Author: Dean Latchana

Thoughts on Team Topologies

Team Topologies is a 2019 book written by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais

I include myself amongst those who have longed for a way to better articulate how firms can enable more outcome-focused teams.

So it’s been rewarding to have Team Topologies help me order my thinking to enable organisations to better support customer-facing teams. Such thinking will help those teams better serve their customers and deliver their organisation’s mission.

What Team Topologies says

Pardon the lockdown hair style!

We need to design our organisation around team-first principles. Chiefly we should design around teams’ cognitive load. Cognitive load meaning the mental effort being used at any one time.

Invariably the products & services an organisation creates is determined by its structure and its internal communication lines. This follows Conway’s Law. In a consultative manner, we should work with the law by altering team dynamics, structure and communication lines to create the desired products and services.

We should work with Conway’s Law by altering team dynamics, structure and communication lines to create the desired products and services.

Team Topologies offers a sophisticated mechanism to examine, design and improve team and organisation design.

There are four team topologies (i.e. types of team)

This is achieved through close attention to team topologies (i.e. types of team), team responsibilities and collaboration modes. Ultimately this is to orientate the organisation to support teams to deliver a continuous flow of value.

There are four team types. Two of which are stream-aligned teams (i.e customer-facing teams) and Platform teams whose raison d’être is to support stream-aligned teams with reusable services with minimal friction.

My Take-Aways

Counter-intuitively, where appropriate, we need to reduce collaboration. For example, a platform team needs to provide an easy-to-consume service for customer-facing teams; this shouldn’t necessitate in-depth collaboration. This will allow the customer-facing team to focus more on their customer mission.

To help organisations realise their mission, Team Topologies helps standardise the ingredients for team and organisation design. Metaphorically speaking, these ingredients are not for a standard meal plan, but more for a test kitchen. A test kitchen where organisations can continuously discover how customer-facing teams should be supported by other team types and the leadership team.

Metaphorically speaking, the ingredients described in Team Topologies are not for a standard meal plan, but more for a test kitchen. A test kitchen where organisations can continuously discover how to support customer-facing teams.

Dean Latchana

Closing thoughts

Team Topologies will help foster the right mindset and means to help organisations re-orientate to support customer-facing teams become more outcome-focused, better serve customers and deliver the organisation’s mission.

It’s given me the language, ingredients and confidence to better articulate my own experiences to help my clients achieve success.

Kudos to Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais (Team Topologies) for authoring Team Topologies.

Aporia Insights

These crowd-sourced thoughts and insights are from Aporia discussions I’ve run at a few events.

Meetup hosted by Digital Leadership – 2020-07-30

Man in Blue Denim Jacket Holding a Printing Paper

During this Digital Leadership meetup, a participant shared a situation where their organisation chose to complete a project which would mean a large investment to replace their office printers. This is despite the organisation not knowing whether, due to COVID, when and how many of their colleagues could return to the office.

We considered the decision to be one suffering from the sunk-cost fallacy. Since the project is nearing its end, and it has taken a lot of effort, they chose to complete the project despite it potentially resulting in insufficient value.

It would have been wiser if the decision-makers better acknowledged that there is incomplete information. They should have remained in Aporia and deferred the decision until they had learnt if, and to what degree, colleagues would be returning to the office.

Meetup hosted by Roy Marriott – 2020-06-22

Watch the recording and check out the slides.

Many thanks to everyone for coming to and contributing to the discussion hosted by Roy Marriott. Here are some notable insights that arose from the discussion.

Aporia, with Confused, has replaced Disorder as the name of Cynefin’s fifth domain
  • Aporia can provide teams with the chance to push against a leader’s decision to act. If the team believe the situation or context has changed, aporia can offer a place to oppose a leader’s decision. With hope, it provides an opportunity for respectful dissent.
  • It was suggested that the confused state is one where an individual doesn’t know they are confused; they mistakenly believe they have the right answer. Whereas aporia is when an individual knows they don’t know the right way forward; the individual is aware they are confused or are in a paradox.
  • Aporia is when one is not tense. Whereas in Confused is when one might say “what do you mean it’s not working?!”. Aporia is when we might say “ooohhh, what’s going on….? I don’t understand”.
  • Granularity needs to be considered. We might be holding one big decision in aporia, when in fact we should be breaking it down into several smaller granular decisions. These granular decisions could then be dealt with in other domains.
  • Can you positively stay in the state of not making a decision? Aporia can tell you when that’s okay; it legitimises it. It distinguishes it from mere analysis paralysis.
  • It is also true that deciding not to decide is also a decision.
  • “How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.” – Niels Bohr

