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Team Topologies

Stream-aligned, platform, complicated-subsystem, enabling. Four team types.

A free, animated team topologies you can read here or embed on any website, from Scrollchart.

Team Topologies

Team TopologiesSkelton & Pais 2019: four team types, three interaction modes. Cognitive load is the design constraint.TEAM TYPES(fundamental unit of delivery)X-as-a-ServiceFacilitatingCollaborationStream-aligned BStream-alignedowns a user-facing value stream end-to-endPlatformreduces cognitive load for stream-aligned teamsComplicated-subsystemowns deep specialist domain (ML, DSP, actuarial)Enablingunblocks other teams, then dissolvesInteraction modesCollaborationTwo teams work as one; time-boxedX-as-a-ServiceOne team provides a clean API; other consumesFacilitatingEnabling team removes obstacle, then exitsCognitive load as a design constraintEach stream-aligned team must own its domain withoutrequiring specialist help day-to-day. If it does, acomplicated-subsystem team takes over that slice.Typical ratios at 100-500 engineers:Stream-aligned: 6-8 of every 10 teamsPlatform: 1-2. Enabling: 0-1. Subsystem: 0-2.Avoid: Enabling teams that never exit. Platform teams that becomegatekeepers. Collaboration mode as the permanent default.Interaction mode is as important as team type. X-as-a-Service is the default; Collaboration is expensive.

The four Team Topologies team types with their interaction modes (collaboration, X-as-a-service, facilitating) drawn as edges between teams.

Good for

  • Engineering org design articles explaining cognitive load as a constraint
  • Reorg playbooks for scaling from 50 to 500 engineers
  • CTO and VP Eng content on reducing cross-team coordination overhead

Source & accuracy

This team topologies is an editorial illustration built to represent the concept accurately. Where it shows figures, they are typical or representative values chosen to make the relationship clear, not a single underlying dataset. The diagram and its explainer are reviewed and maintained centrally, and updated over time as understanding improves.

Stream-aligned teams deliver product features end-to-end

A stream-aligned team owns a customer-facing product slice or user journey from database to interface, making it responsible for conception, delivery, and maintenance. This topology works when the organization's architectural boundaries align with product boundaries. A team building search features, another building checkout, another building notifications. Each ships independently and bears the cost of maintaining their code. The strength is clear ownership and rapid feature velocity. The weakness appears when those boundaries don't align with system architecture, forcing stream teams to negotiate with shared infrastructure.

Platform and enabling teams reduce cognitive load on stream teams

As the codebase and infrastructure grow, stream teams accumulate ancillary work: infrastructure maintenance, database management, deployment pipelines, security reviews. This diffuses focus. A platform team centralizes the common abstraction (databases, caching, CI-CD, service frameworks) and offers it as a self-service interface, shrinking the cognitive load each stream team must carry. An enabling team (sometimes called 'coaching' teams) provides time-boxed consulting, building internal tooling, or staffing migrations that individual stream teams cannot easily pull off alone. Complicated-subsystem teams own islands of complexity (machine learning pipelines, payments processors) that demand specialized expertise and rarely change.

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Reference

What this is
A free, embeddable, animated team topologies for any website.
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Business writers.
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Frequently asked questions

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