...that is the question
Organising Teams Around Value: A Blueprint for Success
When you bring those solving the problems close to the customers they are solving the problems for, you will come up with more creative and innovative results. Sound obvious?
It is surprising how distant most engineers and even product owners are from customers. In many organisations, there are multiple hand-offs from stakeholders and "the business" to the teams charged with delivering the solution.
On the flip side, when teams have line of sight and ownership of end-to-end value, delivery speeds up and the likelihood of the solution meeting the mark is much higher.
But what does it mean to "organise around value," and how can you implement this effectively?
To clarify that when we talk about “organising,” we’re not referring to formal organisational charts or hierarchical structures. Instead, we're focused on how people collaborate and communicate within their teams and across other teams.
Guiding Principles for Organising Around Value
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to operating models. However, there are several guiding principles that can help ensure teams are optimised for value delivery:
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Value Focused Teams Aligned to Measurable Customer or Business Goals
The first step is ensuring that teams are organised around specific outcomes that are tied to customer or business value. When teams are aligned with these goals, they can better focus on what they are there to do rather than just completing tasks or features. It's also much more rewarding to move the dial on an outcome rather than just deliver outputs. -
Autonomy to Make Decisions and Take Ownership of Outcomes
Teams need the autonomy to make decisions regarding how they deliver on their goals. So how can you set up the teams to enable this? Ownership leads to a culture of accountability. -
Platform and Enabling Teams to Handle Complex or Shared Concerns
Platform and enabling teams can take on complex or shared responsibilities, such as infrastructure or core systems, allowing stream-aligned teams to focus solely on delivering customer and business outcomes. -
Limit Dependencies and Handoffs to Enable Fast Delivery Cycles and Feedback Loops
One of the major obstacles to fast and efficient delivery is the number of dependencies between teams. Minimising these dependencies and handoffs allows teams to iterate quickly, integrate feedback, and continuously improve. -
Cross-Functional Expertise with the Necessary Mix of Skills to Deliver Value Independently
Teams should have a mix of expertise to deliver value without relying too much on external teams. Cross-functional capabilities allow teams to solve problems and deploy solutions independently, which accelerates the pace of delivery.
If you were to audit your operating today, how many of these principles are you adhering to?
The Role of Team Topologies
As companies evolve, they tend to organise in three primary ways: around technical components, features, or value streams. Regardless of maturity, Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais in Team Topologies outline four essential patterns for teams that enable value-driven delivery:
- Stream-Aligned Teams: These teams are directly aligned with a value stream and are responsible for delivering customer or business outcomes within that stream.
- Enabling Teams: These teams help streamline the processes of stream-aligned teams, offering expertise and support to reduce friction.
- Complex Sub-System Teams: Focused on handling parts of the system that require deep specialisation. These teams do not always endure, forming and dispanding to solve a complex problem for a period of time.
- Platform Teams: These teams manage infrastructure and shared platforms to support other teams, enabling them to move faster by reducing cognitive load. Ideally the stream-aligned teams can self-serve platform capability. Your architecture should enable this.
Skelton and Pais argue that these four types of teams should act as "magnets" that draw in all team types as organisations grow and scale.
Evolving with Purpose
The goal is to design teams intentionally rather than applying a one-size-fits-all template.
As organisations grow, the way they operate must evolve too. What worked when a company was smaller might create unnecessary dependencies and roadblocks as it scales. In many cases, what started as a rational grouping of teams becomes a bottleneck, slowing down progress and preventing teams from being truly empowered.
“In many cases, what started off as a rational grouping is not creating unnecessary dependencies or complications that work against team empowerment” Marty Cagan in Empowered
By consciously designing teams around value delivery, companies can remove the barriers that prevent rapid innovation and create an environment where teams are not just efficient but also empowered to make decisions and own their outcomes.
The journey to organising around value isn’t always easy, but the rewards are clear: faster delivery, higher customer satisfaction, and a culture of accountability and innovation.
By following these guiding principles and adopting the team topologies approach, organisations can build teams that are resilient, adaptable, and aligned with delivering measurable value.
Ultimately, it’s about moving beyond traditional ways of thinking and embracing a model that prioritises collaboration, autonomy, and continuous improvement.
When teams are aligned with delivering value, everyone wins!
