Organizations that do not adapt rapidly to the modern, highly-changeable business environment are failing, and failing in large numbers. Increased regulation, pressures from climate change, shifting of energy sources, digitalization, and (recently) the COVID-19 pandemic are all driving a need for business agility in organizations of all sizes.
In this talk, we’ll explore how the patterns and principles from Team Topologies promote true business agility through a rapid flow of software change, fast feedback from running systems, a strong drive for loose coupling, and an awareness of sociotechnical mirroring. Combined with a product mindset and techniques from Domain-driven Design, the Team Topologies approach is helping organizations around the world to adapt to the “new normal” and achieve true business agility.
Matthew Skelton, co-author of Team Topologies, shares insights from organizations in several different industry sectors including banking, financial services, insurance, retail, and leisure.
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
5. “innovative tools and concepts for
structuring the next generation
digital operating model”
Charles T. Betz,
Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
5
6. 6
What is business agility?
Being agile, not doing ‘Agile’
Valuable: product mindset
Team Topologies examples
7. How does Team Topologies
help with business agility?
7
29. 29
State of DevOps reports
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
Annual survey of 1000-5000 IT
professionals worldwide using
rigorous statistical methods
30. 30
State of DevOps 2019
Analysis from responses of
over 31,000 IT professionals
worldwide over 6 years
“an independent view into the
practices and capabilities that
drive high performance”
+ “Four Key Metrics”
31. 31
State of DevOps 2019
“The use of cloud… is
predictive of software delivery
performance and availability.”
“High performers favor
strategies that create
community structures at both
low and high levels in the
organization...”
32. 32
State of DevOps 2019
“Heavyweight change approval
processes, such as change
approval boards, negatively
impact speed and stability. In
contrast, having a clearly
understood process for
changes drives speed and
stability, as well as reductions
in burnout.”
33. 33
State of DevOps 2019
Key technical practices
● Lightweight change process
● Real DR testing
● Maintainable code
● Loosely-coupled systems
● Monitoring
● Trunk-based development
● Deployment automation
34. Accelerate
Building and Scaling High Performing
Technology Organizations
Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, Gene Kim
IT Revolution Press, 2018
Order via stores worldwide:
https://itrevolution.com/book/accelerate/
34
66. Team Topologies
66
Organizing business and
technology teams for fast flow
Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais
IT Revolution Press, 2019
teamtopologies.com/book
79. 79
Challenge
Hiscox needed to increase the pace of change to
release new products quickly into a highly
competitive and fast-moving market.
Solution
Introduced DevOps practices and infrastructure
automation
80. 80
Results
● Reduced cost per release on a major app by 97%.
● Release cycle improved from 10 weeks per
deployment to 50 deployments per week.
● Reduced time per release by 89%.
● Reduced staff required to release by 75%.
https://www.uk.cdw.com/files/2515/3555/5104/Hiscox-Case-Study-20180411.pdf
82. 82
data center
flooded
data storage
failures
POCs for
cloud
Infrastructure as
Code - config in
version control
New capabilities:
upskilling and
awareness
Ops: learn to code
Dev: learn infra
Migrate core UK policy
admin to cloud
Rework apps to be
more cloud-native
https://blog.weareconvivio.com/how-hiscox-insurance-adopted-agile-working-in-a-0-5bn-bet-on-the-cloud-d613955d3ef9
84. 84
“DevOps has meant big
improvements in reliability and
visibility, and those lead directly
to improved productivity and
speed of releases. With more
reliability in your delivery
process, you get a faster pace
of change.”
Jonathan Fletcher,
CTO at Hiscox
Insurance
https://www.uk.cdw.com/files/2515/3555/5104/Hiscox-Case-Study-20180411.pdf
85. 85
“We decided to limit
DevOpsifying to our
crown jewels: the five
applications we care
about most.”
Jonathan Fletcher,
CTO at Hiscox
Insurance
https://www.uk.cdw.com/files/2515/3555/5104/Hiscox-Case-Study-20180411.pdf
86. 86
“We moved people into roles that were more
aligned with the business unit — “product
focused” is probably the right term, as I
mentioned earlier. Each product team has its
own business analysts, developers, testers and
other functions as needed. These teams are the
masters of their own destiny, rather than trying
to beg and borrow capacity from a big group
function.”
Jonathan Fletcher,
CTO at Hiscox
Insurance
https://www.uk.cdw.com/files/2515/3555/5104/Hiscox-Case-Study-20180411.pdf
87. 87
“We needed a team to evangelize and support
the adoption of DevOps. … We created a
platform services team (which I run). That team
learned continuous delivery and other
DevOps practices...”
Jonathan Fletcher,
CTO at Hiscox
Insurance
88. 88
Results
● Reduced cost per release on a major app by 97%.
● Release cycle improved from 10 weeks per
deployment to 50 deployments per week.
● Reduced time per release by 89%.
● Reduced staff required to release by 75%.
https://www.uk.cdw.com/files/2515/3555/5104/Hiscox-Case-Study-20180411.pdf
102. ● UK's leading comparison
and switching service
● Founded in 2000
● ~250 staff, £140m+ revenue
● > 2010: Autonomous teams
● > 2017: Platformization
136
105. “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
139
108. 142
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
110. 144
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
113. “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
155
114. Concepts
● Platforms to reduce cognitive load
● Platform as a product / MVP
● Discover good boundaries & APIs
● Clear team interaction modes
156
125. “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
167
126. Concepts
● Stream-aligned: build & run
● Boundaries that help flow
● Supporting team types: reduce
cognitive load on Stream teams
168
127. Results
● Clear patterns and language
● Framework for design decisions
● Confidence in scaling approach
169
https://medium.com/ww-engineering/to-monolith-or-to-microservice-f8c3f967e63c