A missing team type in Team Topologies?
TL;DR:Team Topologies names four team types but skips the most important one: a broad, cross-product team capable of working on any feature end-to-end. LeSS calls them feature teams. Stream-aligned teams are not the same — they are bound to a narrow scope by definition. The missing type is the one that drives real adaptivity.
A fifth team type?
Are #teamtopologies ignoring an important team type?
I've worked with high-performing organizations that thoughtfully crafted teams that are capable of working across the whole business/customer domain — as broad as it gets.
Such teams had to do a lot of cross-team learning — what we now call multi-learning — to stay relevant and keep adding real value. Such teams avoided locking themselves into a predefined narrow scope of work to show local efficiency that is easy to measure and brag about.
I saw such teams in highly-adaptive organizations such as PandaDoc, Poster POS, Y Soft and other places.
In LeSS such teams are called "feature teams". A bad choice of a name, if you ask me. (I also know the historical context and understand why it is so. The story goes to the 90s and to how Microsoft was calling those great teams.)
Such teams differ from other team types as they aim at being able to work on any feature end-to-end; across the whole customer/business domain. That's going up the vertical axis of Org Topologies. Not just improving the flow of known value; but exploring the unknown.
That does not mean such teams in the reality of complex legacy products can actually work on any feature right from day one. No. In reality such teams have their preferences and temporary limitations. But that's a great perfection vision to push us forward and keep improving, isn't it?
What to call them
If I were to choose a new name for that team type I would think along these lines:
- whole product focus team
- cross-product teams
- omni-component teams
- versatile teams
- omnipotent teams
- …
It is not about the name, really. But the meaning.
Aren't these just stream-aligned teams?
Aren't stream-aligned teams exactly the same as this 5th team type?
No. As per the definition:
Stream-aligned teams focus on a single, impactful stream of work. It can be a single product or service, a single set of features, a single user journey, or a single user persona.
SATs are by definition bound to their context, affixed to their value stream that is likely defined quite narrowly to fight the cognitive load challenge (the key premise/promise of the TT method). For a deeper critique of this approach, see How Adaptive are Team Topologies? and the broader question of reducing cognitive load systemically.
Thoughts? Criticism?
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Alexey Krivitsky
Co-author of 10X ORG and co-creator of Org Topologies. Helps organizations rethink, redesign & rewire themselves for the AI era — from the codebase to the boardroom.
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