I love the book “Team Topologies”.
It’s one of those annoying books that’s so full of good stuff that if you highlight what’s worth remembering, you end up highlighting the entire book (and then you think to yourself: “well, that was useless”. Or is that just me?).
What I like so much about the book is that it puts into words several things that I had kind of figured out, but hadn’t processed deeply enough to have words for some of my thoughts, much less shaped a well-rounded whole.
To put it very simply, it creates a system of how to classify your teams and their interaction modes.
And that gives you a toolset to model the interactions you see, and consider the interactions you’d want to see.
Reading the book was intersting for me also because I was observing myself as I was working through the ideas presented.
At first, I resisted the four team types the book describes. I was skeptical whether the classification they had found was correct, whether it was complete. Until it dawned on me that it didn’t matter. It was certainly good enough, and here I finally had words to describe what I was reasoning about.
And so what if I were to come across a team that didn’t quite fit the mold? It would still fit well enough, and if I could point out in which ways it didn’t, so much the better: I had just articulated something about this particular team that was special and noteworthy about it.
As I read on, I became increasingly excited about the completeness and ease with which the book’s taxonomy let me describe interactions and structures. And it reminded me what the drivers were to differentiate between good and bad topologies.
This is one of the most inspiring, helpful and eminently practical books I’ve read in a long time. I urge all of you to read it.
In fact, it has inspired me to create a workshop based on its ideas.
This is one of these things where it’s better to discuss, explore, and -yes- doubt together, rather than alone. That’s why I’ve created the workshop.
If you’re interested, maybe you’d like to head over to the workshop page to find out more. It’ll kick off March 2nd – but if you buy your seat by February 1st, you can get it for the early-bird price.
I’d love it if you joined us.