Team Topologies: a solution to the collaboration paradox

I’ve seen it countless times – teams drowning in Slack messages, calendars packed with meetings and work that should take days stretching into weeks or months. The irony? We think we’re being collaborative but we’re actually creating bottlenecks.

The collaboration paradox

Here’s the thing about collaboration – it’s like salt in cooking. The right amount enhances everything but too much ruins the dish. In many organisations, we’ve gone overboard with collaboration and it shows up as:

• Decision paralysis: ‘Let's get input from everyone’ often means nobody feels empowered to make the call
• Meeting madness: Your day becomes a game of calendar Tetris with no time to do the work
• Slack overload: The constant ping of notifications that fragments your attention and destroys focus

The worst part? These problems hide in plain sight until suddenly your delivery dates are slipping, your team is burning out and everyone’s wondering what went wrong.

Flow metrics: Shining a light on the bottlenecks

This is where flow metrics come in. They’re like an MRI for your work process, showing exactly where things are getting stuck. Instead of guessing what’s wrong, you can see it in black and white.

When I started tracking flow metrics with a team that was struggling to deliver, the data told a clear story:

• Flow efficiency was abysmal. Only about 15% of the time was spent working on items. The rest was waiting for reviews, approvals or dependencies from other teams
• Flow time (how long it takes work to go from start to finish) was all over the place. Some simple features took weeks because they were stuck in approval loops
• Flow load showed they were juggling way too many things at once. No wonder nothing was getting done!

One team I worked with discovered that their items spent an average of eight days waiting for security reviews. That was their biggest bottleneck, not the actual development work!

Team Topologies: redesigning for better flow

Once you can see the bottlenecks, you need a way to eliminate them. This is where Team Topologies comes in. It’s a practical approach to organising teams that reduces unnecessary dependencies and clarifies who does what.

Instead of the typical ‘throw everyone together and hope for the best’ approach, Team Topologies gives you four team types that each serve a specific purpose:

© Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais from Team Topologies

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I saw this work wonders at a financial services company where teams were constantly blocked waiting for database changes. By creating a database platform team that built self-service tools, they reduced wait times from weeks to hours.

Fixing how teams talk to each other

Team Topologies also help you to be intentional about how teams interact. There are three main modes:

© Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais from Team Topologies

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A retail company I worked with had its infrastructure and development teams in constant meetings. By shifting to a service relationship with clear APIs and self-service tools, they freed up 15+ hours of meeting time per week while improving delivery speed.

Putting it all together

Here’s the magic formula I’ve seen work time and again:

• Use flow metrics to find where work is getting stuck
• Apply Team Topologies principles to redesign team boundaries and interactions
• Keep measuring to see if things improve
• Rinse and repeat

For example, if flow metrics show that work is constantly waiting for security approvals, you might:

• Create security self-service tools (platform approach)
• Embed security experts temporarily to upskill the team (enabling approach)
• Clarify which decisions teams can make autonomously vs. which need review

This isn’t just theory

By applying these principles, I’ve seen teams cut their delivery time in half. One product team went from averaging 45 days to get features to production down to just 18 days, not by working harder, but by redesigning their team interactions based on flow data.

The best part? People were happier too. There were fewer interruptions, clearer responsibilities and more time spent doing meaningful work instead of sitting in coordination meetings.

Start small, learn fast

You don’t need to reorganise your entire company overnight. Start by tracking some basic flow metrics for a few weeks. Where is work getting stuck? How much time is spent waiting versus doing? Use that data to have honest conversations about team boundaries and interactions.

The goal isn’t to eliminate collaboration. It’s to make those moments more purposeful and effective. When teams have clear boundaries and interaction modes, they can focus on what matters – delivering value without drowning in coordination overhead.

So what’s your biggest team bottleneck? How might you redesign your team topology to fix it?