Team Topologies
Stream-aligned, platform, enabling and complicated-subsystem teams.
5 to work through
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beginner Multiple choice
A team of four engineers owns one service with a 24/7 paging rota. Leadership wants them to take on two more services of similar size. Which fact about the rota decides whether that is possible?
3 min answer -
intermediate
A platform company's teams are organised by technical layer - frontend, backend, database, infrastructure. What problems does this create, and what is the alternative?
2 min answer -
intermediate
When should a capability be owned by a platform team rather than by a stream-aligned team?
2 min answer -
advanced
A mobility platform's teams are organised by technical layer - mobile, backend, data, infrastructure. Why does that slow delivery, and what is the alternative?
2 min answer -
advanced
Leadership accepts that the current three-layer team structure is producing a tightly coupled system, and reorganises into cross-functional product teams in one step. What happens over the following six months?
3 min answer
2 terms in this topic
Team Interaction Mode
The defined way two teams work together — collaborating, consuming a service, or facilitating — chosen deliberately and expected to change over time.
conceptTeam Topologies
Four team types and three interaction modes, used deliberately to shape both the organisation and the architecture it produces.
Neighbouring topics
Business Architecture
General material on the business side of architecture.
Business Capabilities
What a business does, stated stably and independent of implementation.
Capability Mapping
Overlaying systems onto capabilities to expose duplication and gaps.
Business Processes
How work actually flows, including the handoffs nobody documented.
Value Streams
End-to-end delivery of an outcome, and where the waiting happens.
Domain Boundaries
Where the language of the business changes, and services should too.
Stakeholder Analysis
Who is affected, what they need, and who can block you late.
Product Thinking
Treating platforms and services as products with users and a lifecycle.
Business KPIs
The numbers a design is ultimately judged against.
Regulatory Constraints
Non-negotiable requirements that remove design options entirely.
Organisational Constraints
Team structure, skills and budget cycles as architectural inputs.
Time to Market
The constraint that dominates most products, and how to trade against it.
Build vs Buy
Differentiation versus table stakes, priced over five years.
Business Cases
Expressing an architecture proposal in the currency that gets funded.
Operating Models
How delivery, platform and governance functions fit together.
Platform as a Product
Adoption earned rather than mandated, with an owner and a roadmap.
Outcome Measurement
Knowing whether the thing you built achieved what it promised.
Portfolio Prioritisation
Choosing between investments with incomparable benefits.
Business Continuity
What the business does while the system is unavailable.