The Importance of Team Design
Next in this pile of books is … Team Topologies
Although not quite finished yet, I’m still reading less than normal, partly down to increasing study in data science and game theory optimum strategy (as applied to 50nl) but mostly down to not quite having old habits rebuilt.
This is a decent book and provides a consistent way of communicating team design across an enterprise or tech company, it articulates well the importance of team interactions and their strategic impact on architecture.
Its something I’ve referenced in previous posts, regardless of your intention towards a specific architectural design, the frequency and bandwidth of communication across teams will long term influence architectural outcomes. The two are inseparable.
A team creating a software system is the beginning of a cause-effect-cause relationship, the code and environment evolve over time, growing in complexity as features are added and need changes, the boundaries, and the size of the system become naturally constrained by the communication and context of the team.
The best-adapted organisations recognise the synonymity between an evolving engineered architecture and their organisational structure and design their teams with this in mind; cross-functionality and self-sufficiency in the pursuit of fractal scale.
If you find you're limited to Scrum, Spotify models, or value streams this book provides a consistent approach to articulating team type, purpose, and interaction, a simple solution to a complex problem.
Whilst I won’t go into any more depth than I have on the book, I will say that in a remote world promoting great team design and teamwork is more important than ever.
Where once we all appreciated the flexibility of home working but took for granted the convenience of physical colocation, in a remote-only world we are constrained to digital interactions, the imperative as this book elucidates is to facilitate colocation of purpose.
Next up … “The Art of Business Value”.
