Stef Cuisinier has introduced us to Team Topologies and his view on how it integrates with other models such as SAFe, LeSS, Sociocracy and Holacracy.
What is the purpose of the team?
Team Topologies is based on the idea that work that is transmitted to another team to get finished takes an order of magnitude larger in duration to get finished. Teams are limited in size by the complexity of interactions and by cognitive load, though, so interfaces between teams and handovers are inevitable. This requires a smart design of your teams and their roles.
The best results are achieved by 'stream aligned' teams, teams that function in the value stream and are part of the flow (as also described in SAFe). Those teams function best if they are long-lived, multi-functional and are supported in their self-organization.
Applying the insights
After Stef's introduction we used the newly acquired insights to discuss how we could use it to help optimize the organization of one of our customers.
Designing the team topology does not just reflect the current needs, but must be adaptable so it can take care of changes.
We discussed designing a workshop along the lines of the SAFe DevOps workshop
but potentially broader in scope, so also including non-IT teams.