A data-driven approach to fast flow using Team Topologies principles at EBSCO
EBSCO leveraged Team Topologies with Conflux's support to optimize its organizational dynamics for software delivery. After seven years of using SAFe, EBSCO’s existing ART structure was experiencing several critical challenges in delivering value efficiently.
In the following 18 months, EBSCO realised many operational improvements; $9.1M recurring annual cost reduction, 26% faster feature delivery, dependency-related blockers decreased by 45%.
EBSCO Information Services, a leading provider of research databases, leveraged Team Topologies with Conflux's support to optimize its organizational dynamics for software delivery.
EBSCO operational improvements:
$9.1M recurring annual cost reduction
26% faster feature delivery
Dependency-related blockers decreased by 45%
Repeatable enterprise capability playbook
Significantly higher team satisfaction
After seven years of using SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework), EBSCO’s existing ART (Agile Release Train) structure was experiencing several critical challenges in delivering value efficiently.
A restructure of ARTs to better accommodate legacy and emerging value streams was needed. As the restructure would be implemented using Team Topologies principles and practices, EBSCO enlisted Conflux, a leading Team Topologies Solutions Partner, to guide them through the implementation.
Restructuring using Team Topologies principles enabled significant improvements in EBSCO's speed, autonomy, and efficiency. Feature output increased by 25%, unlocking an additional $9M annually. EBSCO also discovered a renewed awareness of its value and now has a repeatable playbook for future enterprise capabilities and new platform plays.
Re-architecting teams and systems for flow
After seven years with SAFe, EBSCO's ART structure no longer supported the organization's desired flow. The challenges included:
Ownership challenges: Teams lacked end-to-end ownership of value streams
Alignment issues: Managing too many dependencies across boundaries
Delivery speed: Existing structures limited the desired flow of value
Cognitive load: Teams and leadership faced excessive cognitive burden
Excessive WIP: Work in Progress levels complicated delivery effectiveness
"At first, I was skeptical that reorganizing the teams would have any significant benefit. It was hard to imagine there would be any measurable difference. However, once the Team Topologies work had completed, my development managers reported that they felt they had much less cognitive load and there was an increase in their job satisfaction." — Mike Gunning, SVP of Development, EBSCO IS
Catalyzing decision-making through Team Topologies
Conflux guided EBSCO through discovery sessions to map team architecture and value streams. Using Independent Service Heuristics (ISH), they identified optimal value streams for team alignment.
Effective implementation of Team Topologies requires self-awareness at multiple organizational levels, which was very evident at EBSCO. This self-awareness is fundamental to understanding how boundaries can be built around value streams to enable flow.
"EBSCO's relative cultural maturity positioned the organization well for the Team Topologies approach." — Matthew Skelton, CEO/CTO of Conflux and co-author of Team Topologies
From ‘Ownership’ to ‘Stewardship’
In the Team Topologies approach, emphasizing ‘stewardship’ rather than simple ‘ownership’ of services signifies a critical shift in thinking about team responsibilities.
Traditional ownership models sometimes create territorial behaviors, while stewardship emphasizes ongoing care and evolution of services. Establishing clear responsibilities for services and applications was essential to EBSCO's transformation journey.
Stream-aligned teams drive value flow
The transformation delivered substantial financial benefits over the initial two-year period:
$9.1M in cost savings
62% ROI with payback in just 1.2 years
197 additional features delivered
EBSCO's new model connected capabilities, applications, and teams around distinct value offerings. This optimized structure enabled end-to-end domain stewardship and reduced handoffs, removing delivery friction.
"Becoming a full-stack development team has benefitted my team in so many ways. We're avoiding dependencies on other teams, triaging a wider range of defects, and providing both API and UI focused teammates a better understanding of where their data comes from." — Craig Spara, Senior Software Engineer, EBSCO IS.
