Since the book Team Topologies was published in 2019, organizations around the world have started to adopt Team Topologies principles and practices like Stream-aligned teams, modern platforms, well-defined team interactions, and team cognitive load as a key driver for fast software delivery and operations. We will look at examples from these organizations: Gjensidige Insurance, a leading Nordic insurance company with 4000 employees and business in the Nordic and Baltic countries, uses the four fundamental team types to clarify team responsibilities and interactions and is moving towards several “thinnest viable platforms” with Stream-aligned teams as internal customers PureGym is Britain’s largest gym chain - the first to gain over 1 million members. As PureGym expanded, so did the need for software to enable their members to book and manage gym sessions. Since 2019, PureGym has re-aligned its teams and team interactions based on Team Topologies patterns, helping to scale the engineering teams and improve flow. uSwitch / RVU, one of the UK’s leading consumer price comparison websites, has grown a modern platform from scratch, allowing stream-aligned teams to focus on consumers needs, offloading infrastructure provisioning concerns to the platform which also provides cross-cutting services around scalability, security and data management Visma is one of the leading software development companies in Europe with nearly 1 million customers in 21 countries. Team Topologies has helped to define and accelerate a transformation begun in 2015 to improve service ownership and speed of changes. Wealth Wizards is a UK company making financial advice affordable and accessible to everyone through online tools and apps. The engineering division at Wealth Wizards has used the Team Topologies ideas around team cognitive load to help right-size their teams and align teams to the most important flows of business change. For each of these examples, we explore how the ideas and patterns in Team Topologies were useful to the organization and the results of the changes.

1. TeamTopologies.com
@TeamTopologies
Team Topologies in action
early results from industry
Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais
co-authors of Team Topologies
@matthewpskelton @manupaisable
DOES London Virtual - 24 June 2020

2. 2
Manuel Pais
Independent IT organizational
consultant and trainer
Ex-dev, ex-build manager,
ex-tester, ex-QA lead
Twitter: @manupaisable
LinkedIn: manuelpais
Matthew Skelton
Founder at Conflux
Experience as: software developer,
technical director, change enabler,
conference organizer...
Twitter: @matthewpskelton
LinkedIn: matthewskelton

3. Team Topologies
3
Organizing business and
technology teams for fast flow
Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais
IT Revolution Press, 2019
teamtopologies.com/book

4. “innovative tools and concepts for
structuring the next generation
digital operating model”
Charles T. Betz,
Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
4

5. PROBLEMS TO SOLVE
with Team Topologies

6. Why is our transformation
not achieving fast flow?

7. What’s our purpose and
mission as a team within
the wider organization?

8. Why are our teams not
able to respond quickly to
business needs?

9. How can we safely remove
low-level complexity from
customer-facing teams?

10. TODAY
Team Topologies
in action

11. June 2020:
9 months since
publication
Photo by noor Younis on Unsplash 11

12. 12

13. 13

14. 14

15. 15
Flow of change

16. CaseStudy
16

17. ● Founded in 1847
● Insurance sector
● Norway and Baltics
● 4000 employees
● Cloud/DevOps
transformation 2015-now
17

18. 2015
18
Project-based
Waterfall

19. Now: Stream-aligned
19

20. Supporting topologies
20
Design Platform, Analytics Platform, Web
Application Platform, CRM platform,
Infrastructure platform
Mainframe core system
Architecture, Information Security

21. Results
● Digital sales: 40% growth (5 yrs)
● Customer service: 2x digital
● Claims handling: 80%+ online
22
teamtopologies.com/examples

22. Thanks to:
Christian Moe
Chief Digital Officer
Gjensidige Insurance
23

23. CaseStudy
24

24. ● Launched in 2009
● Now 230 gyms in the UK
● > 1 million members
● Largest operator in UK
● Expanding into DK PL CH
25

25. 26

26. ● 2015-2020
● Huge growth in members
● Joining (mobile app)
● Bookings, payments
● “Online-first” experience
27

27. Less Than 10 People
Project A
Project B
Bugs Small Changes
GSD
Projects BAU
Project C
Handover
28
2015

28. Team Grew to 15 People
Project D
Project E Small Changes
Project F
Projects BAU
Project G
Project G
Bugs
GSD
Handover
29
2017

29. Bugs & Small Change
Project G
Project H
Project I
Project J
Project K
Trigger: Rapid Team Growth to 40
Projects BAU
GSD
Handover
30
2019

30. The Monolith
Site
Project G
Project H
Project I
Project J
BAU
Vendor API
Reseller API
Mobile App
Mobile Team
Customer API
Membership Management System
Single code
repository
31
2019

31. Gyms
Breaking the Monolith
Site
Class
Listings
Members
Area
Payments Help
Centre
Class
Booking
Join
Process
PT
Profiles
Gift
Cards
Landing
Pages
Project G
Project H
Project I
Project J
BAU
Group
Training
Time
Tables
Blog Live Chat Kiosks …
32
2019

32. Re-defining Teams
SREDeveloper Experience
Membership Management Gateway (MMG)
Acquisition
Join Process
Landing Pages
…
Gym
Team
Time Tables
Gyms
…
Payments
Reconciliation
Join Payments
…
Retentio
n
Members Area
CRM
…
Other
….
…
Streams
Enabling
Mobile ??Platform
33
2020

33. SREDevEx
High Collaboration Phase
Payments Team
Acquisition Team
Retention Team
Gym Team
MMG Mobile?
34
2020

34. SREDevEx
Using Facilitation and Developing X as a Service
In Gym Experience Team
Payments Team
Mobile Team
?
Acquisition Team
Membership Management Gateway Team
Retention Team
35
2020

