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Helping technology leaders achieve their goals through publishing, events & research.

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Minimize Team Cognitive Load to Increase Flow

January 21, 2021 by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais Leave a Comment

The team is the fundamental means of delivery at organizations. But organizations also need to ensure that the cognitive load on a team is not too high. A team working with software systems that require too high of a cognitive load cannot effectively own or safely evolve the software. In this post, we will identify ways in which the cognitive load on teams can be detected and limited in order to safely promote fast flow of change. First, let's look at how to measure cognitive load. Measure … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books, Team Topologies Tagged With: cognitive load, manuel pais, matthew skelton, team motivation, team org structure, team organization, team topologies, teams

Team Cognitive Load

January 19, 2021 by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais Leave a Comment

When we talk about cognitive load, it’s easy to understand that any one person has a limit on how much information they can hold in their brains at any given moment. The same happens for any one team by simply adding up all the team members’ cognitive capacities. What is Cognitive Load Cognitive load was characterized in 1988 by psychologist John Sweller as “the total amount of mental effort being used in the working memory.” Sweller defines three different kinds of cognitive load: Intrinsic … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Team Topologies Tagged With: cognitive load, manuel pais, matthew skelton, organization design, team org structure, team organization, team topologies

Conway’s Law: Critical for Efficient Team Design in Tech

November 24, 2020 by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais Leave a Comment

This post on Conway's Law is adapted from Chapter 2 of Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow. Conway's Law Conway’s law is critical to understanding the forces at play when organizing teams amidst the long-lasting, unattended impact they can have on our software systems, as the latter have become larger and more interconnected than ever before. But you might wonder if a law from 1968 about software architecture has stood the test of time. We’ve come a long … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books, Team Topologies Tagged With: conway's law, manuel pais, matthew skelton, team organization, team topologies

The Problem with Org Charts

May 28, 2020 by IT Revolution 1 Comment

Adapted from Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais. Technology workers are in a constant state of action: creating and updating systems at an unbelievable rate, and combining different types of technology to create a compelling user experience. Mobile applications; cloud-based services; web applications; and embedded, wearable, or industrial IoT devices all need to interoperate effectively to achieve the desired business … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books, Team Topologies Tagged With: agile, devops, lean, manuel pais, matthew skelton, organization design, team org structure, team topologies, teams

Remote-First Team Interactions

April 3, 2020 by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais Leave a Comment

Remote-first work has suddenly become the "new normal" for many companies around the world. There is plenty of advice out there on how individual teams can bond and work effectively remotely, but there is little that addresses remote interactions between different teams that need to collaborate remotely as part of the same value stream. Moving entire enterprises online can exacerbate pre-existing interaction problems, increase wait times, and slow delivery and even response to incidents. This … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books, Team Topologies Tagged With: free, manuel pais, matthew skelton, remote teams, remote work, team topologies, teams, webinar

Gene Kim Q&A with the Authors of Team Topologies

October 2, 2019 by IT Revolution Leave a Comment

  Gene: Every company loves an org chart, but why are they really so misleading Matthew and Manuel: Org charts are management-focused constructs, meant to funnel lines of reporting from the bottom to the top—the typical hierarchical pyramid. The fundamental problem is extrapolating this construct and assuming it actually represents the lines of communication in the organization, alignment of business goals and decision making power.  This misinterpretation still happens in most … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books, Team Topologies, Uncategorized Tagged With: book, devops, Gene Kim, manuel pais, matthew skelton, organization, team topologies, teams

Monoliths vs Microservices is Missing the Point—Start with Team Cognitive Load

September 17, 2019 by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais Leave a Comment

The “monoliths vs microservices” debate often focuses on technological aspects, ignoring strategy and team dynamics. Instead of technology, smart-thinking organizations are beginning with team cognitive load as the guiding principle for modern software. In this presentation, Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais explain how and why, illustrated by real case studies. Matthew Skelton My name's Matthew Skelton, and this is Manuel Pais, and together, we are the co-authors of a new book called Team … [Read more...]

Filed Under: DevOps Enterprise Summit Tagged With: does19, manuel pais, matthew skelton, team topologies, uk

Go Beyond Team Structures for Software Delivery Success

September 12, 2019 by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais Leave a Comment

Matthew-Skelton-does19-london-1

  Key Takeaways: 1. New team-based organizational designs are proving valuable across the IT industry. 2. Adopting new team structures is only part of the picture: it’s the interactions between teams that really counts. 3. Since 2013 many organizations have used the DevOps topologies patterns to explore different team models. 4. The new book Team Topologies by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais addresses important organization dynamics around team-based software delivery.  Team-First is the New … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books, Team Topologies Tagged With: matthew skelton, team topologies

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