Mini-book: Optimizing for fast flow

Fast flow is the key to happy and successful software teams.

But, how is fast flow created? And how do you achieve fast flow without also adding additional pressure on the team? Even better, achieve fast flow within a humanistic environment of empowered, autonomous team members with a shared purpose.

In this mini-book, you will learn from 6 industry experts in 5 articles on how to understand the mindset, approaches, and practices that enable fast flow.

 

Discover more in this PDF mini-book.

The articles in this mini-book, written by experts in the fields of software and organization design, and covering a broad range of topics, will help you to understand and appreciate the mindset, approaches, and practices – both technical and social – that are needed when aiming to optimize for fast flow.

  • Richard James sets out the need for continuous improvement with reference to lessons learned from Nationwide Building Society. The article gives a fascinating overview of the journey to continuous improvement and the ups and downs along the way. In particular, what enabled, inhibited, or didn’t affect flow.

  • Jessica Kerr on achieving true observability, the best use of telemetry, and the importance of sociotechnical mirroring for fast flow and value creation. She also sets out the truly effective way to measure ‘code quality’.

  • Audun Fauchald Strand and Truls Jørgensen on how to achieve alignment (of missions, teams, architecture, and terminology) whilst also maintaining autonomy. And what is the real role, function, and place of IT within a business. 

  • Emily Webber on the value that can be realized in organizations through Communities of Practice. 

  • Sophie Weston on psychological safety, its relationship to fast flow, and the business benefits of creating a psychologically safe workplace.

 

Sample pages

Matthew Skelton

Founder and Principal at Conflux

Matthew Skelton is co-author of Team Topologies: organizing business and technology teams for fast flow. Recognized by TechBeacon in 2018, 2019, and 2020 as one of the top 100 people to follow in DevOps, Matthew curates the well-known DevOps team topologies patterns at devopstopologies.com. He is Head of Consulting at Conflux and specializes in Continuous Delivery, operability, and organization dynamics for modern software systems.

LinkedIn: matthewskelton

Mastodon: @matthewskelton@mastodon.social

https://confluxhq.com
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Mini-book: Modern Software Delivery