team topologies Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Olaitan Fashanu: Three Teams, Three Backlogs, One Feature—Can You Make Them See Each Other?

“How do we ensure that these teams actually work together to show the same data?” – Olaitan Fashanu

Olaitan brings a problem most Scrum Masters in scaled environments will recognize. Three teams. Three separate backlogs. One product, accessed across app, web, and support channels.

Leadership made a top-down team topologies decision: split the work to move faster. Predictable result—each team optimizes for their own backlog, blind to what the others are building, sometimes shipping the same feature twice with different behaviors. The product owners know there’s overlap. The teams love the idea of linking tickets across backlogs.

They just won’t maintain the habit. Olaitan and Vasco walk through experiments together: a sync between POs, joint refinement sessions, linking tickets, putting “this is also being built by Team B” notes at the top of stories. The deeper insight: the Scrum Master’s job is to keep surfacing information until a habit forms. As Vasco’s old lifting coach put it—you find the imbalance, you get rid of the imbalance, one by one. That’s how you get stronger.

In this episode, we refer to team topologies and the practice of surfacing information across team boundaries.

Self-reflection Question: Where in your organization are teams unknowingly building the same thing twice—and what’s the smallest experiment you could run this week to make that visible?

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About Olaitan Fashanu

Olaitan Fashanu is a customer-focused professional with expertise in product management, technology, and coaching. He drives digital and agile transformation, builds collaborative cross-functional teams, and delivers high-quality products across markets. Curious and strategic, he explores AI and data intelligence while balancing technical depth, business goals, culture, structure, and long-term vision.

You can link with Olaitan Fashanu on LinkedIn.

BONUS: The Communication Tax — Why Your Team Collaborates Too Much and What to Cut First

In this BONUS episode, Roman Nikolaev challenges one of the most deeply held beliefs in the agile world: that more collaboration is always better. As Head of Technology at Cambri, Roman has watched teams burn their best hours in meetings and hand offs that create the feeling of productivity without the outcomes. He shares practical tools — from the vacation test to RFC processes — that help teams find the minimum viable level of collaboration.

From Senior Engineer to Accidental Manager

“I kind of accidentally ended up in management. I didn’t want to lead anyone, I wanted to be just a senior engineer doing my stuff. But somehow, four months in the job, I was already leading a team, and then one year after, I was head of technology.”

Roman’s career in engineering goes back to the early 2000s. When he changed jobs during COVID, he specifically didn’t want a management role — he wanted to code. But within months he was leading a team, and within a year he was running the entire technical organization at Cambri.

That unexpected shift from hands-on engineering to leading teams gave him a front-row seat to how collaboration actually works — and how often it doesn’t. What he noticed was that the most important differentiator for technical teams isn’t technical knowledge — it’s communication, and the tax you pay when communication goes wrong.

The Communication Tax Is Real

“The communication tax is real. The less we need to pay for communication, the more we can concentrate and own things end to end.” Continue reading BONUS: The Communication Tax — Why Your Team Collaborates Too Much and What to Cut First

Iryna Stelmakh: When Communication Clarity Matters More Than Technical Complexity, A Healthcare Project That Fell Apart

“Communication clarity is more important than technical complexity, because if you do not understand, it’s pretty hard to execute.” — Iryna Stelmakh

Iryna shares one of her most painful career stories — a project in the healthcare domain focused on cancer treatment research data. When she joined, she was managing around 9 projects simultaneously and agreed to take this one on the condition that a strong technical lead would own the technical direction. The project began with a critical misunderstanding: sales had communicated that the client needed a database redesign, but the client actually needed a migration to a different database type. Similar words, fundamentally different work.

For three months, the team worked through research and discovery phases, trying to understand the actual problem. But communication gaps — compounded by language barriers between the Ukrainian development team and the US-based client — prevented them from identifying the real need in time. Iryna trusted the technical lead’s reports that everything was on track. She relied instead of checking. Eventually, the client lost confidence and left. It remains the only project in her career she considers a genuine failure.

The lesson cuts deep: teams must have people who can ask the right questions early. As Vasco observes, the root cause was implicit assumptions that were never discovered or explored by the different people involved.

In this episode, we also talk about the importance of the monitoring and controlling phase in project management.

Self-reflection Question: When you trust a team member’s assessment that “everything is fine,” what verification steps do you take to confirm that understanding is truly shared across all stakeholders?

Featured Book of the Week: Team Topologies by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais

Iryna recommends Team Topologies by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais as a book that changed how she thinks about Agile leadership. “Great agile leadership is not only about frameworks, but it’s about communication, influence, and the ability to align people around shared goals,” she explains. The book helped her understand that Agile isn’t just about team process — it’s about organizational structure, team boundaries, and responsibilities. She also recommends Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss for Scrum Masters who want to sharpen their communication and influence tactics. As Iryna puts it, communication is one of the most important skills a Scrum Master must have.

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About Iryna Stelmakh

IRYNA Stelmakh is a Project & Delivery Leader and Agile Coach who helps leaders turn complexity into clarity. With 10+ years across US, Nordic, and Eastern European environments, she works at the intersection of business transformation and human systems, building resilient organizations and high-performing teams in complex contexts.

You can link with Iryna Stelmakh on LinkedIn.

CTO Series: Toni Sallanmaa on Scaling Engineering Teams and Aligning Tech with Business Goals

In this BONUS episode, we explore the journey of scaling technology teams and maintaining alignment between engineering and business objectives with Toni Sallanmaa, CTO at Funidata. Toni shares invaluable insights from leading the development of Sisu, a cutting-edge student information system serving over 100,000 Finnish university users, and discusses practical strategies for growing engineering organizations while preserving company culture.

The Genesis of Leadership in Technology

“I understood what I was really responsible for. I’m interested in the business we are running—the business adds meaning to the work.”

Toni’s approach to technology leadership was fundamentally shaped by a pivotal moment early in his career when he first gained influence over system development and technology choices. After working with large-scale systems for 20 years, this moment of responsibility revelation transformed his perspective from purely technical to business-focused. He emphasizes that infinite curiosity drives success in tech businesses, and understanding the business context gives meaningful purpose to technical work.

Bridging the Gap Between Tech and Product

“Don’t separate Tech from Product. We established a common language between product and technology people.” Continue reading CTO Series: Toni Sallanmaa on Scaling Engineering Teams and Aligning Tech with Business Goals

Takunda Noha: How to Convince the Organization for Cross-Functional Collaboration to overcome Missing Deadlines and Integration Problems

In this episode, the focus is on the challenges faced in a delivery factory where multiple teams are required to collaborate in order to deliver a feature. However, these teams were siloed and lacked collaboration, leading to missed deadlines and integration problems. The first step was to gather facts and data to identify the causes of delays. The next challenge was to create a vision for a cross-functional team, but faced resistance from other teams. Persistence was key in convincing the organization to adopt a cross-functional approach. Although the team faced initial failures, the advice is to have a thick skin, learn from failures, and try again. To help understand and navigate this type of challenges, Takunda recommends the book is Team Topologies by Skelton and Pais, who have been previous guests on the podcast.

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About Takunda Noha

Takunda is a seasoned change agent. He specializes in turning dysfunctional teams into high performing teams.

You can link with Takunda Noha on LinkedIn.