Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow

by Matthew Skelton

There are two useful ways to visualize teams interacting using the collaboration mode. The first is to visualize two teams with distinct expertise and responsibilities working together on a small set of things. In this first collaboration interaction, the two teams substantially retain their responsibility and expertise for their natural area of focus, and work together on a specific subset of activities and details. The second visualization of collaboration mode identifies that the nature of working together between teams can be almost total: although there were originally two teams with different skills and expertise, now there is effectively a single team pooling expertise and responsibilities. (Care must be taken to not let the number of people exceed Dunbar’s number of fifteen).