Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow

by Matthew Skelton

We need to put the team first, advocating for restricting their cognitive loads. Explicitly thinking about cognitive load can be a powerful tool for deciding on team size, assigning responsibilities, and establishing boundaries with other teams.

[Conway’s law] creates an imperative to keep asking: “Is there a better design that is not available to us because of our organization?”

Organizations need to maximize trust between people on a team, and that means limiting the number of team members.

For teams to work, team members should put the needs of the team above their own.

Organizations must design teams intentionally by asking these questions: Given our skills, constraints, cultural and engineering maturity, desired software architecture, and business goals, which team topology will help us deliver results faster and safer?

Organizations that value information feedback from live (production) systems can not only improve their software more rapidly but also develop a heightened responsiveness to customers and users.