FastFlowConf 2025: Team Topologies ❤️ Platforms

We just got back from the fourth edition of FastFlowConf in London, a conference built around the Team Topologies organizational methodology. This years edition was particularly focused on platform engineering, which is a frequent topic of discussion at Trice HQ, so I was excited to learn more and connect with the community.

Trice team-member Jessica Andersson and I had the good fortune to be selected to speak at the conference. Our talk, “Pragmatic Guide to Compliance and Platform”, explored how organizations should use their Internal Developer Platform efforts to support and enhance existing compliance workflows, without falling into the trap of trying to replace them wholesale. You can catch our presentation here.

A Growing Community

The Team Topologies movement is rapidly gaining maturity as more companies apply the theories and start relating them to the context in which they operate, figuring out where the gray areas are and what works well when communicating with different parts of the organization.

A variety of practitioners working in different organizations adapting the theories for new contexts are necessary for the longevity of the community that has been created here, and it’s encouraging to see the progress happening not just on the stage, but also on the “hallway track”, the discussions and exchanges between attendees.

Bringing in the more technical angle from the platform engineering community was a great choice, really highlighting the sort of end-to-end, sociotechnical systems thinking we need to be doing in order to succeed in our efforts to build effective software organizations.

Standout Talks

Perhaps my favorite talk of the conference was Dan Abel presenting Engineer-led security, a case study in nurturing security and compliance awareness using a mix of platform building and enablement.

Manuel Pais’ talk on the next steps after achieving a productized platform was another highlight, reminding us that there’s no “done” to be had, the process of building organizations and technical artifacts needs to continue as we respond to changes in the business environment and learn more about what works for our organization.

A fireside chat with Liz Fong-Jones and Jennifer Riggins that closed out the first day was a great example of the sort of real-world experience sharing that is impossible to find outside of the conference space, discussing the relationship between SRE and platform engineering as well as how to measure platform efforts.

Well Executed Conference Experience

Event organization is a thankless job, with many ways in which things can go wrong, causing frustration with attendees and sponsors, but the organization at FastFlowConf was top notch. Plenty of room for attendees to spread out in and none of the typical overload of shared facilities. Big congratulations to the team on a great conference!