Team Topologies Interaction Modes: Breaking Through Common Misconceptions
Team Topologies
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Many companies are looking at Team Topologies when trying to improve organizational efficiency and delivery speed. However, the three fundamental interaction modes - Collaboration, X-as-a-Service, and Facilitating - are often overlooked, misunderstood and misapplied, leading to decreased effectiveness and increased organizational friction rather than the intended benefits.
This edition was curated by Eduardo da Silva.
The Collaboration Confusion
The most common misunderstanding of Collaboration mode is treating it as an indefinite state of teams "working together." Organizations often fall into the trap of permanent collaboration, creating what they call "hybrid teams" or "joint task forces" that never seem to end. This directly contradicts the fundamental principle of the Collaboration mode from Team Topologies: it must be temporary and focused on specific learning objectives. When collaboration becomes permanent, it creates hidden dependencies, increases cognitive load, and ultimately slows down the delivery of value rather than accelerating it. In fact, this “indefinite and unclear collaboration” model is not a “Collaboration” as, in Team Topologies, it is an “Undefined Interaction”, which in time may also affect the nature of the teams involved in that interaction, as represented in the following diagram.
The XaaS you don't need or want
X-as-a-Service (or self-servicing interaction) is frequently reduced to simply "creating an API" or "building a platform." This oversimplification leads platform teams to adopt a “build, and they will come” philosophy without listening to their customers and building what they need. The result? Consuming teams spend more time figuring out how to use the service than they save by using it. Or they simply don’t use those services as they are not helping improve their flow (and reduce their cognitive load).
True X-as-a-Service emerges from consumer teams' needs. This requires treating internal services as products, complete with user research, clear documentation, and evolution based on user feedback. To accomplish that,? X-as-a-Service tends to emerge or evolve by leveraging other interaction modes, such as “collaboration” with potential users to understand what they truly need. Often times, some of those teams are already exploring ways to solve the problems at hand - and such Collaboration can help discover that and leverage those learnings when consolidating platforms that can help the stream-aligned teams in the organization.
Wondering what are some other misconceptions or patterns when applying Team Topologies across industries? Join the community and get insights from your peers.
The Facilitating Fallacy
Perhaps the most misused mode is Facilitating, often confused with traditional consulting or permanent support roles. Organizations create enabling teams that can become crutches rather than catalysts, leading to pushing things into the teams that they were supposed to in the first place. When those facilitating interactions are loosely defined and unclear, they will also become undefined interactions, and with those behaviors, the team also stops being an Enabling Team.
True Facilitating has clear entry and goals, focuses on knowledge transfer or addressing some missing capability, and aims to make itself unnecessary - a concept many find uncomfortable but is essential for organizational growth. This approach allows organizations to support people who know about a certain topic to help others in need of those skills and abilities, which helps improve the overall effectiveness of the organization.
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Breaking the Cycle of Misuse
These misunderstandings often stem from trying to fit new patterns into old organizational habits. Real improvement requires understanding that:
Moving Forward
To effectively leverage these interaction modes, organizations need to:
Understanding and correctly applying these interaction modes isn't just about following a framework - it's about creating an environment where teams can work effectively while maintaining their autonomy. When properly implemented, these modes reduce cognitive load, increase delivery speed, and create more resilient organizations.
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Technology Leader with experience in startups and transformational consultancy. I love leading teams to be the best they can be. Also a bird watcher ??? ?? ??
1 周I've seen a lot of "XaaS you don't need or want"
CEO at Conflux / Co-author of Team Topologies ??- Disrupting transformation via Team Topologies, fast flow, and Adapt Together??
1 周The team interaction modes in TT are so crucial to a more nimble, humane way of working. It's great to see this explanation and exploration, Eduardo da Silva!