35. Continuous Collaboration and Facilitation
SRE
DevEx
In Gym Experience Team
Payments Team
Mobile Team ?
Acquisition Team
Membership Management Gateway Team
Retention Team
36
2020+

36. “Team Topologies helped us at PureGym
to evaluate the relationship between our
teams and the business strategy, to
increase team efficiency, and evolve
away from a monolith.“
-- John Kilmister,
Principal Software Architect, PureGym
38

37. Results
● More business-responsive
● Projects+BAU → Streams
● Separate services: Join / Book / ...
40

38. Results
● Balanced ownership of services
● Improved team morale
● Better long-term architecture
41

39. Thanks to:
John Kilmister
Principal Software Architect
PureGym
Rich Allen
Head of Consulting
Conjurer Solutions
42

40. CaseStudy
43

41. ● UK's leading comparison
and switching service
● Founded in 2000
● ~250 staff, £140m+ revenue
● > 2010: Autonomous teams
● > 2017: Platformization
44

42. Autonomous stream-aligned teams
45
2015
...

43. 46
Low-level AWS service calls before platform adoption
2015-2016: direct AWS API calls

44. “people were spending more time having
to interact with relatively low-level
services thus spending their time on
relatively low-value decisions”
Paul Ingles, CTO at RVU / Uswitch
47

45. 48
2017
Infra platform
started with few
services
First customer
(centralized
logging, metrics,
auto scaling)

46. 49
2017
Early platform (first customer)

47. 50
2017
Infra platform
started with few
services
First customer
(centralized
logging, metrics,
auto scaling)
2018
Started using SLAs
and SLOs, clarifying
reliability/latency/etc
Growing traffic in
platform vs AWS

48. 51
Low-level AWS service calls since platform adoption
2015-2018: direct AWS API calls

49. 52
2019
Addressed critical
cross-functional
needs (GDPR,
security, alerts +
SLOs as a service)
Adoption by HMRT
(Highest Maturity
& Revenue Team)
2017
Infra platform
started with few
services
First customer
(centralized
logging, metrics,
auto scaling)
2018
Started using SLAs
and SLOs, clarifying
reliability/latency/etc
Growing traffic in
platform vs AWS

50. 53
Measure and demonstrate
2019

51. 59
2020

52. 60
2020
Topologies & interaction modes

53. 62
2020
Context-specific platform

54. “Engineering principles guided the way we
organise teams: loosely-coupled and highly
cohesive. Team Topologies is great for tying
a lot of those ideas together, and most
importantly giving it some language.“
Paul Ingles, CTO at RVU / Uswitch
63

55. Results
● “Curated” platform experience
● Reduced complexity for teams
● Addressed cross-team needs
65

56. Results
● From autonomy to self-sufficiency
● Patterns applied beyond IT
● Balancing fast flow with reliability
66
teamtopologies.com/examples

57. Thanks to:
Paul Ingles
Chief Technology Officer
RVU / Uswitch
Tom Booth
Head of Infrastructure & Security
RVU / Uswitch
67

58. CaseStudy
68

59. ● Software solutions
● Accounting, ERP, HR, ...
● 1 million customers
● Europe & LatAm
● 11000 employees
69

60. < 2015: large releases
70
Every 2
months

61. > 2015: autonomy, flow
71

62. 2020: + cognitive load
72

63. “Team Topologies has changed how we
form development teams in Visma...
Does [the team] get the right support
from enabling teams? ... What is the sum
of the cognitive load on this team?”
T. Alexander Lystad, Chief Cloud Architect, Visma
73

64. Results
● From 6 deploys per year (2015) to
2 deploys per week (& N per day)
● Increased ownership in teams
75
teamtopologies.com/examples

65. Thanks to:
Tinius Alexander Lystad
Chief Cloud Architect
Visma
76

66. CaseStudy
77

67. ● Financial advice
● Founded 2009
● Consumers & companies
● 'Explainable AI'
● Increasingly successful
78

68. < 2019: product growth
79
x 6

69. Mid-2019
80
HALT!

70. September 2019
81

71. 2020: New architecture
83

72. “Team Topologies ... has given us the
tools we were looking for and have
helped us to build a plan and have
confidence that we know where we’re
going and how to get there.”
Richard Marshall, CTO, Wealth Wizards
84

73. Results
● Clear patterns and language
● Framework for design decisions
● Confidence in scaling approach
86
https://medium.com/ww-engineering/to-monolith-or-to-microservice-f8c3f967e63c

74. Thanks to:
Richard Marshall
CTO
Wealth Wizards
87

75. Summary:
Team Topologies
in action
88

76. 89

77. The Stream-aligned team is
the starting point:
fast flow and feedback
from running systems

78. Team Topologies provides
a common language and
set of patterns for the
whole IT organization

79. Explicitly design for
team cognitive load

80. A platform is a curated
experience for engineers
to accelerate and simplify
software delivery

81. What’s next?
94

82. Workbook
coming soon...
Team Topologies
for Remote Teams
95
for Remote
Teams
Resources: teamtopologies.com/remote-first
FREE

83. Free Resources
96
Remote-first interactions
teamtopologies.com/remote-first
Free tools & templates
github.com/teamtopologies

84. TeamTopologies.com
@TeamTopologies
Feedback:
info@teamtopologies.com
@TeamTopologies

85. Remote-
Friendly
Training
teamtopologies.com/training
99

86. TeamTopologies.com
@TeamTopologies
Sign up for news and tips:
TeamTopologies.com

87. TeamTopologies.com
@TeamTopologies
Q&A: Slack, now
AMA: 17:55, 24 June

88. Thank you!
info@teamtopologies.com
Matthew Skelton, Conflux
@matthewpskelton
Manuel Pais, Independent
@manupaisable
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