Team Topologies

Synopsis

Team Topologies provides a practical, step-by-step, adaptive model for organisational design and team interaction for modern software delivery. The book introduces four fundamental team types and three core interaction modes that organizations can use to evolve their structure for fast flow of change and value.

The four team types:

1. Stream-aligned teams
2. Enabling teams
3. Complicated-subsystem teams
4. Platform teams

The three interaction modes:

1. Collaboration
2. X-as-a-Service
3. Facilitating

Why I Recommend It

As an engineering leader, this book has been invaluable for structuring teams in a way that optimises for flow and reduces cognitive load. The frameworks are immediately applicable and have helped me reorganise teams for better delivery.

Key insights:

• Conway's Law in action: Your system architecture mirrors your communication structure
• Cognitive load limits: Teams can only effectively handle a limited amount of complexity
• Team-first thinking: Design for team interactions, not just technical architecture

Real-world application: We reorganised our platform from a single monolithic team into stream-aligned teams focused on specific user journeys, supported by a platform team. This reduced deployment time by 60% and improved team morale significantly.

The book's emphasis on "team APIs"—clear contracts for how teams interact—has transformed how we think about inter-team dependencies.

Favourite Quote

"If we stress the communication paths in our organizations, we'll discover several bottlenecks or over-strong dependencies between teams where Conway's law proves to be working against us."

This is particularly relevant in today's microservices and distributed systems world.