Team Topologies enables organizational transformation for fast flow
"One key takeaway is that we now have the tools to develop and maintain a consistent approach. If we need to reorganize or redesign into new enterprise capabilities or a new platform play, we have the playbook." — Nicole Casellini, VP Lean Enterprise Office, EBSCO IS
EBSCO now has a sustainable improvement model based on five key principles:
Empowering teams via technology – Creating an environment where teams can deliver value autonomously
Ongoing stewardship over project completion – Moving from ‘build and move on’ to continuous care
Sociotechnical systems thinking – Aligning human and technical elements
Fast flow through clear boundaries – Enabling rapid delivery by defining team interfaces
Cognitive load management – Ensuring teams can effectively maintain and evolve services
Download the full EBSCO case study
Discover the full story of EBSCO's Team Topologies transformation:
Detailed methodology and implementation approach
Enterprise domain evolution through capability affinity grouping
Platform team evolution and the "restaurant menu” approach
ROI breakdown and measurement frameworks
And much more...
Thank you to Nicole Casellini, VP Lean Enterprise Office - EBSCO Information Services, Scott Cummins, SVP Office of CIO - EBSCO Information Services, and Steven Whitaker Principal Enterprise Architect - EBSCO Information Services for sharing their insights.
Book your discovery call today to discuss your organization's specific challenges and how our proven approach can help you achieve measurable improvements.
Proemion optimizes team and system boundaries for flow with CodeScene and Conflux
Proemion, a leading telematics platform provider, leveraged CodeScene to optimize its software delivery performance as it scaled its engineering teams.
Inspired by a talk from Matthew Skelton, CEO of Conflux, on untangling software delivery, Umberto Nicoletti, Head of R&D at Proemion, realized the importance of establishing good boundaries for flow, as outlined in the book 'Team Topologies' co-authored by Matthew Skelton.
How IoT leader Proemion used CodeScene and guidance from Conflux to evolve healthy team and system boundaries for flow.
Proemion is the leading telematics platform provider for OEMs, offering a seamless integration of hardware, software, and connectivity, ensuring continuous business success for its customers. With a fully integrated telematics stack providing platform monitoring, analysis, prediction, remote diagnostic, and access capabilities, Proemion makes it easy for businesses to manage fleets and boost efficiency. After joining Battery Ventures in 2022, Proemion expanded in 2024 by acquiring Trendminer, a company specializing in industrial process and asset monitoring.
At Proemion, around 60 engineers across 10 teams are continually working on generating, collecting, and presenting key operational data via their flagship DataPortal product, and these teams are growing with customer demand. Umberto Nicoletti, Head of R&D at Proemion, realized that to support the company’s continued sustainable growth of their software engineering capability, it would need to adopt principles and practices informed by fast flow, such as Team Topologies.
In particular, it became clear that as the number of engineers increased, it was vital to establish good boundaries for flow, enabling teams to work with empowered autonomy whilst still contributing effectively to the whole solution. In 2024, after watching a talk from Conflux CEO, Matthew Skelton on untangling software delivery, Proemion began to use CodeScene to assess codebase health.
“I decided to trial CodeScene after having seen it recommended in the ‘untangling’ presentation by Matthew Skelton at the DORA community in 2023”, said Nicoletti. He needed to understand why some teams were struggling with delivery compared to others. Were some teams blocked more often, were delays due to code quality, or some other problem? Nicoletti commented, “A qualitative assessment with the respective Team Leads suggested that there was room for improvement, however, we could not pinpoint exactly what the obstacles were.”
Initially, Nicoletti used the concept of counting “blocking waits” to assess team independence (as outlined in Matthew Skelton’s talk), however, their findings were counterintuitive: the team with the highest delivery performance reported the most blocking waits. After some discussion, Nicoletti realized that a high-maturity team is typically more aware of its surroundings and limitations, and more readily able to report blockers as a result.
When they used CodeScene to compare the context of different teams, it provided clarity and pinpointed the problems faced by the lower-performing team. “CodeScene on the other hand told a story that fit my perception and that of the team lead perfectly”, said Nicoletti. “CodeScene showed us that the underperforming team exhibited a cluster of challenges: it was the only team with decreasing code quality, a few significant refactoring hotspots, knowledge loss due to staff leaving, and had low team effectiveness (we had scaled up the team size but failed to reap the full benefits of it).”
CodeScene helped the leadership at Proemion identify the causes of lower team performance around software delivery and provided actionable recommendations for addressing the problems, such as refactoring steps, hotspot analysis, and code health trends.
