Team Shape

Team Shape Assessment

Evaluate organizational design for fast flow. Source: Skelton & Pais (Team Topologies).

Preflight: Read target canvas file(s) before any Write/Edit

Hard rule. Before issuing Write or Edit against any .claude/canvas/*.yml, use the Read tool on that file in this session. Claude Code's Read-before-Write check requires the Read tool specifically — cat/head/grep via Bash do NOT satisfy it. Reaching for Write first produces a tool error and forces a remedial Read, which costs ~14k tokens of pure ceremony at typical canvas sizes (anti-pattern #7 instance #5, 2026-05-09).

If this skill writes to multiple canvas files, Read each one first. If unsure whether a write is needed, Read first anyway — Read is cheap, the recovery loop is not.

See CLAUDE.md Canvas writes — Read before Write for the canonical rule.

Assessment Workflow

1. Map Current Teams

For each team, classify:

• Stream-aligned: Owns a user journey or business domain (most teams should be this)
• Enabling: Helps other teams acquire capabilities (temporary engagement)
• Complicated subsystem: Deep specialist knowledge (only when cognitive load justifies)
• Platform: Internal product that reduces cognitive load for stream-aligned teams

2. Evaluate Cognitive Load

For each team, assess:

• Intrinsic load: Problem complexity (can't reduce, only manage)
• Extraneous load: Bad tools/processes (SHOULD reduce -- platform teams help here)
• Germane load: Learning new relevant things (encourage)
• If team is overloaded: shrink domain, move complexity to platform, or split

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 .claude/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).

Bounded Agency (Skelton, 2025-2026)

Skelton's "Infrastructure for Agency" framing describes how organizations should provide boundaries that enable autonomy rather than control that restricts it. Mycelium implements bounded agency for AI agents using the same structural principles:

Agency without boundaries produces chaos; boundaries without agency produces bureaucracy. The target is the middle.

Source: Skelton (Infrastructure for Agency, 2025-2026)

Output

• Update .claude/canvas/team-shape.yml and .claude/canvas/bounded-contexts.yml with assessment results.
• APPEND a ### Team Shape Assessment entry to .claude/harness/decision-log.md with: team types identified, cognitive load findings, Conway alignment, recommendations. (MANDATORY per G-P4)