Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow
Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais
Praise for this book
... a much-needed framework for evaluating and optimizing team organization for increased flow...Team Topologies combines a methodical approach with real-world case studies to unlock the full potential of your tech teams.
Greg Burrell, Senior Reliability Engineer at Netflix
It’s well constructed and signposted, based in sound thinking, and challenges readers to assume, like them, that an organization is a socio-technical system or ecosystem.
Dr. Naomi Stanford, Organization Design Practitioner, Teacher, and Author
... few have attempted to catalog and analyze the organizational design patterns of IT organizations going through Digital, DevOps, and SRE transformations. Skelton and Pais have not only accepted this bold challenge, but they’ve also hit the mark by creating an indispensable and unique resource.
Damon Edwards, Co-Founder of Rundeck
At Condé Nast International, this resource was crucial in understanding our current DevOps state and in defining the vision for our aspirational DevOps operating model... The models themselves proved extremely useful artifacts in aligning both stakeholders and teams directly involved.
Crystal Hirschorn, VP of Engineering, Global Strategy & Operations at Condé Nast
We need a structured and methodical approach to shaping teams for continuous delivery instead of copying a few Spotify rituals. This is the book.
Nick Tune, API Platform Lead, Navico
DevOps is great, but how do real-world organizations actually structure themselves to do it? Team Topologies provides a practical set of templates for addressing the key DevOps question that other guides leave as an exercise for the student.
Jeff Sussna, Founder & CEO, Sussna Associates, and Author of Designing Delivery
Empowered teams—augmented by technology—are essential for any organization to deliver value continuously and sustainably. But how do you build the best team organization for your specific goals, culture, and needs?
Team Topologies offers a practical, adaptive approach for organizational design and team interactions based on a toolkit that includes: empowered teams, keen awareness of value streams and information flow, the need for decoupling for speed, team cognitive load as a key design factor, shared language, four fundamental team types and three team interaction patterns. This proven approach treats teams as the fundamental means of delivery, where team structures and communication pathways evolve with technological and organizational maturity.
In this updated second edition, business consultants Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais enhance their original work with new case studies from multiple industries around the world, demonstrating how diverse organizations have successfully implemented these principles and patterns. A new foreword from the authors reflects on the global impact and evolution of Team Topologies since its initial publication and hints at what might be next.
At the heart of the Team Topologies approach remains a dual focus on fast flow—avoiding handoffs and other obstacles to the flow of value—and a deep understanding of team cognitive load—the mental effort required for teams to manage their work effectively. By proactively assessing and managing cognitive load in teams, organizations can increase customer focus, prevent burnout, improve delivery capabilities, drastically increase staff engagement, and enable teams to operate at their best.
This second edition shares secrets of successful organizational patterns and dynamic team interactions, helping readers choose and evolve the right team patterns for their organization, ensuring healthy services and optimized value streams. Whether you’re discovering Team Topologies for the first time or seeking to deepen your existing implementation, this comprehensive guide provides the knowledge and tools needed to turn inter-team problems into valuable signals for a self-steering organization.
Team Topologies remains a major step forward in organizational design for IT and knowledge work, presenting a well-defined way for teams to interact and interrelate that helps make the resulting value delivery architecture clearer and more sustainable.
What's inside
Organizational Design — Enrich your understanding of organizational architecture and how it should serve the teams creating value.
Practical Guide — Learn step-by-step how to create organizational topologies that help teams interact to make software architecture more sustainable.
High Utility — With tips, notes, and 19 industry examples and case studies as well as 38 full-color figures, this book is actionable as soon as you close the final page.
All Levels — This book is a useful guide for all levels of practitioners.
Matthew Skelton is co-author of the ground-breaking book Team Topologies , and Founder & Principal at Conflux . The Team Topologies book was rated one of the ‘Best product management books of all time’ by Book Authority and is widely used by organizations worldwide to transform the way they deliver value. Matthew is one of the foremost leaders in modern organizational dynamics for fast flow, drawing on Team Topologies and related practices to support organizations with transformation towards a sustainable fast flow of value and true business agility. A Chartered Engineer (CEng), Matthew brings together principles and practices from multiple disciplines for a holistic approach to digitally-enriched operating models. He combines his experience as a leader and software architect in multiple contexts (GOV.UK, ecommerce, financial services, telecoms, pharma, retail, robotics, etc.) with a strong interest in the human side of organizations for a compassionate and humanistic approach to organizational effectiveness.
Manuel Pais is on a mission to both make work more humane and businesses more valuable to customers. Manuel delivers motivational keynotes and practical masterclasses on the principles and practices for fast flow that resonate across the organization, from C-level executives to the teams on the ground. He has also helped several Fortune 500 companies pave the path for accelerated value delivery via strategic & organizational assessments. On the product side, Manuel has led the creation and evolution of the Team Topologies Academy providing online, worldwide access to the latest insights around fast flow, and Teamperature, the industry leading model for assessing and managing team cognitive load. Learn more at manuelpais.com .
