The following is a glossary of key terms and concepts used in the Fast Flow Flywheel. If anything is unclear, please reach out to us.

Term Description
Evolution Trigger Formalized signals or thresholds that indicate it may be time to make or revisit a Flow Decision. While Flow Signals surface everyday frictions, Triggers reflect accumulated evidence or strategic shifts that suggest your structure, interactions, or capabilities need to evolve.
Fast Flow A state where value moves quickly and consistently through an organization, with minimal friction, clear ownership, and the ability to adapt without chaos.
Flow The continuous, sustainable movement of value through a system, across teams, services, and decisions, toward a meaningful outcome.
Flow Clinic A facilitated session where individuals or teams bring flow-related challenges, trade-offs, or structural uncertainties for collaborative exploration. Rather than prescribing answers, Flow Clinics create a space for advice-based decision-making, guided by shared principles and facilitated inquiry.
Flow Decision A structured, intentional choice to evolve your team, service, or coordination model in pursuit of faster, safer delivery. It captures not just what you’re changing, but why, how, and what impact you expect.
Flow Decision Record A short, structured artifact that captures a decision made to improve the flow of value in an organization. Like an Architecture Decision Record, it emphasizes clarity, traceability, and accountability, but instead of focusing on technical architecture, it focuses on organizational dynamics, team interactions, and strategic alignment with flow. For more, see Flow Decision Records.
Flow Friction Friction in the flow of value, often manifesting as delays, misalignments, or hidden dependencies that slow down delivery and increase risk.
Flow Objective Define what you’re aiming to improve or enable as you evolve your team and service structures. They provide a north star for structural decisions, helping teams and leaders align on what “better flow” really means.
Flow Outcome A specific, observable improvements you aim to achieve by evolving your team structures, service boundaries, or enabling systems. They serve as anchors for strategic intent and provide a way to assess whether changes are working, not just structurally, but in terms of real-world impact on value delivery, autonomy, and decision-making.
Flow Play A repeatable structural patterns or interventions designed to help teams and organizations respond to flow friction. Each Play connects one or more Flow Signals to a high-level structural response, often informed by patterns from Team Topologies, Dynamic Reteaming, enabling teams, or fast flow principles.
Flow Roadmap A structured plan for evolving your team and service structures to improve flow. It includes a series of Flow Decisions and Flow Tactics that together form a cohesive strategy for achieving a specific Flow Outcome.
Flow Signal Short, recognizable statements that indicate friction, misalignment, or emerging challenges in the flow of value across your organization. They help surface problems early , before they escalate into delivery failures, missed opportunities, or reactive reorgs.
Flow Tactics Specific, testable interventions that teams and leaders can use to improve flow, autonomy, decision-making, and alignment. Tactics are situational building blocks, often small, safe-to-try actions, that help operationalize larger structural changes described in Flow Plays or derived from Flow Decisions.
Strategic Bets Focused, high-leverage investments you make to evolve your organization’s structure, capabilities, or coordination in pursuit of faster flow. Strategic Bets help you focus energy and attention on what really matters, while treating change as a testable experiment, not a guaranteed outcome.
Strategic Principles Foundational beliefs that guide how we structure teams, design services, and evolve our organization for faster flow. They’re not rules, they’re compass points.