Team Topologies

5	The Four Fundamental Team Topologies

The architecture of the system gets cemented in the forms of the teams that develop it.

—Ruth Malan, “Conway’s Law”

In many organizations, there is a variety of team types and there are even teams taking on multiple roles (e.g., an infrastructure and tooling team). This sprawl makes it hard for everyone to visualize the full organizational landscape: Do we have the right teams in place? Are we lacking capabilities in some areas that are not being addressed by any team? Does it look like teams have the necessary balance between autonomy and support by other teams?

Answering these questions becomes simpler if we reduce the number of team variations to four fundamental team topologies:

• Stream-aligned ...