Hi I really loved

Question

Hi < Manuel Pais co author Team Topologies > I really loved your talk Every time that I m reading about platform teams we end up with tons of examples more related to SRE and DevOps But do you think that in larger organizations will be useful having another kind of platform teams that are between SRE and Stream aligned teams Nowadays we are facing a lot of complexity and cognitive load related to some part of our business domain A lot of different stream aligned teams and their value streams rely on these business domains We are thinking of creating platforms teams that are hiding and making it easier to share the knowledge of these business domain complexities through services and APIs for the stream aligned teams Do you think is a dangerous strategy or did you already see something similar in other places We have some concerns in creating bottlenecks on these teams Thanks

Manuel Pais (co-author Team Topologies) · Answer

That s a very important question and first of all it s critical that the org is aware of the potential impact on the flow of stream aligned teams when we re trying to help but we end up unwantingly with platforms that are more blockers that helpers

Manuel Pais (co-author Team Topologies) · Answer

Of course we must start by the business related platform being self service that s a must

Manuel Pais (co-author Team Topologies) · Answer

But even then a common problem is the boundaries of the platform being too strict and defined upfront That is a common mistake that leads to painful dependencies down the line Maybe the abstractions are too high level for some teams forcing them to use workarounds or frequently wait on platform teams to make changes Or the abstraction is too low level causing cognitive load on the stream teams

Manuel Pais (co-author Team Topologies) · Answer

In short it s definitely beneficial to think about possible non infra SRE DevOps platforms You can find some really interesting examples here <https bit ly 3NgtKoW>

Manuel Pais (co-author Team Topologies) · Answer

I love how uSwitch evolved from an initial could infra platform to now having multiple platforms around consumer data and even marketing <https teamtopologies com industry examples organizational evolution accelerating delivery of comparison services uswitch>

Manuel Pais (co-author Team Topologies) · Answer

Or how NAV a gov org in Norway has a design platform and a data platform on top of the Applicaton platform <https teamtopologies com industry examples how the internal technology platform creates value at nav>

Paul Puschmann · Answer

How does this related to the in famous Spotify model Like Tribes Is everything you describe inside a tribe

Manuel Pais (co-author Team Topologies) · Answer

In my opinion those higher level platforms are where a lot of the platform value shines

Manuel Pais (co-author Team Topologies) · Answer

< Paul Puschmann> it s unrelated to tribes we re not based off the Spotify model at all

Manuel Pais (co-author Team Topologies) · Answer

You can find the key concepts from the Team Topologies book here <https teamtopologies com key concepts>

Angel Costela · Answer

Thanks a lot for the info

Paul Puschmann · Answer

thinking face Thank you so I should do some serious reading first joy I only wondered what you would think of something like platform as a separate tribe

Manuel Pais (co-author Team Topologies) · Answer

Personally I think tribes are fine if they re aligned to true domains but dangerous if aligned to disciplines like SRE or DevOps A tribe typically sets very strong incentives so you end up incentivizing the wrong things from a business perspective possibly

Manuel Pais (co-author Team Topologies) · Answer

A clearly defined platform could be a tribe But there should be a clear value proposition to this platform which is aligned to the needs of the other teams and the organization s goals

Paul Puschmann · Answer

And I guess you d recommend to have the platform inside of a tribe

Manuel Pais (co-author Team Topologies) · Answer

There s no silver bullet to recommend Sometimes it makes sense for large distributed orgs to have multiple platforms that are localized per region even if they provide similar services for e g

Manuel Pais (co-author Team Topologies) · Answer

Other times it doesn t make sense to do that

Manuel Pais (co-author Team Topologies) · Answer

I think a sense of belonging is important whether that s with tribes or some other construct

Paul Puschmann · Answer

Yes it highly depends Thank you so far I ll have to think about this slightly smiling face

Manuel Pais (co-author Team Topologies) · Answer

We talk about trust boundaries in the book these are important to keep in mind when organizing platform teams as well Having 300 people in a single platform group is going to cause issues of trust

Manuel Pais (co-author Team Topologies) · Answer

We go into more details of all this in our Platform as a Product online training <https bit ly 3MS88Pt>

Manuel Pais (co-author Team Topologies) · Answer

you can use code platformcon 15off for a 15 discount

Manuel Pais (co-author Team Topologies) · Answer

But just to go back to < Angel Costela> s initial question it is key for any platform but especially for business amp data focused platforms to keep the boundaries of what s in and out of the platform quite fluid and evolving over time We can use things like a team dependencies tracker to help us have leading indicators of potential issues over time