Agile Xpertise meetup – 2020-05-20

  • A useful metaphor for understanding aporia is to consider stacking a dishwasher. At the start of the day, when the dishwasher is empty, you won’t know what will need to be washed, so you’re in aporia. But aporia is different from having no idea, or doing nothing, or any of your choices being of equal value. Therefore when stacking the breakfast items, you’d be wise to space them in a way which keeps as many options open as possible, without having to re-stack later in the day. So being in aporia doesn’t mean to remain passive.
  • An approach to utilising aporia in relation to the other domains is to throw into the framework all issues, then work out where best to place each issue. You are likely to find that although many issues may start in aporia, the majority of them will have a home in other domains. This method is called Four Table Contextualisation
  • Aporia has relevance to how we naturally learn
  • In the early days of the COVID outbreak, many governments operated in the Chaotic domain; they chose to act first knowing that there’ll be collateral damage. For example, loosening the criteria for financial support would provide immediate stability for many people and businesses, and yet such a policy would also be open to greater inappropriate use and fraud.  
  • The handling of COVID occurs in many domains at the same time. Investigating the biology of the virus may be manageable in the Complex domain. At the same time in the early days of the outbreak, many nations did not know sufficiently its epidemiology, so they responded in the Chaotic domain by enforcing lockdown in an attempt to halt its distribution. The consequential slowing of infection gave many governments the leeway to operate in aporia.

Piano Berlin meetup – 2020-05-19

  • Aporia is the biggest opportunity for change
  • To ‘escape’ aporia, we need to know what information is needed before moving into a different domain
  • People and organisations need resilience (e.g. financial reserves, optionality, inventory) to stay in aporia for a long time, and not be tempted to make a decision earlier than necessary
  • Regarding COVID, since some Asian countries previously dealt with SARS, their populations know that a COVID vaccine cannot be discovered quickly. So, compared to some western countries, these Asian countries are wise to keep their populations in aporia by not speculating when a vaccine may be ready
  • It’s often said politicians can either be right, wrong or uncertain; to be uncertain is the weakest position. However to be uncertain, and not make a choice, can be a legitimate stance (i.e. remain in aporia)

The office layout needs rethinking

With the lockdown slowly easing, and organisations considering how to reshape their offices, is now the time to fundamentally reevaluate our assumptions of the office layout?

Consider the 2018 study which showed the negative impact of the ‘open’ workspace on collaboration.

People have a desire for privacy. The study showed the open-plan office can reduce privacy, resulting in less face-to-face communication and collaboration.

The open-plan office can overstimulate, thus decrease organisational productivity.

We need to create team-focused boundaries; semi-permeable team areas which support local decision-making and psychological safety. Teams need to control when to work privately and when to be open and allow greater serendipity.

As offices are being reshaped, let’s take the opportunity to consult with our teams to create a space designed around their needs to collaborate and solve problems.

Aporia discussion workshop

What is Aporia

Aporia, with Confused, has replaced Disorder as the name of Cynefin’s fifth domain

Cynefin’s Disorder domain has changed to include Aporia – a state of puzzlement and doubt. It’s a timely adjustment to the sense-making framework.

Aporia is a state of mind which allows us to, as Chris Corrigan states, “[confront] paradoxes and situations that have no resolution, no precedent and no right way forward.”

Zhen Goh (Goh Shuzhen) says, “Aporia provides a safe and curious vantage point for leaders.”

About this discussion workshop

Through discussion, we’ll develop our understanding of Aporia, and explore how Aporia may help individuals and organisations. We’ll explore how Aporia may help the global effort to understand and respond to a rapidly changing world. Regardless of seniority, experience or sector, this discussion workshop would be of value to leaders navigating their team or organisation through an uncertain future.

Previous aporia discussion events

Here are insights from previous aporia discussion events.

Here are the slides from a previous event

Workshop Dates

Contact me (dean@latchana.co.uk) if you’d like this workshop run at your event.

Benefiting from puzzlement and doubt

Cynefin’s Disorder domain has changed to include Aporia – a state of puzzlement and doubt. It’s a timely adjustment to the sense-making framework.

Aporia is a state which allows us to, as Chris Corrigan states, “[confront] paradoxes and situations that have no resolution, no precedent and no right way forward.”

Zhen Goh says in Aporetic Meditations, “Aporia provides a safe and curious vantage point for leaders.”

I’m realising the significance of this domain since it describes an honest state we should embrace more often.

If we can show honesty, we can invite others to collectively deceiver where we are, and what could be done. It avoids our tendency to jump to conclusions and prematurely make commitments.

The difference between Aporia and Chaos

To be in aporia is to acknowledge we don’t understand the nature of the situation. This differs from being in chaos since when we’re in the latter we know we must act immediately to stabilise the situation. We can operate in both at the same time.

For example, a few weeks ago, many took action to hoard toilet roll. At the same time, they didn’t know the emerging nature of the lockdown. So for other decisions, they would have been wise to linger in aporia until things further unfolded. So, for example, they may have delayed the decision to get a refund on their season ticket.

Join the Aporia discussion

Join the Aporia discussion on LinkedIn