To achieve business agility, it may be hard to believe that you don’t need a plan (waterfall plan) up front, in some cases called a transformation plan. You do indeed need a transformation process, which in the simplest case can consist of iterations that you inset and adjust at the end of each iteration.
You should be aware that you cannot plan a transformation in advance, at least not in a complex environment.
a waterfall plan is not a solution
You need to know what you want to achieve with this kind of transformation, and that should not be that you implement an agile framework in multiple teams, that would not be a good achievement because it does not serve the customer.
Its about the flow of work, not about a waterfall plan
When you look at Flight Levels, you may think it is a hierarchy. FlightLevel one, Team Level, FlightLevel two, department level, FlightLevel three, upper management … but that’s not the purpose of FlightLevels. The purpose is to take a closer look at how work flows within an organization and how the delays in that flow cause delays in the value stream. With FlightLevels, you will be able to understand how to improve your flow of workitems without changing the organizational structure.
Let’s make it simple – with flight levels
The three levels are not about hierarchies or anything like that. The first level is about the teams and how they work. Remember, it’s not just about the framework they use, and it doesn’t really matter what framework the teams use. The second level is about the coordination of the teams, that is, the team of teams. This is probably the most important level in most organisations to achieve business agility. And last but not least, the third level is about how to connect the strategy to the team (of teams).
Start with what you are doing anyway
Start with what you are doing anyway
To get started with Flight Levels, we, you, your teams don’t need to use a specific framework or change anything. Stick with the approach you are already using and implement the 5 Flight Level core principles.
1) VISUALIZE THE SITUATION
2) CREATE FOCUS
3) ESTABLISH AGILE INTERACTIONS
4) MEASURE PROGRESS
5) IMPROVE
Ray, Howard, and Britta are also in the process of doing this in their second adventure at ReG Inc. As you may remember, they took on the challenge of developing a click-dummy for the trade fair. A potential customer was very excited about the click-dummy and wants a white label solution … stay tuned and look forward to the second book.
