Spotlight session - Applying Team Topologies to firmware and software appliances
Fast flow of change is key to a healthy product feedback cycle. As consumers, we expect top-notch experiences. Software appliances and firmware can use principles and practices from Team Topologies, continuous delivery, cloud-native, and software operability to enable a fast flow of change.
Price: 18000 GBP
Applying Team Topologies to firmware and software appliances
3x 2-hour online sessions
Product code: P641a
Product specifications
Product name: Spotlight session - Applying Team Topologies to software appliances and firmware
Product code: P641a
Product type: Spotlight session
Format: online session
Schedule: 3x 2-hour sessions
Suggested attendees: Engineers and managers involved in building and evolving the software appliances and firmware
Number of attendees: up to 15 people
Price: 18000 GBP
All sessions from Conflux are co-designed with Matthew Skelton, co-author of the book Team Topologies.
What the Spotlight session is about
Your customers increasingly expect frequent, seamless feature changes and security updates to the appliances and devices you provide. But how can you make changes safely without adding unnecessary complexity and without engineer burnout?
This Spotlight session helps to increase awareness of the mindset and skills needed for fast flow by using ideas from Team Topologies: team types, effective team boundaries, team interactions modes, sociotechnical architecture, ways to limit and manage team cognitive load.
Who the Spotlight session is for
This Spotlight session is for engineers and managers involved in designing, creating, and maintaining software appliances and firmware.
Your staff will understand the concepts for fast flow, and create a shared mental model about what fast flow means for their context. They will be able to adopt the principles and implement practices that benefit flow in your product.
What benefits to expect
Overview of the key technical practices to enable fast flow.
Understanding of how Team Topologies helps with fast flow.
Understanding of Continuous Delivery practices.
Implications of Team Topologies and modern engineering practices for software appliances and firmware.
How to begin to apply Team Topologies ideas to software appliances and firmware, to help fast flow and manage team cognitive load.
Problems that this Spotlight session solves
You are aware of the needs of your users, namely they expect a rapid turnover of features and security upgrades on their devices. At the same time, your current engineering approach doesn’t enable you to adopt fast flow. You observe hand-overs between different teams, which affects your lead time to market. To achieve the required quality of your product, you have rework between the different teams involved in delivering the product. Attendees of this Spotlight session will gain an understanding of the implications of Team Topologies to fast flow and have an opportunity to discuss how to remove some of the blockers to fast flow, such as hand-overs and rework.
Schedule: what is covered and when
Screenshot of part of the Miro board used for this Spotlight session
The Spotlight session takes place over three 2-hour sessions, making it easy to schedule in busy calendars across multiple time zones. These sessions can be run in the same week or spread across two or three weeks.
Session 1: Implications of Team Topologies, fast flow, and team cognitive load for software appliances and firmware
We begin by reviewing the core engineering practices for fast flow: Continuous Delivery, deployment pipelines, operability, and modern version control.
We review the case study of the HP LaserJet firmware division who adopted Continuous Delivery practices between 2008 and 2011 and explore the reasons for the huge improvement in business results.
We review the key engineering techniques used at HP LaserJet firmware division and compare these to the techniques being used in your organization.
We then explore several implications of fast flow and Team Topologies for things like: team ownership, software boundaries, deployment pipelines, architecture, code ownership, coding practices, and - most importantly - managing team cognitive load.
We use a worked example of a digital personal health monitoring device to explore the ideas of fast flow and Team Topologies.
Session 2: Start to apply Team Topologies in your specific situation
We begin by introducing the Team Topologies team interaction modeling shapes and how these help to facilitate conversations about team evolution.
We then use the modeling shapes to design team interactions for the personal health monitoring example from Session 1.
We next look at a real scenario from your organization and begin to apply Team Topologies principles (we can help you select a suitable scenario for the workshop beforehand).
Optional: attendees are given exercises to complete before Session 3. This exercise explores the ideas from the first two sessions in the context of the attendees’ own organization.
Session 3: Work review plus Q&A
We review and discuss any recent work or exercises undertaken by attendees.
Questions from the previous two sessions will be explored by the attendees and practitioners.
Prerequisites
Attendees will get the most benefit from the Spotlight session by completing the prerequisite activities. The ‘Essential’ activities should take around 1-2 hours to complete. The ‘Recommended’ activities may take a few days to complete in total but will enable a deeper, more valuable learning experience.
Essential
Read the material at https://teamtopologies.com/key-concepts and https://teamtopologies.com/infographics
Watch two or more videos from https://teamtopologies.com/talks
Watch the video The future of Continuous Delivery at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7mSqpE26Fk - if needed (to cover core modern engineering practices).
Watch the video A Practical Approach to Large Scale Agile Development by Gary Gruver at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Trqjj3d3lhQ - this is about the HP LaserJet firmware division.
At Conflux, we use Miro for our online workshops. If you’re not already familiar with using Miro, you can quickly learn the basics with this short course from Miro: https://academy.miro.com/courses/participant-onboarding
Recommended
Complete one or more online video courses on the Team Topologies Academy: https://academy.teamtopologies.com/
Read two or more articles from the Conflux mini-book Modern Software Delivery
Read through and discuss two or more case studies from https://teamtopologies.com/examples - how might these apply to your context?
Read the Team Topologies book: https://teamtopologies.com/book
We also recommend
Insight sessions: https://confluxhq.com/live-sessions#insight
4-week peer learning sessions: https://confluxhq.com/live-sessions#peer
Online talk with Q&A: https://confluxhq.com/live-sessions#talks
How to buy
Price: 18000 GBP (and applicable taxes)
We have flexible contract and payment terms. Contact our Sales team to begin the purchase process, quoting workshop code “P641a”.
FAQs
What makes a good scenario for the Spotlight session?
Choose a scenario where the flow of work is often blocked with one team waiting on another or with multiple hand-offs between teams. This flow probably spans many different skill sets and/or layers of the technology stack.
Example: customers want regular updates to the “cloud connector”. functionality for connecting the appliance/device to public cloud services.
Example: customers want regular updates to the “fleet management” functionality for managing 100s or 1000s of devices.
Who should attend the Spotlight session?
Engineers and managers involved in building and evolving the products and services.
How is the Spotlight session delivered?
The Spotlight session is delivered online using video call (Google Meet, Zoom, or MS Teams).
How do I buy this Spotlight session?
Contact sales@confluxhq.com and mention the “P641a software appliances and firmware sessions”