Using team analysis in CodeScene to map to Team Topologies principles
CodeScene provides powerful capabilities to detect and visualize team boundaries based on the patterns of activity in code repositories, drawing on concepts explored in the book ‘Team Topologies’, co-authored by Conflux CEO, Matthew Skelton. Any mismatches between the software architecture and the team architecture are easy to spot using CodeScene, via its team dynamics features.
Nicoletti used these features to assess the effectiveness of team boundaries at Proemion, in particular looking for cross-team dependencies. The analysis showed that a change from a waterfall to a stream-aligned model 18 months before had been successful in minimizing cross-team dependencies. “CodeScene gave us confidence that we did not have a major problem with blocking waits, due to the earlier reorganization inspired by Team Topologies”, said Nicoletti.
CodeScene’s team alignment explorer demonstrates that the model change from waterfall to stream-aligned reduced the communication channels outside of the team.
In this case, the circle on the team on the left-hand side represents an individual who moved from the bottom right team to the left, and Codescene correctly portrays the strong ties to their former team.
Comparing CodeScene to other code quality tools (like SonarCloud)
Led by Nicoletti, the engineering team at Proemion also used CodeScene alongside SonarCloud for a “multi-level” approach to code quality assessment.
“We found that CodeScene and SonarCloud complement each other when it comes to assessing codebase health”, said Nicoletti. “CodeScene focuses on how code quality affects team dynamics (and vice-versa), whereas SonarCloud focuses on ‘single line’ code quality, without any real context about the social or organizational aspects. With that in mind, they are both helpful, because SonarCloud helps with static code analysis on each single change and is therefore useful for the developers in their day-to-day work.”
CodeScene’s dashboard shows steadily increasing code quality and team alignment. This data matches the perceived team(s) performance as they work on the codebase that has been powering the Proemion telematics platform for over 15 years.
“In contrast, CodeScene’s focus on organizational dynamics is relevant for an audience such as team leads, engineering managers, and CTOs who can influence organizational structure and team boundaries”, explained Nicoletti. “Thanks to CodeScene, we discovered that we’re well set up from a Team Topologies perspective, which helped us to identify that the problem with the lower-performing team seemed to be down to the team not scheduling time to tackle the hotspots. This is something that other tools more or less in the same space (like SonarCloud) fail to capture and show as clearly as CodeScene does.”
CodeScene provides actionable insights for reducing time-to-value
Thanks to guidance and suggestions from Conflux, the R&D department at Proemion found practical approaches to assessing and remediating lower performance in their software delivery teams. The use of CodeScene for social code analysis was crucial to giving clarity on the nature and location of the problems.
“CodeScene backs the perceived team performance problems with data and provides actionable next steps”, said Nicoletti. “Codescene excels in revealing the dynamics and factors that affect software delivery performance through clear, actionable diagrams.”
Conflux is a global CodeScene partner. Our dedicated CodeScene success accelerator program delivers measurable results to help your teams adopt and maintain a sustainable fast flow of value.
Visit confluxhq.com/codescene to get started.
Cloud readiness and flow architectures at iBwave
In 2020, iBwave began to move its flagship software product to the cloud to take advantage of massively parallel processing power for 4G/5G network signal calculations.
Conflux helped iBwave to explore and evaluate options during the move to Microsoft Azure.
iBwave provides telecom radio planning software used by telecoms providers around the world. Conflux guided a move to adopt a cloud product mode.
“Thanks again for your work here at iBwave; it was valuable and we all learn a lot from your experience.”
iBwave is the power behind great in-building wireless experience, enabling billions of end users and devices to connect inside a wide range of venues. As the global industry reference, iBwave software solutions allow for smarter planning, design and deployment of any wireless network project regardless of size, complexity or technology.
In 2020, iBwave began to move its flagship software product to the cloud to take advantage of massively parallel processing power for 4G/5G network signal calculations.
Conflux helped iBwave to explore and evaluate options during the move to Microsoft Azure:
Recommendations for adjustments to the sales and product approaches to better suit a cloud-based SaaS subscription service,
Practical options for migrating the software application in stages to the cloud, together with decision heuristics to enable adjustments later on. This included a redesign of the teams based on the book Team Topologies by Conflux founder, Matthew Skelton.
Specific practices for modernizing .NET codebases and migrating to to team-sizes services using Continuous Delivery based on the book Continuous Delivery with Windows and .NET by Conflux founder, Matthew Skelton.
