Engagement model
expert-led group learning for adopting fast flow and Team Topologies
Conflux acts as an Enabling team to increase awareness and capabilities within key groups in your organization: your leadership group, product leaders, change agents, and your own Enabling teams.
Outcomes you can expect
Following an engagement with Conflux, you can expect:
Increased understanding and common language across the organization around fast flow and Team Topologies
Key groups understand how to apply Team Topologies to achieve fast flow and to be able to sustain and navigate it successfully
Key groups understand how to reshape team and system architectures for fast flow
Key groups understand how to adopt and sustain effective team working practices for fast flow such as psychological safety, team capability assessments, technical writing, tech talks, Continuous Delivery, collaboration around operability & reliability, and related themes
Specifically, we expect that:
One or more Enabling teams will have increased capability to facilitate the adoption of Team Topologies across the organization.
The leadership group and change agents will have a more aligned language and mindset around fast flow and the implications for the adoption of Team Topologies.
Product leaders will have greater clarity about product opportunities around fast flow and Team Topologies.
How we work with you
Conflux works with key groups in your organization over 6 to 18 months to increase awareness and build capabilities around fast flow and Team Topologies. These groups then act as change agents and/or Enabling teams to embed and spread ideas and practices in Stream-aligned teams (aka squads, delivery teams, etc.) and other teams across the organization.
We work with:
Leaders, managers, change agents, etc to increase awareness and set priorities.
Enabling teams to help them form and/or become more effective.
Stream-aligned teams and platform teams directly as a prototype or example for the Enabling teams. We help these teams to share their learnings with other groups.
We generally do not work with Stream-aligned teams and Platform teams directly on an ongoing basis. Instead, we help your Enabling teams to become more effective at working with teams across the organization.
We work with leadership and Enabling teams
Working with Leadership and Enabling teams helps to scale out and embed the approach
Embed and expand capabilities with See-Do-Teach
Our approach to embedding and extending capabilities is based upon the ‘See One, Do One, Teach One’ methodology of teaching originally developed to teach new techniques to medical students.
Session Types
The increased awareness and capability building are achieved through a series of online workshops, focused Spotlight sessions, 4-week peer learning programs, and semi-structured Insight sessions:
Guided Workshops: 3x 3-hour intensive workshop for up to 15 people
Spotlight sessions: 3x 2-hour workshops for 2-8 people with a specific focus
Peer learning programs: 2-3 hours per week over 4 weeks for up to 8 people
Insight sessions: 2-hour sessions for discussions, Q&A, Ask Me Anything (AMA)
All sessions from Conflux are co-designed with Matthew Skelton, co-author of the book Team Topologies.
Availability and time zones
Conflux serves customers from many different countries from our offices in the UK and Ireland. We run live sessions via video call during UK and Ireland working hours (09:00-17:00 GMT+0 / GMT+1 in daylight saving time) on Mondays to Thursdays. We are happy to work with you and your teams within this time window. We occasionally run sessions outside of these hours in some circumstances.
By arrangement, we may visit your offices in person for “meet and greet” events on an occasional basis (around once every 6 months).
Engagements that are adaptive and responsive
We know from experience that organizations often need to adapt their plans and shift their focus - due to changing market conditions, Mergers & Acquisitions, or because of geopolitical events outside of their control. The engagement model from Conflux is responsive to these challenges. It enables you and your team to choose a set of learning sessions that fits your current needs, but also allows those session topics to be changed as the engagement unfolds and as new goals and requirements emerge (subject to available topics from Conflux).
Adaptive and responsive engagements
The focus of the sessions can be adjusted during the engagement to meet emerging needs
Here is how a typical engagement with Conflux works:
Together, you (the customer) and Conflux agree how many learning sessions of each type will be delivered over a given time period (usually 6 or 18 months). A budget is agreed and the work is signed up; the engagement starts.
You and Conflux also agree on the anticipated topics for the sessions based on the identified needs and goals of the organization and the topics that are available from Conflux at the start of the engagement.
Over the course of the engagement, the date and specific topic for a particular workshop or session will be agreed upon and the session delivered.
Some time later, you (or your organization) may recognise that your needs or goals have changed in some way, or new session topics become available from Conflux. At that point, the topics for the remaining sessions can be altered.
This approach provides clarity on the total budget together with flexibility on the topics covered, helping the engagement to be responsive to your needs as a customer.
Billing
Invoices are issued monthly in arrears based on sessions started that month. Access to the sessions expires at the end of the engagement period; any unused sessions at the end of the engagement period may be carried over to the next engagement, but will be billed and not refunded if not used. Any sessions carried over into a subsequent engagement must be used within 6 months.
Discovery and getting started
For engagements that are expected to last 6 months or longer, we offer a free, no-obligation 60-minute mini-workshop to explore the topics and sessions that would work well on the first 6 months of the engagement.
The output of the mini-workshop is a list of recommended sessions to be covered during the first 6 months. The sessions for later points in time are determined around 3 or 4 months into the program.