How does strategy affect team topology?

Strategy should shape structure, not the other way around. But most people inherit a team topology and try to fit strategy into it.

Map the themes from your approach to your teams. Remember the rule from Chapter 7: a team should be assigned one theme to work on at a time, while a given theme can span several teams.

That clean mapping gives you clear ownership—every team knows what it's responsible for and why it matters. One thing breaks it: a team carrying too many themes at once. Split across unrelated work, it bleeds performance to context-switching.

You may not be able to change your team structure right now, and that's okay. If you do need to change it, remember that team stability is a major driver of performance. Change structure only when the strategy demands it. Don't blow up the org chart every quarter.