The work led to a set of operating principles for cloud-based software, a migration path for the existing software product, and practical options for accelerating software delivery.
Screenshot of the flagship iBwave Design software, showing 4G/5G connectivity for a sports stadium.
DevOps and cloud adoption at CDL
In 2018, CDL began to take steps to accelerate delivery of changes to its widely-used insurance software.
Conflux helped CDL to assess its current approaches to planning, building, testing, and operating its software services in three phases.
CDL is the UK market leader for insurance software. Their practices - aided by Conflux - were featured in the book Team Topologies.
“This was a very team-friendly way of assessing software delivery and it produced useful, actionable recommendations.”
CDL offers powerful solutions enabling insurers to achieve strategic, mass market distribution of their products, while retaining control through insurer hosted rating mechanisms. Combining an ambitious R&D programme with a track record of industry firsts, CDL also works closely with insurers to create next generation insurance products, in tune with the expectations of millennials.
In 2018, CDL began to take steps to accelerate delivery of changes to its widely-used insurance software. Several successful innovation pilots had shown “the art of the possible” and the challenge was then to adopt these pilot practices across the rest of the organization.
Conflux helped CDL to assess its current approaches to planning, building, testing, and operating its software services in three phases:
A team-centric assessment of practices for building and running software using DevOps principles
A wide-ranging, strategic assessment of practices across all areas of engineering and IT
A series of workshops and group sessions focused on inter-team dynamics, Team Topologies principles, and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE).
The work led to increased clarity about the pathway to a cloud-centric operating model, practical steps for decomposing a large monolithic software codebase, and increased engagement from practitioners.
“We engaged Conflux to provide a 2-day DevOps-focused software delivery assessment across six of our software development squads here at CDL. We wanted to get an independent view of what was working well and what needed improvement, and the results were eye-opening for us. After the assessment it was clear that we needed to consider quite significant changes in how the teams are composed, organised and run, plus better definition of our internal and external software services.
The assessment process itself was refreshing to see: the Conflux consultant quickly developed a good rapport with the various teams, putting them at ease and helping them to produce an honest assessment of their practices, skills, capabilities, and frustrations. This was a very team-friendly way of assessing software delivery and it produced useful, actionable recommendations.”
The modern Codeworks building at CDL.
Cloud readiness and fast flow at Publish Interactive
In 2018, the Publish Interactive team began to take advantage of the AWS and Azure public cloud platforms for running their software at scale and also for build/test/deployment. Publish Interactive engaged Conflux to help guide and accelerate the adoption of public cloud alongside approaches like Continuous Delivery, DevOps, and SRE.
Publish Interactive is the publishing and monetization platform for the research sector. Conflux helped them to adopt fast flow and prepare for cloud-native approaches.
“I think we’ve managed to jump over some of the potential pitfalls in moving to cloud thanks to ... Conflux.”
Publish Interactive is the publishing and monetization platform for the research sector. Trusted by 50% of Fortune 500 companies, Publish Interactive has been in continuous development since 2004 and includes several patents for innovative data processing.
In 2018, the Publish Interactive team began to take advantage of the AWS and Azure public cloud platforms for running their software at scale and also for build/test/deployment. Publish Interactive engaged Conflux to help guide and accelerate the adoption of public cloud alongside approaches like Continuous Delivery, DevOps, and SRE.
Conflux provided initial targeted consulting sessions with Publish Interactive staff which helped them to build a high-level plan for adoption of new technologies and approaches. Conflux then ran a Value Stream Mapping workshop to identify blockers in the flow of change from version control to Production, helping to reduce significantly the time taken to prepare new changes for release.
The Publish Interactive staff participated in a full-day workshop run by Conflux covering modern DevOps approaches to software delivery including: a Run Book dialogue sheet exercise to identify gaps in operational readiness, running the Elevation of Privilege card game from Microsoft to recognize security problems, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) as an approach to responsive cloud operations, and an exploration of ways to evolve the software to take advantage of cloud technologies.
“The input we’ve had from Conflux has been great. It’s really helped us to develop a clearer picture of where we’re heading with both technology and teams. I think we’ve managed to jump over some of the potential pitfalls in moving to cloud thanks to the sessions from Matthew and the team at Conflux.”
Screenshot of the Publish Interactive cross-sell feature.