.

We spoke to Mark Phillips - author of Reinventing Communications - to discover insights into modern organizational dynamics from the viewpoint of project management and program management.

We spoke to Henny Portman to discover insights into modern organizational dynamics from the viewpoint of project management, programme management, and portfolio management.

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.