I often use the principles of Team Topology when working with large enterprises, so was excited to see Matthew Skelton on stage at the recent Agile Australia conference. He recommended Unbundling the Enterprise by Stephen Fishman and Matt McLarty as a follow up, and I'm so glad he did. It couldn’t be more relevant to the work we’re doing to help companies shift to value-aligned ways of working.
The book explores how organisations can be designed to harness flexibility, modularity, and responsiveness so they’re not just built for efficiency, but built to catch that elusive opportunity, that lightning in a bottle.
They call this the OOOps Model: Optionality, Opportunity, Optimise.
They use a great example of Google’s Maps API, originally a tightly controlled internal system, which became transformative once opened up to developers. It reminded me of the Post-it Note story: a failed experiment that turned into an iconic product. These “happy accidents” aren’t really accidental when your organisation is designed to respond to the unexpected.
Here’s a quick breakdown of the OOOps model:
Optionality – Be Ready for Anything
Optionality is about designing for flexibility:
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Understand your business capabilities.
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Create modular, API-enabled digital assets.
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Fund exploration, not just delivery.
The goal is to enable fast movement, not just efficient execution of fixed plans. Optionality is what lets you capture that serendipity.
Opportunity – Know How Value Flows
To seize opportunities, you need to know how value flows. Value mapping is a cool technique shared in the book.
At Propel, we talk about "organising around value" as one of the five pillars of a strong product company. What this book adds is a way to visualise those dynamics and design for them, making it easier to spot and act on an opportunity as it arises.
Optimise – Sense and Respond
You need feedback loops to keep improving and adjusting. That means building systems where data flows both ways and where product teams can learn fast and adapt. APIs are often the enabler here.
This is what separates product-led organisations from project-led ones. Optimisation isn’t about squeezing more out of a plan, it’s about building learning into how you work.
Cross-Functional Collaboration is the (not so) Secret to Success
One of the most powerful reminders in the book is that product model transformation isn’t about IT catching up to business; it’s about the two becoming indistinguishable.
It's creating a culture where there is shared ownership of outcomes, with the individuals in cross-functional teams having aligned incentives.
In many large enterprises, the "business" still sees "IT" as a delivery unit which results in a breakdown of accountability. And let’s not forget the golden rule: you build it, you run it.
Digital-native companies generally already operate this way. But for legacy enterprises, this isn’t just an opportunity to leapfrog the competition, it will become a ticket to play, if it isn't already.
Now that AI is ReShaping what's Possible, Decision Speed is the New Advantage
As AI reshapes what’s possible, the real constraint is no longer how fast you can build, it’s how fast you can decide.
That means:
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Understanding how value flows for you customers and your business
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Being flexible in how you deliver
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And having the tech architecture to respond fast
In other words, being set up to capitalise on happy accidents.
If your org isn’t ready for that, I recommend reading Unbundling the Enterprise as a great place to start!
