Each FDR should aim to improve one or more of the following outcomes. These outcomes provide a shared language to reason about how changes improve the flow of value in the organization.

Core Flow Outcomes

  • 🔁 Reduce handoffs
    Minimize the number of team-to-team transitions required to deliver value.

  • ⚡ Increase delivery speed
    Shorten the time from idea to value delivered. May include reducing lead time or cycle time.

  • 🧠 Reduce cognitive load
    Ensure teams can focus on what they’re responsible for without being overwhelmed by complexity.

  • 🧭 Clarify team responsibilities
    Improve clarity and ownership of domains, capabilities, or services.

  • 🎯 Align teams to user needs
    Restructure around real user needs or business capabilities, not internal silos.

  • 🔄 Improve feedback loops
    Increase the speed, frequency, and usefulness of feedback from users, customers, or systems.

  • ⛓️ Reduce coordination overhead
    Minimize synchronous planning, alignment, or negotiation across teams.

  • 🧰 Strengthen platform usability
    Improve the clarity, usability, or discoverability of internal platform services.

  • ✂️ Increase autonomy
    Enable teams to make more decisions independently and deliver value without waiting.

  • 🔗 Simplify team interactions
    Reduce complexity and ambiguity in how teams collaborate or depend on each other.

  • 👀 Improve flow observability
    Make flow of value and blockers more visible across the organization.

  • 🧪 Enable safe experimentation
    Create space for testing changes without long approval cycles or fear of failure.

  • 🚀 Unblock strategic priorities
    Reshape structure to align with a new or evolving strategic initiative.

After identifying an outcome, you can use the Flow Decision Approaches to help you understand the impact of the decision.

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