Team Topologies
Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow
by Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais
Summary
Team Topologies is a practical, step-by-step, adaptive model for organizational design and team interaction based on four fundamental team types and three team interaction modes.
Key Takeaways
- Four fundamental team types: Stream-aligned, Enabling, Complicated-subsystem, and Platform teams
- Three team interaction modes: Collaboration, X-as-a-Service, and Facilitating
- Conway's Law and its implications for software architecture
- Cognitive load theory applied to software teams
- How to evolve team structures as organizations scale
Why We Recommend It
This book provides the theoretical foundation for platform team design that we reference throughout our content. The concepts of platform teams, enabling teams, and team interaction modes are fundamental to successful platform engineering organizations.
Notable Quotes
"Organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations."
"The goal is for your architecture to support the ability of teams to get their work done—from design through to deployment—without requiring high-bandwidth communication between teams."
Best For
- Engineering managers designing team structures
- Platform engineering leaders
- CTOs and VPs of Engineering
- Anyone involved in organizational design