The Power of Purposeful Team Collaboration
Team Topologies
Organize for fast flow of value - we help leaders design high-impact team-of-teams organizations.
In our previous newsletter, we explored different team interaction modes to help break down some of the most common misconceptions that hinder organizations from achieving fast flow.
This time, we’re diving deeper — focusing specifically on the collaboration mode.
This edition was curated by?Eduardo da Silva.
Teams don’t live in isolation. To maximize an organization's ability to succeed and exist in its market, teams need to coexist and complement each other. To do that and address the changes around the organization, teams will need to adapt their interactions. While many organizations recognize the need for teams to interact and work together, they often do so without a structured approach, ending up with unclear and ineffective collaborations.?
Team Topologies offers a clear set of principles and language for team interactions, including a precise definition and purpose for teams’ collaboration: “working together for a defined period of time to discover new things”. This is essential, as it helps teams to figure out together how to evolve and respond purposefully to the needs around them.
You can use Shapes to model and better structure these interactions, as shown in the following diagram.
Do you need help with modelling team interactions? Get the Team Topologies Distilled course or?contact us to transform your organization and achieve fast flow.
The purpose of the collaboration mode isn't just about teams working together; it's a deliberate, time-bound interaction where two or more teams work closely to learn, explore, and overcome significant obstacles. Collaborations are initiated only between teams that can help address a specific challenge or opportunity. These collaborations have a clear mission and are temporary — they end once teams gain the insights necessary to decide how to proceed. This is fundamentally different from general "cooperation" or "coordination."
The impact of well-structured collaboration is illustrated by Telenet's transformation journey. The Belgian telecom provider initially adopted agile practices inspired by the Spotify model in 2019, but by 2022, they faced structural friction that hindered their business agility. By implementing Team Topologies principles and restructuring their teams to optimize for fast flow and improved collaboration, Telenet created cross-functional teams that could work autonomously while maintaining clear communication channels. The results were significant: teams became more responsive to customer needs and market changes, while collaborative practices became deeply embedded in the company's culture.
The Strategic Platform Collaborations
Collaboration often takes place between Platform teams and Stream-aligned teams. This is essential for refining the capabilities that should be in platforms and determining how to define them most effectively to support the customer Stream-aligned teams. The following diagrams share two interesting examples of leveraging collaboration in the context of platforms.
First, collaboration between the Platform and two stream-aligned teams has been pioneering a new capability that is beneficial for them and could help other teams within the organization. This capability is shaped by the needs of the stream-aligned teams; however, it is not necessarily their core business and can be integrated into a platform that supports both them and other teams.
A second example of leveraging collaboration occurs when a platform service no longer meets the needs of its customer stream-aligned teams. In this situation, collaboration between the platform and those stream-aligned teams can help refine what has happened, identify their needs, and explore ways to evolve the platform's capabilities.
These two examples illustrate that collaboration can address uncertainty about how best to evolve platform services to meet evolving stream-aligned team needs. In these cases, collaboration helps both sides gain clarity: Platform teams better understand real user needs, while stream-aligned teams learn to leverage platform capabilities effectively. This form of targeted, time-limited collaboration ensures that both teams can work together to overcome obstacles without creating long-term dependencies.
Wondering what are some other misconceptions or patterns when applying Team Topologies across industries? Join the community and get insights from your peers.
What’s Coming Up Next?
We are gathering all Team Topologies events on our Events page and would love to hear your feedback about the ones you have attended or the ones that we have missed
Welcome Team Topologies Advocates
We are proud to have three new Team Topologies Advocates:
If you're passionate about Team Topologies and want to become an advocate, we would love to have you join us. Or, if you have a story to share, we would be honored to feature it on the website.
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