Capability Crew

Crew Type

The goal of a Capability Crew is to offer unique expertise.

Purpose

Sometimes, you have a few people with special skills that you cannot distribute across all Value Stream Crews in your Base. The expertise might be machine learning, cyber security, data analysis, and so on. Maybe these people take care of a component or subsystem, or maybe they make their talent available through conversations. You have eight value streams but only three of these experts, and you cannot spread three people over eight Crews. What can you do?

You can solve this problem by creating a Capability Crew consisting of people with advanced skills. Their goal is to assist the other Crews when their skills are needed. The experts will then (temporarily) work with those Value Stream Crews, but they are considered guest members. The situation is very similar to having external consultants with special knowledge working on your Crews for a while.

Notes

Note that this is something you only do with rare skill sets. If your Base has ten Value Stream Crews and only two expert UX designers, it makes sense for them to form a Capability Crew. When the number grows to ten UX designers, you should have a UX designer on each Value Stream Crew and turn the UX Crew into a UX Forum.

The goal of a Capability Crew is not to manage a component. The goal is to nurture unique expertise and easily make that talent accessible for all other Crews.

The Capability Crew is inspired by (but NOT the same as) the “complicated-subsystem team” in Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow.

Rules / Constraints

  • The expertise of the Capability Crew cannot be spread across all Value Stream Crews.

  • The expertise of the Capability Crew is rare or even unique.

“Cooperation is the thorough conviction that nobody can get there unless everybody gets there.”

(Source: Virginia Burden)