Team Topologies Applied
How to Structure for a Specific Competency
Introduction
As we seek to organize around value to streamline delivery of a product to customers, we struggle with a key question: How should you organize teams to make best use of a particular competency?
Competency = skills + knowledge + abilities
Should we create a team of people with this competency and leverage them as a shared service to other teams? Should we allocate one or more team members with this competency to each team? Should we have the people with this competency create a service to be used by other teams?
We have created a Calculator that will leverage the parameters of your organization to provide insights and advice on the team structure that could work best for you.
Much of this work is influenced by Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow by Matthew Skelton and Manual Pais. Our own experience in advising organizations is also brought to bear in creation of and this description of the calculator. Application of the Team Topologies to teams-of-teams is also explained in this article.
Free to use Value Calculators:
Table of Contents
Introduction
Start by scoping the Calculator
Example Competencies
Team Structure Options
Enter Parameters into the Calculator
Step 1: Assessing Supply
Step 2: Assessing Demand
Step 3: Analysis of Designated Team Member Model
Step 4: Analysis of Complicated-subsystem Model
Step 5: Analysis of Competency-as-a-service Model
Example 1: Thermal Analytics Competency
Example 2: Regulatory Compliance Competency
Wrap-up and Follow Up
Start by Scoping the Calculator
To scope the calculator, do the following:
Determine the name of the competency and describe what it entails. See example competencies below.
Identify the organization scope: an Enterprise, a department, a program or product? This scoping is essential to determine the demand on the number of people with the competency.
Example Competencies
Apply a security patch to infrastructure, e.g. a server or firewall
Thermal analytics
Information security
User experience design
Creation of technical documentation
Instructional design and development
There are example analyses with two of these examples at the end of this document.
Team Structure Options
Following are the three options that the calculator will examine based on your parameters:
Designated Team Members: A person with the competency is assigned as a team member on each cross-functional agile team that needs the competency within the defined organizational scope.
Complicated-subsystem Team: The people with the competency are all part of a single team. This team provides support to any team, program or Agile Release Train that needs this competency to implement and deliver their solution or element of a solution. This includes the pattern of a Shared Services team.
Competency-as-a-service: The most-often needed skills and how to apply them are provided in a well-defined interface with effective usage guidance. The calculator allows entry of parameters to support an Enabling Team as defined in “Team Topologies” that may be needed to educate and assist users of this Competency-as-a-service.
Enter Parameters into the Calculator
The Calculator has 5 steps:
Step 1: collects information on the supply of the competency.
Step 2: collects information on the demand for the competency.
Step 3: assesses the fit for the Designated Team Member model and provides recommendations.
Step 4: assesses the fit for the Complicated-subsystem model and provides recommendations.
Step 5: assesses the fit for the Competency-as-a-service model and provides recommendations.
Following are descriptions of the calculations on each page and a screenshot.
Step 1: Assessing Supply
These parameter descriptions should be self-explanatory. If you have questions or feedback, please leverage the email in the last section of this document.
The Supply Investment Hours is a simple calculation of number of people with the competency x the hours required to obtain the competency. If you selected Yes re the question of whether more than one year is required, the value used is 2000 hours (based on 40 hrs per week for 50 weeks).
The Supply Availability Hours per Quarter is calculated as number of people with the competency x ((hours per week x weeks per quarter) – hrs to maintain)
Step 2: Assessing Demand
Use parameters to quantify the frequency of need for the competency across the organization.
The Demand Hours per Quarter is calculated as number of teams needing competency x needs per quarter x (time to fulfill need + wait time + time to understand team context) x criticality of consistency multiplier.
Step 3: Analysis of Designated Team Member Model
The Ratio of People with Competency to Teams Consuming is calculated simply as number of people with the competency divided by the number of teams needing competency.
The Percentage of Time a Person would use the Competency on a Team is calculated as ((time waiting + time getting help) x number of needs per quarter x criticality of consistency)/((avg hours per week x avg weeks per quarter)-time to maintain per quarter)) .
Develop Competency in This Number of People to Have One Per Team is calculated as number of teams that need to apply the competency – number of people with the competency.
Competency Development Investment Required is calculated as number of people to develop the competency in x hours to develop the competency.
Step 4: Analysis of Complicated-subsystem Model
The Supply-to-demand Ratio is calculated as supply hours available per quarter / demand hours per quarter.
The Estimated Additional People with Competency Needed to Meet Demand is calculated as the difference between demand and supply divided by the available hours per person per quarter.
The Additional Competency Investment Needed is calculated as number of additional people needed x hours to learn the competency.
Step 5: Analysis of Competency-as-a-service Model
The Initial Investment in Competency-as-a-service is calculated as the hours needed to develop the service + (number of teams x hours to train a team).
