These icons can help visually identify the type of intervention being made in a Flow Decision Record (FDR).

A. Team Structure & Boundaries

  • ✂️ Grow and split a team by value stream
    One team becomes two or more focused on distinct user needs or capabilities.

  • 🔗 Merge or recombine teams
    Combine teams to reduce handoffs or align better with a shared purpose.

  • 🔄 One by one reteaming
    Move individuals between teams to evolve boundaries or seed new capabilities.

  • 🔀 Switching to a new team
    Switch one or more individuals between teams to share knowledge, skills and working practices.

  • 🔒 Isolation
    Create a new team to support a specific user need or capability.

  • 🆘 Create an enabling team
    Launch a new team to support others with specific capabilities or practices.

  • 🎛️ Redesign team responsibilities
    Change what a team owns to reduce cognitive load or improve autonomy.

B. Interaction Design

  • 🧭 Redefine team interactions
    Clarify or reduce expected collaboration types (collaboration, X-as-a-Service, facilitating, etc.).

  • 🔓 Reduce or remove dependencies
    Decouple services, eliminate shared code, or shift to clear APIs.

  • 🗣️ Introduce an advice process
    Enable decentralized decisions by formalizing consultation over consensus.

  • 🔁 Strengthen feedback loops
    Add or redesign ways to learn from users, systems, or adjacent teams.

C. Platform & Architecture

  • 🧱 Extract a shared capability into a platform service
    Move reusable capabilities into a dedicated platform team or service.

  • 🧰 Simplify or redesign platform interfaces
    Improve clarity and ease of use for internal platforms or services.

  • 🛠️ Introduce supporting tooling
    Add tools (dashboards, catalogs, scorecards) to improve visibility or alignment.

D. Strategic & Governance Adjustments

  • 🆙 Shift prioritization model
    Change how work is sequenced or selected to improve alignment with flow goals.

  • 📆 Reshape cross-functional forums
    Update rituals or syncs (e.g., planning, architecture reviews) to reduce overload and improve focus.

  • 📊 Establish flow-focused metrics
    Create and align around metrics tied to delivery speed, feedback, or ownership clarity.

After identifying an approach, you can use the Flow Decision Metrics to help you evaluate the impact of the decision.

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