How Connected Outcomes Strengthen and Measure Platform Value

Over the past few years, I've been diving deep into how we measure and connect the value of platforms within organisations. This journey has been heavily influenced by the work of Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais, the authors of Team Topologies. Their insights have provided a framework to understand and optimise team structures, collaboration, and performance within the context of platform engineering.

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The Role of Platform Teams in Delivering Value

In any organisation, platform teams play a crucial role in enabling other teams—especially those focused on product development and service delivery—to perform at their best. A platform team might be a small group dedicated to creating a DevOps platform that enhances the developer experience, ensuring that product engineers can build and deploy features quickly and efficiently. The goals of a platform team often include developing secure, reliable, and scalable infrastructure that serves as the foundation for the entire organisation's technical operations.

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Stream-Aligned Teams and Their Connection to Platform Teams

On the other side, we have stream-aligned teams. These teams are relentlessly focused on delivering specific value streams, such as improving a product feature or enhancing customer satisfaction. Their goals are more directly tied to business outcomes, like increasing overall service user satisfaction or boosting customer lifetime value.

In the world of Team Topologies, these two types of teams—platform and stream-aligned—are intrinsically connected. The platform team exists to support and enable the stream-aligned teams, but this relationship is a two-way street. The platform team needs feedback and insights from the stream-aligned teams to ensure they are building the right tools and capabilities. Conversely, the stream-aligned teams rely on the platform team's success to achieve their own objectives.

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Strengthening Connections Between Teams

To truly measure and enhance the value of platforms, it’s essential to not only monitor the progress of individual teams but also to focus on the strength of the connections between them. For instance, if a platform team is focused on reducing the mean time to respond to incidents, this should positively impact the stream-aligned team’s goal of increasing customer satisfaction. When these goals and their associated key results are aligned, both teams can drive towards a common outcome more effectively.

But how do we ensure that these connections are strong and effective? It involves a few key strategies:

• Clear Communication and Feedback Loops: Regular communication between platform and stream-aligned teams is critical. This ensures that platform teams understand the needs of the stream-aligned teams and can adjust their development priorities accordingly.
• Shared Objectives: While each team may have its own specific goals, identifying shared objectives can help align efforts and create a sense of mutual accountability.
• Tracking Connected Outcomes: Beyond tracking individual team metrics, it’s important to monitor the outcomes that arise from the collaboration between teams. This could involve setting up joint KPIs or regularly reviewing how the success of one team is impacting the other.

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The Broader Impact of Connected Outcomes

The concept of connected outcomes isn’t limited to platform and stream-aligned teams. It can be extended across the entire organisation, linking business teams, strategy teams, and other functional areas. By focusing on strengthening these connections, organisations can move towards a model where outcomes are not just achieved in isolation but are interconnected, creating a ripple effect of value throughout the company.

In essence, connected outcomes allow organisations to visualise, measure, and enhance the value of their platforms and their teams. This approach leads to a more agile, responsive, and ultimately successful organisation, where every team’s success contributes to the broader strategic goals.

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Final Thoughts

As we continue to explore and refine these ideas, we'd love to hear from others in the field. Does this resonate with your experience? Have you invested in platform engineering, and can you visualise and measure its value in your organisation? Let’s connect and share insights on how to strengthen these critical connections!