The Competency Providers’ Total Cognitive Load (without) is calculated as (number of teams x number of needs per quarter x (time to fulfill + time to understand context)) + time to maintain competency per quarter
The Teams’ Total Cognitive Load (without) is calculated as number of teams x number of needs per quarter x time to understand context
The Organization’s Total Collaboration Load (without) is calculated as wait time x number of teams needing competency x number of needs per team per quarter
The Competency Providers’ Total Cognitive Load (with) is calculated as hrs to maintain service per quarter + (hrs to support a team x number of teams)
The Teams’ Total Cognitive Load (with) is calculated as number of teams x number of needs per quarter x time to use the service
The Organization’s Total Collaboration Load (with) is calculated as time to support each team per quarter x number of teams needing the service
Example 1: Thermal Analytics Competency
The following are screenshots from the calculator for a real example from a company I coached. Note that I made some aesthetics changes on the pages after I took these screenshots. The values entered and calculated did not change.
This is the top part of page 1 of the calculator. What we see right off the bat is that this Thermal Analytics competency required a hefty investment to develop in a person. Already we have a clue that allocating Thermal Analytics skill to each team is going to be costly. Let’s examine the rest of the parameters.
Now we have the total supply availability. This will help us evaluate all of our options once we see the demand.
Here we note a couple of key parameters. For one, the teams need to wait 8 hours for help and that is something we would like to address. Another key thing to note is the criticality of consistency across contexts. What this means in this example, is that the Thermal Analytics team members must work together to understand how they are applying their analysis across the teams and the instances of help they provide. In the calculator, this increases the total demand by an additional 50%.
Armed with a view of Supply and Demand, let’s see what the viewpoint for assigning a Thermal Analytics person to each team.
Not surprising, the parameters validate our gut feeling that assigning a Thermal Analytics person as a full-time team member on each team would be costly to the organization, and not likely something in which we will invest. Another parameter we can think about is whether a Thermal Engineer would be fulfilled doing other kinds of work on the team to which she is assigned.
So now let’s look at Supply and Demand from the standpoint of whether this team is currently operating in the desired model or if the Competency-as-a-service model provides better efficiency to the organization.
This team is currently operating as a Complicated-subsystem team. Our parameters validate that we have enough Supply to Meet the Demand of the organization. In fact, we have a bit of extra supply that seems to fit the organization’s potential need for a spike in demand, for example, providing input to a new proposal. If a team member leaves the organization, or if we take on a larger amount of new work, our calculator can help us estimate the impact.
For completeness sake, let’s just see what the Competency-as-a-service model parameters would be. Maybe it’s an option to still be considered . . .
This analysis tells us that the Competency-as-a-service for Thermal Analytics is a hefty upfront investment and will shift the cognitive load to the teams. This impact on the teams is not the best option. Our conclusion is that keeping the Thermal Analytics team in its current structure is the best option.
When discussing with this organization, we also uncovered that all of the Thermal Analytics team members were sharing the burden of constant disruptions, limiting their ability to get consistent heads-down “flow time”, which is essential in the deep-thinking analysis required. As a result, the team settled on a model of interaction with the teams and their requests that allowed a few team members to be the “first responders” while the other team members’ time was reserved for non-disruption time.
Example 2: Regulatory Compliance Competency
Following are screenshots from the calculator for a real example from a financial services company I coached.
On the top part of page 1 we see how many people have the competency and how long it takes, on average, for a person to develop this competency.
With the bottom part of page 2 we now calculate the total supply of this competency available per quarter.
Wow, given the number of teams and needs per quarter, combined with the criticality of consistency for everywhere we apply this regulatory compliance, the demand is very high. It’s not surprising that getting help from people with the constrained supply requires a significant wait time.
Now let’s look at putting a person with this competency on each team. It looks as though they would use a third of their time to apply this competency. Would they be able to leverage the other 60% or so to contribute to the team in other ways? Of course, that depends on the nature of the work. But this analysis indicates that adding 90 more people could be very expensive, especially if they are not already on staff and we have to hire them.
In step 4 we see that we would need to triple the number of people with this competency just to meet the demand. Perhaps these compliance-skilled folks can diversify into something more aligned with this competency – like other compliance skills. In this example, we just look at this one competency to help you understand how this calculator/advisor works.
In Step 5, we look at the option of implementing the as-a-service interaction model as described in the Team Topologies book referenced in our introduction.
With our fairly straight-forward way of looking at cognitive load and collaboration load, which we normalize onto hours required for applying the competency, using the service, and collaboration time in addition, we see that creating a Compliance-as-a-service solution is worth exploring further.
Wrap-up and Follow Up
Why try to actually quantify these trade-offs? It’s not a perfect mathematical solution, as we can’t handle every possible condition or nuance that you might encounter. Still, a deeper analysis with a calculator and parameters opens up the conversation and analysis to a deeper level. This helps us understand where the big trade-off options work better or are negligible for the context in which we work.
Your questions, feedback and collaboration are a gift. Please share with cindy@valoreconsult.com (my personal site) or cindy@projectandteam.com - my “Band of Compadres” with whom I help move my customers into better outcomes.