The Role of an Enabling Team in the ZeroBlockers Framework

In the Team Topologies framework by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais, there are four fundamental team types: Stream, Platform, Complicated-Subsystem, and Enabling. An Enabling Team is a specialised group composed of domain experts who help Stream Teams (and sometimes others) become more effective. Their focus is on reducing cognitive load, introducing new skills, and helping teams adopt best practices.

Enabling Teams come in various forms depending on organisational needs. Some common implementations include:

1. ResearchOps: Focuses on improving research processes, establishing standardised methods, and consolidating insights. They provide tools and practices to streamline user interviews, usability testing, and data analysis for Stream Teams.

2. DesignOps: Ensures that design processes, tools, and systems are efficient and scalable. They might set up component libraries, style guides, or comprehensive design systems, ensuring consistency and quality across all user-facing products.

3. DevEx (Developer Experience): Enhances the day-to-day workflows for software developers. They evaluate development tools, automation pipelines, and engineering best practices, aiming to reduce friction and speed up delivery.

4. MarketingOps: Streamlines marketing tools, workflows, and analytics. They evaluate different platforms for social media management, lead generation, or email campaigns, ensuring marketing teams can operate effectively at scale.

5. FinOps: Bridges the gap between finance and operational teams (often in cloud cost management), ensuring cost efficiency while maintaining performance. They establish processes for budget tracking, cost optimisation, and financial reporting.

Other possible areas include SecOps (security operations), SalesOps (sales operations), and DataOps (data pipeline management). In each case, the purpose remains consistent: to enable other teams to work more effectively by upskilling them, providing tools, and establishing best practices.

Key Responsibilities

The responsibilities of an enabling team span several critical areas.

Defining What Good Looks Like

Enabling Teams establish organisational standards, clarify roles, and outline responsibilities for various seniority levels. For instance, a DevEx team might define a progression ladder for software engineers, specifying competencies needed at each step—Junior, Mid-level, Senior, Staff, Principal. By delineating clear expectations, they help individuals and teams aim for excellence.

Upskilling

A critical function of an Enabling Team is to identify training needs and design curricula. They develop specialised courses—be it advanced design workshops, cloud cost management sessions, or security best practices. These courses might include self-paced modules, group trainings, and hands-on labs, ensuring knowledge transfer is both accessible and effective.

Transfer Knowledge

Through careful documentation of technical guidelines and creation of scenario-based playbooks, they ensure that best practices are accessible and replicable across the organisation.

In addition, they foster Communities of Practice—forums or channels where individuals with shared interests can discuss challenges, exchange ideas, and solidify shared understanding. This not only eases on-boarding for newcomers but also allows existing staff to stay updated on emerging trends and best practices.

Implement High-Quality Tools

Enabling Teams have an organisation-wide view as they work with teams across products and domains, allowing them to spot duplications or inefficiencies in tooling. They recommend platforms or software solutions that can be broadly adopted, relieving Stream Teams of the burden of tool selection and implementation. The Enabling Team then assists with rollout and configuration, ensuring consistent high standards.

Contribute to the Product Strategy

Enabling Teams are much closer to the day-to-day work of the Stream Teams than many of the functional managers on a Product Team. They also have more capacity to stay up-to-date on the latest tools and technologies available in the space. This, coupled with their experience, makes them an invaluable partner for functional managers when understanding the needs of the function to advocate for them in the overall product strategy.

Who Is on the Team?

Enabling teams are small, 2 - 3 people teams, typically consisting of senior technical experts who have both deep domain knowledge and strong teaching abilities. These could include Staff Engineers, Principal Designers, Architects, Senior Researchers, or Operations Specialists.

In many organisations, when a person reaches a particular level in their career they are often faced with a dilemma: stay doing the function that they love but stop advancing their career or do a career change into management. A dual track career ladder removes this unnecessary choice and allows for more specialist growth.

It might seem wasteful to have your most experienced people working on training or streamlining initiatives instead of actually building your products but, like in agriculture where you sow your best crops instead of eating them, by putting your most senior staff into a mentorship or coaching role, you can leverage their advanced knowledge to guide and uplift others, raising the bar across the organisation.

How They Work

Enabling Teams use a “facilitating” interaction pattern, meaning they function as advisors and coaches rather than as gatekeepers or suppliers. In short - they help teams do the work, but they never do the work themselves because then the teams will never become self-sufficient.

Successful enabling teams employ a variety of engagement methods to maximise their impact. One of the hallmark traits of an Enabling Team is their willingness to “walk around” (physically or virtually) and observe. Rather than waiting for teams to reach out in crisis, they proactively look for ways to help. By popping into user story mapping sessions, ideation workshops, or teaming sessions, they identify skill gaps or bottlenecks early. Then they propose relevant solutions, such as new training modules, improved process guidelines, or updated tooling configurations. Once the Stream Team is self-sufficient, the Enabling Team moves on to assist elsewhere, ensuring continuous improvement across the organisation.

Much like user-centric product teams, Enabling Teams frequently interview their “customers”, the teams they serve, to understand pain points and validate assumptions. For example, if a DevEx team is introducing a new CI/CD tool, they gather feedback from engineers on current build times, pipeline frustrations, and testing hurdles. They test potential solutions, gather feedback through pilot programs, and iterate until they find the right balance of complexity and usability.

Over time, the assets that Enabling Teams create can grow in scope, like design supports increasing in complexity form a Style Guide through to a fully-fledged Design System. Once these resources become foundational, the Enabling Team may hand them off to a dedicated team (e.g. a specialised design system team) to manage day-to-day maintenance and upgrades, freeing Enabling Teams to tackle the next emerging challenge.

Potential Risks

Two significant risks face enabling teams: becoming a monopoly and being seen as dispensable during downturns.

To avoid becoming a monopoly, Stream Teams must be free to source training and best practices externally. This competition ensures that Enabling Teams create effective and efficient offerings. To quantify the impact, and publicise their services, the Enabling Teams need to have clear metrics that they track to validate effectiveness.

These metrics also help out with the second issue: during a downturn, because teh Enabling Team is both one of the most expensive teams and it does not directly create the products, they can be seen as dispensable. By having clear and quantifiable proof of effectiveness, Enabling Teams can protect themselves when an inevitable cost cutting drive occurs.

Some useful metrics include:

• Reduced Defects: If new testing guidelines drastically lower the number of bugs, highlight that.

• Time Savings: Demonstrate how improvements to tooling or processes shorten development cycles.

• Knowledge Retention: Monitor community activity, training completion rates, and how quickly new hires become productive.

• Innovation and Employee Satisfaction: Feedback from Stream Teams can highlight intangible benefits, such as boosting morale, fostering innovation, and reducing burnout.

Conclusion

Enabling Teams are the unsung heroes of high-performing organisations, quietly transforming how knowledge is shared, tools are adopted, and best practices are implemented. By focusing on facilitation rather than control, they support Stream Teams in becoming self-sufficient and more effective. Their responsibilities of defining excellence, upskilling team members, transferring knowledge, and implementing high-quality tools make them indispensable in a fast-moving marketplace.

However, an Enabling Team must continually prove its worth. They need to remain flexible, proactive, and empathetic to the everyday realities of their internal “customers.” They must measure and communicate their impact to leadership, ensuring the organisation sees them as an asset that accelerates, rather than hinders, strategic objectives. When done right, an Enabling Team becomes a key strategic partner, helping shape an organisation’s culture of continuous learning and improvement. This symbiotic relationship between Enabling Teams and Stream Teams can be the difference between incremental progress and truly transformative growth.