Category: Organisational Design
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Why are teams twelve times faster?
In my writing about team effectiveness, and in other prominent places too, something like the following quote might appear: How bad is backlog coupling? At an Australian telecommunications company, my colleagues did a study of hundreds of pieces of work or tasks passing through a delivery centre. Some tasks could be completed by a single…
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The life-changing magic of tidying your data
After tackling data waste for some years now, I thought it would be fun to revisit the Marie Kondo approach to tidying up work in large organisations (from 10 years ago), and apply it to data too… Surprise! Managing work data in a large organisation is a lot like keeping your belongings in check at…
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Data and AI mini blogs
A brief reflection on Thoughtworks Australia Data & AI mini-blogs. From May 2021, we set ourselves a target to publish a short blog on a different AI, ML or data topic every week. Here’s the pitch from the landing page: Bite-sized content delivering valuable insights from Thoughtworkers who wrestle varied client problems week in and…
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GenAI in Data Platforms
I was part of a panel on the Impact of GenAI on Modern Data Platforms recently, hosted by the Data Engineering Melbourne meetup. It was great to chat with MC Ryan Collingwood and fellow panellists Rahul Trikha, Peter Barnes and Tony Nicol in front of a large and curious crowd. Like the crowd, I felt…
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Team Topologies x EMLT
To provide more resources around the excellent conversation we had with Matthew Skelton on the Stream of Teams podcast in late 2024, we collaborated on an article summarising our chat, which was based on the final chapter of Effective Machine Learning Teams (EMLT). The article titled Team Topologies in action: Effective structures for Machine Learning…
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Waste not Programmable
Programmable 2025 Melbourne featured a fantastic program, heavy on practical data & AI in an apt reflection of the times. It was also a great chance to catch up with many in the Melbourne tech community. I presented my 7 Wastes of Data Production talk. In the spirit of continuous improvement, I made some minor…
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AI conversations for every role
We always envisaged Effective Machine Learning Teams (EMLT) speaking to multiple roles. Recently we’ve spoken to 4 distinct audiences about ML development, and you can listen in too. Whether you identify with: there’s a podcast* for you with popular presenters – see more below. Product We joined a Product Tank Melbourne event, along with Ana…
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Stream of Teams
It was great to chat with Matthew Skelton about the intersection of Team Topologies and AI/ML product delivery – watch the recording. This was the subject of the final chapter of Effective Machine Learning Teams, in which we used the Team Topologies model to explore effectiveness at the level of “between teams”. We covered a…
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Effective topologies for Data and ML teams
I presented this talk at the Melbourne Data Engineering meetup, on a wild and wet Friday night. Having your cake and eating it too – Effective topologies for Data and ML teams (slides) In the talk I explore how Team Topologies provides patterns for reconciling fast flow of value with (multiple) specialisations in data and…
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Hopsworks and multidisciplinary ML
I recently had a brief but fun chat with Hopsworks about the multidisciplinary nature of building machine learning products, as part of their 5-minute podcast series hosted by Rik Van Bruggen. See the transcript and video at 5-minute-interview-with-david-colls-nextdata. Rik and I talked about how David, Ada and I address this multidisciplinary perspective in our book…