team-shape

name	team-shape
description	Assess team structure against Skelton's Team Topologies. Evaluate cognitive load, interaction modes, and Conway's Law alignment.

Team Shape Assessment

Evaluate organizational design for fast flow. Source: Skelton & Pais (Team Topologies).

Assessment Workflow

1. Map Current Teams

For each team, classify:

• Stream-aligned: Owns a user journey or business domain (most teams should be this)
• Enabling: Helps other teams acquire capabilities (temporary engagement)
• Complicated subsystem: Deep specialist knowledge (only when cognitive load justifies)
• Platform: Internal product that reduces cognitive load for stream-aligned teams

2. Evaluate Cognitive Load

For each team, assess:

• Intrinsic load: Problem complexity (can't reduce, only manage)
• Extraneous load: Bad tools/processes (SHOULD reduce -- platform teams help here)
• Germane load: Learning new relevant things (encourage)
• If team is overloaded: shrink domain, move complexity to platform, or split

3. Audit Interaction Modes

Between each pair of collaborating teams:

• Collaboration: Working closely together (time-box this -- it's expensive)
• X-as-a-Service: Consuming/providing via API (ideal steady state)
• Facilitating: Helping another team learn (enabling teams do this)

4. Conway's Law Check

• Does architecture mirror team structure intentionally?
• Do team boundaries align with security boundaries?
• Do team APIs match system APIs?

5. Recommendations

• Teams without clear type -> needs redesign
• Collaboration lasting > 1 quarter -> should evolve to X-as-a-Service
• Stream-aligned team with > 2 cross-team dependencies -> architecture needs decoupling

Update canvas/team-shape.yml with assessment results.