Team Topologies - Organizing for Fast Flow

Team Topologies provides a practical framework for organizing teams to optimize for fast flow of value. Based on Conway's Law and modern software practices, it shows how to evolve team structures as your organization grows.

The four fundamental team types are: Stream-aligned teams (aligned to a flow of value), Enabling teams (helping stream teams adopt new capabilities), Complicated Subsystem teams (managing complex technical areas), and Platform teams (providing self-service capabilities).

Three team interaction modes define how teams work together: Collaboration (working closely together), X-as-a-Service (one team provides, another consumes), and Facilitating (one team helps another). These interactions should be consciously designed and evolved.

Key principles include teams as the unit of delivery (not individuals), cognitive load as the limiting factor, team-first thinking over individual productivity, and evolution of team structures over time.

The framework helps solve common organizational problems like teams stepping on each other's toes, unclear ownership and accountability, slow delivery despite adding people, and platform teams becoming bottlenecks. It provides a shared language for discussing organizational design and clear patterns for scaling engineering organizations.