Release year: 2022

Authors: Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais

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Link to my handwritten notes

Review

This is a nice and small companion book to Team Topologies with a focus on how to take advantage of the different topologies in a remote or hybrid work setting.

Félix rating:
👍

⭐ Star quotes

• (p.1) Google’s five keys to successful teams:
  1. Psychological safety: can teams take risks without feeling insecure?
  2. Dependability: Can teams count on one another?
  3. Structure and clarity: Clear goals, rules and execution plans
  4. Meaning of work: Is the work important to the team?
  5. Impact of work: Does the team believe their work matters?
• (p. 5) Instead of spending time waiting on other teams to finish their work, focus on tracking then removing dependencies between teams.
• (p. 6) ✅ Don’t make it hard for people to discover meaning in written communications. Make messages self-contained to help reduce cognitive load.
• (p. 34) Make it easy for people to self-serve, e.g. by having channel names that make it obvious where to get support (#support-...). Every time someone self-serves, someone’s time is saved.
• (p. 43) ✅ The problem with the organizational chart is that for a lot of knowledge work, we cannot have communication only happening up and down the different branches. Don’t build communication channels around your org chart!
• (p. 57) Use a net promoter score (NPS) to gauge how well the platform is perceived by internal customers.