Klaus Leopold discusses applying the Flight Levels model to improve agility at a car classifieds company with around 300 employees organized into cross-functional product teams. The company has made improvements but still faces long wait times and difficulties executing strategy due to dependencies between teams. Using Flight Levels, the company can define what work systems are needed at each level, how items flow between levels, and which roles should interact to establish end-to-end value creation.
1. Klaus Leopold, Dr.
web: www.LEANability.com
mail: hello@LEANability.com
twitter: @klausleopold
Flight Levels in Action
Lean Kanban Central Europe, 5. November 2019, Hamburg, DE
2. @klausleopold
- car classifieds company (~300 ppl), part of a global online marketplace (~3000 ppl)
- agile transformation and reorganisation:
- cross-functional product teams
an agile organization
- there are already some improvements
- however, the company as a whole is NOT yet able to
act agile in the market
- main reasons:
- long waiting times because of many dependencies
- strategy execution is not working well
10. @klausleopold
what is flight levels?
Flight Levels is a thinking model that
can help you find out where in an
organization you have to do what in
order to achieve the results that you
want to achieve.
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team 2
B C DONEA
team N
deliver DONErealizeconcept
deliver DONErealizeconcept
C DONEBA
FLIGHtlevels
@klausleopold
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FLIGHtlevels
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17. @klausleopold
A flight levels architecture tells us
what work systems are required on
which flight level and how the
systems are connected to each other.
Flight levels architectures can be defined for
entire organizations and parts of organizations.
34. @klausleopold
Strategy
team 1
Op.
Portfolio team 6…
Dealer
Private Seller
OEM
Business
Intelligence
team 1
team 12
…
Core
Experience
Sales
Marketing Lawyers
Customer
team 1
team 4
…
HR
Ctrlg
Flight Level 1
Flight Level 2
Flight Level 3
35. @klausleopold
Strategy
team 1
Op.
Portfolio team 6…
Dealer
Private Seller
OEM
Business
Intelligence
team 1
team 12
…
Core
Experience
Sales
Marketing Lawyers
Customer
team 1
team 4
…
HR
Ctrlg
Delivery
planning
Strategy
planning
retro
Standup Standup
retro
Standup
retro
team planning
Flight Level 1Flight Level 2Flight Level 3
36. @klausleopold
The Flight Levels model
1. Understand the context
The Flight Levels Model is not a recipe that
can be applied in the same way in every
organization.
2. Build a flight levels architecture
A flight levels architecture tells us what
work systems are required on which flight
level and how the systems are connected to
each other in order to establish end-to-end
value creation in an organization.
3. Define flight items and flight routes
Flight items tell us which work item types
are processed in which work systems.
Flight routes tell us how the work items fly
over the different work systems.
4. Define agile interactions
Agile interactions tell us who should talk to
whom, about what and how often.
5. Take-off
Take-off describes an agile roll-out approach for
establishing the Flight Levels model in a
company.
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Upcoming Flight Levels Workshops:
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