Team Topologies Foundations

Inhoud

Most tech organisations face the same challenge: teams work hard, but delivery feels slow. Dependencies multiply, ownership is unclear, and everyone seems to be waiting on someone else. The problem isn't lack of effort—it's organisational design that doesn't match how work actually needs to flow.
In Team Topologies Foundation, participants learn how to identify what blocks fast flow and design team structures that eliminate those blockers. The training introduces the four fundamental team types—stream-aligned teams that own end-to-end delivery, platform teams that reduce friction, enabling teams that build capability, and complicated-subsystem teams that handle complex technical domains. Participants learn the three team interaction modes as proven patterns for effective collaboration without chaos.
The training emphasises practical application over theory. Participants work with their own organisational contexts throughout, mapping existing teams, identifying mismatches, and designing better structures. They learn to recognise when teams are overloaded by understanding cognitive load signals, apply the "Reverse Conway" approach to design team structures that produce the software architecture they actually want, and use organisational sensing to evolve team structures intentionally over time.
Team Topologies Foundation creates shared language for productive conversations about team design and ownership. This matters particularly when multiple people from the same organisation attend together—engineering leadership, product leadership, architects, and tech leads all working from the same approach makes subsequent organisational design conversations dramatically more productive.
The training also addresses common pitfalls organisations make when trying to use Team Topologies, helping participants avoid mistakes and focus on changes that create real impact.

Program
The two-day Team Topologies Foundation Training is structured as consecutive full days. This format allows concepts to build naturally, giving participants time overnight to process what they've learned and return with fresh questions.
The training combines theoretical foundations with extensive hands-on practice. Rather than separating "learning time" from "practice time," exercises are integrated throughout to reinforce concepts immediately. Participants work with their own organisational contexts, making the learning directly applicable.

Day 1: Core Team Topologies Concepts
The first day introduces the fundamental ideas in Team Topologies. Participants explore what it means to be team-first—designing around team needs rather than individual roles.

Morning session: Understanding Conway's Law and what blocks flow
The day begins by examining Conway's Law and its impact on fast flow of change. The session explores how organisational structure shapes software design, often creating the very problems teams are trying to solve. Through guided discussion and analysis exercises, participants identify things that block flow in their own context—unclear ownership, excessive dependencies, teams spread too thin, constant context switching—and explore the consequences of blocked flow.
The morning concludes with an exploration of cognitive load and why it matters more than most organisations realise. Through practical exercises, participants learn to recognise when teams are overloaded and understand why simply "working harder" doesn't solve structural problems. The session covers limiting team cognitive load and aligning to value streams, setting up the crucial insight that teams need clear boundaries and a limited scope to be effective.

Afternoon session: The four fundamental team types
After lunch, the training introduces the four fundamental team types and groupings that form the core of Team Topologies modelling language. Participants learn how platform, complicated subsystem, and enabling teams support stream-aligned teams in delivering end-to-end value.
Stream-aligned teams are explored first—teams organised around a flow of work that own end-to-end delivery of value. Platform teams andgroups come next, explored as teams that reduce cognitive load and accelerate flow for stream-aligned teams by providing capabilities as compelling internal products. Enabling teams are introduced as specialists who help stream-aligned teams overcome obstacles and build new capabilities by working directly with the team, then move on. Complicated-subsystem teams round out the fundamental types—small teams of specialists handling technical domains where the expertise needed exceeds what a stream-aligned team should carry.
The afternoon includes extended practice mapping existing teams to the four types, identifying mismatches where teams are trying to be multiple types simultaneously. The session covers how Team API and tracking dependencies can help, and introduces the concept of organisational sensing—using team interactions as signals about organisational health.
The day concludes by exploring the benefits and outcomes of intentionally designed team structures that foster happier team members.

Day 2: Getting Started with Team Topologies
Building on day one's concepts, day two focuses on practical application and how to start introducing Team Topologies into an organisation.

Morning session: Understanding and aligning your current teams
The morning begins by helping participants understand the teams they currently have. Through exercises, participants map their existing teams and practice aligning them with the fundamental team types. This reveals where teams are trying to be multiple types at once—a common source of overload and confusion.
The session then explores concrete ways to limit cognitive load on teams in practice. Participants learn to use the "Reverse Conway" approach to produce software systems that are sustainable by the organisation—deliberately designing team structure to produce the software architecture you actually want rather than letting architecture happen by accident.

Afternoon session: Team interactions and evolution
The afternoon focuses on understanding team interactions and how they can be used to evolve the organisation. The training introduces the three team interaction modes as proven patterns for how teams should work together: collaboration for solving complex problems, X-as-a-Service for consuming without coordination, and facilitation for temporarily building capability.
Using their organisational mapping from the morning, participants practice recognising which mode fits which situation and learn how to drive and evolve (and limit) inter-team collaboration. The session emphasises making sure team structures are explicitly evolved over time rather than drifting randomly.
The training concludes by enabling team interactions to drive organisational sensing—recognising signals that indicate where structures need adjustment. Participants leave with action plans for their first concrete steps in applying Team Topologies.
A final group discussion allows participants to share their planned next steps, get feedback from trainers and peers, and commit to concrete actions.

After this training

• Participants can identify the four fundamental team types and map existing teams to these patterns
• They recognise when teams are overloaded by understanding cognitive load signals
• They apply the three team interaction modes to prevent coordination chaos
• They use the "Reverse Conway" approach to design team structures that produce desired software architecture
• They evolve team structures intentionally over time using organisational sensing
• They create shared language for productive convers