Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow

by Matthew Skelton

Expected Behaviors As we’ve seen, the mission of complicated-subsystem teams is to off-load work from stream-aligned teams on particularly complicated subsystems that need to be developed by a group of specialists. What kind of behaviors and outcomes do we expect to see in an effective complicated-subsystem team? A complicated-subsystem team is mindful of the current stage of development of the subsystem and acts accordingly: high collaboration with stream-aligned teams during early exploration and development phases; reduced interaction and focus on the subsystem interface and feature evolution and usage during later stages, when the subsystem has stabilized. With a complicated-subsystem team, delivery speed and quality for the subsystem is clearly higher than if/when the subsystem was being developed by a stream-aligned team (before the decision to split). The complicated-subsystem team correctly prioritizes and delivers upcoming work respecting the needs of the stream-aligned teams that use the complicated subsystem.