Background

As leading gym chain PureGym’s digital platforms and engineering organisation expanded, the approach that had once worked effectively for a smaller team began to show signs of strain.

The organisation had successfully brought technology capabilities in-house and built a strong engineering culture centred around modern delivery practices such as CI/CD, automated testing, and lean delivery processes. Small teams were able to deliver quickly and frequently, supporting a rapidly growing digital business.

At the time, work was primarily delivered through short-lived project teams. Once projects completed, responsibility for ongoing support and maintenance would transfer to separate teams focused on operational work and smaller changes. As the organisation grew, so did the complexity of coordinating this model.

The brief

There was growing recognition that the existing structure was creating friction. Knowledge was becoming increasingly siloed within project teams. Handoffs between teams were slowing delivery and creating ownership ambiguity. Prioritisation was becoming harder as the number of initiatives and stakeholders increased. Teams were finding it difficult to balance delivery pressure with the growing operational complexity of the platform.

The challenge was not simply about scaling delivery capacity; it was about evolving the organisation in a way that reduced cognitive load, improved ownership, and created a more sustainable model for long-term growth.

Introducing a team-first approach

Using the principles and practices of Team Topologies, we began exploring a shift away from temporary project structures towards longer-lived, stream-aligned teams. A key part of the work involved identifying more natural ownership boundaries within the platform and understanding where the existing setup was creating unnecessary coordination overhead.

This included:

• exploring potential fracture planes within the system

• assessing areas of high cognitive load and operational complexity

• redefining teams around longer-lived business and customer domains

• introducing clearer interaction patterns between teams

• reducing reliance on handovers and centralised maintenance teams

The goal was not to create rigid structures, but to establish clearer ownership and more intentional collaboration patterns that could evolve over time.

What became visible

As the work progressed, several important tensions surfaced. Temporary project teams had unintentionally encouraged fragmented ownership and knowledge silos. Teams were collaborating frequently, but often because the structure required constant coordination rather than because collaboration was genuinely valuable.

It also became clear that not every domain justified its own dedicated team. Some areas were relatively simple, while others carried significantly higher operational or business complexity. Managing cognitive load became an important part of reasoning about team boundaries and responsibilities.

We also began thinking more deliberately about different interaction modes between teams; where collaboration was needed, where capabilities should be provided as services, and where enabling support could help reduce friction across the wider engineering organisation.

What changed

The shift towards stream-aligned teams created clearer long-term ownership across areas such as acquisition, payments, retention, and the in-gym experience. Instead of disbanding teams after projects completed, teams became responsible for the ongoing evolution and operation of the capabilities they owned.

Supporting enabling and platform capabilities were also introduced to help improve engineering effectiveness, infrastructure support, and operational resilience across the organisation.

Alongside the structural changes, the organisation introduced clearer ways for teams to describe their responsibilities, services, and interaction patterns, helping reduce ambiguity and improve collaboration across the wider engineering group.

Outcomes

The work helped PureGym evolve from a project-centric delivery model towards one built around sustained ownership, clearer boundaries, and more intentional team interactions.

This resulted in:

• reduced dependency and coordination overhead

• clearer ownership across the platform

• lower cognitive load within teams

• improved autonomy and accountability

• more sustainable collaboration patterns as the organisation scaled

Perhaps most importantly, the organisation gained a shared language for reasoning about team design and organisational evolution as the business continued to grow. Rather than treating organisational design as a one-off restructuring exercise, the principles from Team Topologies provided a foundation for continuous adaptation over time.

Feedback

“Rich’s ability to break down complex concepts and identify user needs really helped us build a system that enabled the business to work in more efficient ways. In addition to his technical knowledge, Rich was instrumental in defining our initial team topologies, creating a structure that improved cross-team collaboration and workflow efficiency. What sets Rich apart is his professionalism, strong communication skills, and his ability to align both technical and non-technical stakeholders.” James Burnham, Solutions Architect, PureGym

Could this help your organisation?

This kind of thinking becomes particularly valuable for organisations where the operating model hasn’t evolved alongside the complexity of the business and technology landscape.

Approaches such as Team Topologies can help organisations reason more deliberately about team boundaries, ownership, interaction patterns, and cognitive load, helping them to design more intentionally for sustainable delivery as they scale.

If these kinds of challenges feel familiar, I’d be happy to explore how this thinking could apply within your organisation.