People & Culture

Westrum Culture, Team Topologies & Sustainable Operations

People & Culture | Technical Operations Excellence

30%
Generative Boost
4
Team Types
3
Interaction Modes
<2
Pages/Shift Target

Westrum Culture Types

TypeCharacteristicsPerformance
PathologicalPower-oriented, fearLow
BureaucraticRule-oriented, silosMedium
GenerativePerformance-oriented+30%

Generative cultures: high cooperation, messengers welcomed, failures lead to inquiry

Key Frameworks

FrameworkCore Concept
Three WaysFlow, Feedback, Learning
Team Topologies4 team types, 3 modes
Five IdealsLocality, Flow, Improvement
Conway's LawTeams mirror architecture

See dedicated pages for deep dives on each framework

SRE Team Models

ModelBest For
CentralizedShared expertise, standards
EmbeddedDeep product context
HybridBalance of both approaches

Blameless Culture

Blameless postmortems focus on systems, not individuals. The goal is learning, not punishment.

- Google SRE

  • Psychological safety: Speak up without fear
  • Just culture: Distinguish error from recklessness
  • Learning reviews: Focus on "how" not "who"

On-Call Sustainability

MetricTarget
Pages per shift<2
Interrupt ratio<25%
Rotation size6-8 engineers
Max consecutive days3-4 days

Burnout risk: >2 pages/night or >25% interrupt work

SRE Core Competencies

TechnicalNon-Technical
Distributed systemsCommunication
ObservabilityIncident command
AutomationDocumentation
NetworkingCollaboration

Team Health Signals

  • Healthy: Proactive improvements, low burnout
  • Warning: Increasing toil, delayed projects
  • Unhealthy: High turnover, reactive only

Culture Eats Strategy

Generative culture is the foundation of elite performance.