A customer-focussed realignment based on cognitive load at Mimecast
summary
A 12‑month reorg of 150 engineers across 15 teams moves from component teams to domain ownership using Team Topologies and Trello to map domains and assign work. Cognitive load is measured as inherent complexity × expected change (cognitive load formula), aiming for ~3–4 domains per team and ~80% stream‑aligned teams. Example work: extract attachment protection from the MTA into a domain service and create a URL‑protection stream aligned team. Results: clearer ownership, lower individual cognitive load, happier engineers, some loss of flexibility and remaining inter‑team silos.
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chapters (14)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:13Who we are
- 0:58Mimecast four years ago
- 2:40First Attempt - Breaking silos • Re-align people • Component teams - product teams
- 4:47Team Topologies
- 5:54Four types of teams
- 7:15How it fits together
- 8:30Identifying domains
- 9:28Assigning domains to teams
- 10:29Desired Architecture
- 11:47Interviews & survey
- 12:44What we think went well
- 14:17What we need to work on
- 15:17Reflections
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