Team Shape

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

Conway's Law (1968): "Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure." Note: it's communication structures, not org chart hierarchy — two teams in the same org with poor communication will still produce fragmented systems.

Inverse Conway Maneuver (James Lewis, popularized by Skelton & Pais): Deliberately design team communication structures to match the desired system architecture, rather than letting architecture drift to match existing teams.

• Does architecture mirror team structure intentionally?
• Do team boundaries align with security boundaries?
• Do team APIs match system APIs?
• If architecture doesn't match team structure: is the mismatch intentional or a Conway's Law drift?

4b. Fracture Planes (Skelton & Pais)

When a team's cognitive load exceeds capacity, use fracture planes to identify the cleanest split point. The fracture plane that aligns with the most criteria wins:

Source: Skelton & Pais (Team Topologies, Chapter 6)

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
• Cognitive load exceeding capacity -> use fracture planes to identify split point

5. Bounded Context Alignment (DDD)

If the product has multiple domains or services:

• Are bounded contexts identified? (Check canvas/bounded-contexts.yml)
• Does each stream-aligned team own a coherent bounded context?
• If a context is split across teams: handoff friction. Fix team boundaries.
• If a team owns unrelated contexts: cognitive overload. Split the team or contexts.
• Context map relationships should match team interaction modes: Partnership = Collaboration, Customer-Supplier = X-as-a-Service, ACL = translation layer Source: Evans (DDD), "Architecture for Flow" (DDD + Wardley + Team Topologies)

6. Capability Gap Diagnosis (DASA)

When DORA metrics indicate capability gaps, use the DASA DevOps Competency Framework's 12 skill areas to identify which team skills need development (e.g., courage, teambuilding, continuous improvement, business value optimization).

Update canvas/team-shape.yml and canvas/bounded-contexts.yml with assessment results.