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Team Coaching with Org Topologies

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Summary

This article explains how to use the concept of Organizational Topologies (OT) to coach teams and improve in-team collaboration. OT helps teams understand their position and journey, figure out what skills are missing, and create solutions to resolve these skills. It also helps teams identify where they are currently on the OT map, explore the horizontal and vertical axes, and determine what it takes to reach the B level (team of teams). The article provides suggestions to help teams increase collaboration, reduce dependencies, and create a product that customers are willing to pay for. It also explains how teams can benefit from OT even without making a deep change.

Q&As

What did the team need to do to create more in-team cohesion?
The team needed to explore possibilities for creating more in-team cohesion between the product specialists and the developers.

What are the benefits of creating “teams of teams”?
The benefits of creating “teams of teams” include fewer dependencies, more connection between product work and software development work, solving capacity problems in the current teams, working more efficiently, and delivering more valuable products to customers.

What skills were frequently blocking the team from delivering "Done" autonomously?
The skills that were frequently blocking the team from delivering "Done" autonomously were Requirements analysis, Test specialism, Branding, "TP-application"-skills, and Legal.

How did the team come up with possible solutions to resolve the missing skills?
The team came up with possible solutions to resolve the missing skills by having existing team members learn the skill, agreeing with stakeholders to give the mandate to the team, automating and creating a self-service solution, having someone close to the team who can help refine and provide feedback, and adding someone with the missing skill/knowledge to the team.

How did the team use the Organizational Topology map to assess their journey and current position?
The team used the Organizational Topology map to assess their journey and current position by exploring the organizational archetypes on the map and trying to determine where the team is now. They also zoomed in on the horizontal axis of the Org Topology map to understand the team's dependencies and studied the vertical axis to understand how collaboration takes place between teams.

AI Comments

👍 This article provides a great framework to help teams better understand their current position and take ownership of their organizational design.

👎 This article is overly complex and not particularly helpful for teams looking for practical solutions.

AI Discussion

Me: It's about team coaching with org topologies. It gives an example of how a team went through the process of understanding their team dynamics and how they could use org topologies to improve how they work together.

Friend: Wow, that sounds interesting. What are the implications of this article?

Me: Well, the article shows how teams can use org topologies to understand their team dynamics and how they can make improvements. It also demonstrates how teams can use org topologies to take ownership of their organizational design. This can help teams become more autonomous, nimble, and efficient, and help them better serve their customers. Additionally, the article stresses the importance of understanding the team's current position and knowing their destination, as well as the importance of understanding customer value and how teams can work together to deliver it.

Action items

Explore the Organizational Topologies (OT) tool and determine where the team is now.
Make an inventory of the main problems the team is experiencing and schedule a "ready for the future" session.
Research and understand the benefits of moving up to the B level on the Org Topology map and what this will require of the team.

Technical terms

Scrum: A framework for managing work with an emphasis on software development. It is designed to help teams work together and create high-quality products.
Org Topologies: A framework for understanding and managing organizational design. It is based on the idea that organizations can be divided into archetypes, or “topologies”, which can be used to identify and address problems in the organization.
Y0: An individualistic task-driven work archetype in Org Topologies.
A1: A team of product specialists without developers archetype in Org Topologies.
A2: An incomplete team with a feature focus archetype in Org Topologies.
B Level: A business value area archetype in Org Topologies.
T-Shaping: A concept in which team members have multiple skills instead of reducing their primary specialism.
LeSS: A framework for scaling Scrum to multiple teams.
Multi-team Product Backlog Refinement: A process in which multiple teams work together to refine the product backlog.
Large-scale Sprint Planning: A process in which multiple teams work together to plan a sprint.
Large-scale Sprint Review: A process in which multiple teams work together to review a sprint.