Team Topologies in practice

Join this DDD NL meetup to learn about Team Topologies. We have both a talk and a workshop, both about applying Team Topologies in practice. This time in Rotterdam at the Coolblue HQ.

🌎 Talk: Team Topologies at Coolblue ⛴️

By Aman Agrawal - Principal Developer at Coolblue
https://www.linkedin.com/in/aagrw/

In this talk, Aman presents the story of how at Coolblue, they have organised two of the engineering teams in the Purchasing organisation for improved flow, stronger ownership and better autonomy. He starts by setting the organisational context a bit, both from the overall technical and business perspectives. Learn about the challenges that they encountered with regards to:

• Business alignment and purpose of the teams,
• Systems they owned and operated and their complicated inter-dependencies,
• Consideration to create a large team and manage it with more process
• Lack of inclusion of the engineering teams’ perspectives in the reorganization effort.

Aman will also share how they tackled these challenges by using Domain Driven Design and Team Topologies as tools to give them a language and a set of heuristics to make more informed choices about organising teams for better ownership, reduced cognitive load, improved flow and consequently improve the software architecture in line with organisational engineering goals. You'll also learn what they learned and have done since and what a potential future might look like at Coolblue.

🛠️ Workshop: Leveraging Team Topologies for Organization and Software Evolution 🐟🦎🐒🧑

By João Rosa - Independent Consultant
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joaoasrosa/

Increase the flow of delivery with effective software design and team interactions. Have you ever faced roadblocks in software development stemming from disjointed team structures or interactions? You’re not alone. Misalignment between software and the domain, siloed teams focusing on random tasks, or processes dictating software architecture often end up in rigid software that is not coherent with evolving environment and requirements. Enter Team Topologies, a pattern language, and a set of principles and practices to ensure a steady flow of value while respecting human-centric aspects like trust boundaries and cognitive load. This perspective poses a burning question: What if we change how teams interact with each other and leverage these interactions to evolve the organization and the software? What would such a world look like?

The software we produce quickly changes the user's needs, which has a ripple effect on the software itself. Requirements change, and people want different things. This is good; people are engaged, and the software's value is sound. But there’s a caveat: how the teams inside the organization interact can be an enabler or blocker to evolving the software services and the organization itself. You probably have experience with how the friction between different people and teams inside a company didn’t yield the desirable results. This session focuses on a different angle. What if we take how teams interact and leverage our native humane capabilities, such as trust and empathy, around a common goal?

Rather than starting from the technical angle, we start from the social and humane angle. With this in mind, we use Team Topologies principles and practices. We design how teams can interact with each other and how to have a sensible software architecture that enables a fast flow of value toward the users. You will work in smaller groups around a fictional company example based on real-life use cases. The session provides a space to safely experiment with different options and reflect on the tradeoffs and implications. There is a strong emphasis on the practical side of things, with short theory blocks to give you the foundation for the exercises. At the end of the workshop, you can apply the principles and practices to your context, improving the flow and business outcomes.

😎 About the host 🔵

At Coolblue, they do everything for a smile. They are the go-to electronics and energy-saving company with one obsession: customer satisfaction. Whether you shop online, in their app, or in one of their stores, they make sure your journey is smooth from start to finish. Their own delivery and installation services? Check. Super helpful customer service? Double check. And their famous 'smile marketing'? That’s how they turn every moment into a little surprise. Customers love them (just ask their sky-high NPS), and they love making them happy. Because happy customers make a strong, lovable brand. Simple as that.

🕠 Schedule 🕘

17:30 - 18:00: Welcoming guests downstairs + on the 8th floor, welcome drinks (begin with coffee/tea/soft drinks)
18:00 - 18:15: Welcome presentation by Devon Burris
18:15 - 18:45: Dinner
18:45 - 19:00: Talk by Aman Agrawal - Team Topologies at Coolblue
19:00 - 20:15: Hands-on workshop by João Rosa - Leveraging Team Topologies for Organization and Software Evolution
20:15 - 21:00: Social drinks + networking (beer/wine/soft drinks)