Remote Team Interactions Workbook: Using Team Topologies Patterns for Remote Working

by Matthew Skelton CEO of Conflux and co-author of Team Topologies

Overview

In the new remote-first and hybrid workplace, many organizations are struggling to catch up with new tooling and ways of working. Many are discovering for the first time that the physical office was covering up poorly defined teams and poorly defined areas of focus, threatening their DevOps transformation efforts and the overall health and success of their business.

Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais, coauthors of the highly successful Team Topologies, provide proven patterns for a successful remote-first approach to teams. Using simple tools for dependency tracking and patterns from Team Topologies, such as the Team API, organizations will find that well-defined team interactions are key to effective IT delivery in the remote-first world.

This workbook explores several aspects of team-first remote work, including:

•How the new “remote-first” world is highlighting existing poor team interactions within organizations.

•Why organizations should use the Team API pattern to define and communicate the focus of teams.

•How organizations can track and remove team-level dependencies.

•How and why organizations should design inter-team communications consciously.

•How and why organizations can use the three team interaction modes from Team Topologies (collaboration, x-as-a-service, and facilitating) to help.

The ideas and patterns presented here will help your organization become more effective with a team-based, remote-first approach to building and running software systems.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781950508624
Publisher:	IT Revolution Press
Publication date:	04/26/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	80
Sales rank:	838,609
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Matthew Skelton has been building, deploying, and operating commercial software systems since 1998. Head of Consulting at Conflux, he specializes in Continuous Delivery, operability and organization design for software in manufacturing, ecommerce, and online services, including cloud, IoT, and embedded software. He currently lives in the UK.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Introduction ix

A Brief Overview of Team Topologies ix

How to Use This Workbook x

Chapter 1 Overview: Focus on Remote Team Interactions 1

What Does an Organization Need in Order to Thrive in a Remote-First World? 1

Resource: Cognitive Load Assessment 3

Use the Team API Approach to Define and Communicate Responsibilities and Team Focus 4

Track Dependencies Using Simple Tools and Remove Blocking Dependencies 4

Overcommunicate Using Just Enough Written Documentation 5

Summary: Design and Define the Ways in Which Teams Interact 6

Chapter 2 Team Dependencies 7

Team API 7

Resource: Team API Exercise 11

Tracking Dependencies 14

Resource: Team Dependencies Tracking Exercise 17

Building Networks: Coffee, Talks, Internal Conferences 18

Chapter 3 Setting Team Boundaries 23

Group Trust Boundaries 23

Resource: Trust Boundaries Exercise 26

Online Space Setup 27

Resource: Online Space Assessment 32

Team-Focused Conventions for Chat Tools 34

Chapter 4 Purposeful Interactions 37

Team Interaction Modes: A Review 37

Listening to Team Interactions 43

Clarity Communication Purpose and Channels 47

Ensuring Clarity of Purpose of Platforms and Services 49

Resource: Example Wiki Page: Thinnest Viable Platform Template 53

Chapter 5 Next Steps 55

Design and Conduct a Developer Experience Platform Survey 55

Define Naming and Usage Conventions for Chat Tools 57

Use the Team API with Multiple Teams to Define and Clarify Team Boundaries 58

Devise and Share an Execution Plan 58

List of Resources 61

Notes 63

About the Authors 67

About Team Topologies 68