This is a chapter 7.3.15 from the EDGY Cookbook.
WHAT?
Enterprise Flow is a holistic, human-centric approach to understand, design, and manage how value moves through an enterprise – from customer needs to meaningful outcomes. It connects customer journeys, operations, and development, so that the enterprise can run, improve, and evolve in alignment with real customer value.
Enterprise Flow is the end-to-end movement of value through an enterprise – from customer need to delivered outcome. It shows how strategy becomes action, how customers experience value, how systems operate, and how teams collaborate.
Enterprise Flow is about the continuous movement of value – to customers, through operations, and across development – so the enterprise can deliver today and evolve for tomorrow.
Enterprise value flow = a movement for coherent, customer-centered, value-driven enterprises.
The value delivered is the outcome of a flow of actions that benefits customers, users, employees, or the business. It’s not just output – it’s valuable outcome that makes a difference. Value delivered is the result of the flow – something that meets a customer need, improves a process, or advances the business.
A flow isn’t just activity – it’s purposeful movement toward delivering value.
Enterprise Flow is a comprehensive view of how an enterprise creates and delivers value – from understanding customer needs to achieving meaningful outcomes.
Load Enterprise Flow pdf overview
WHY?
Enterprise Flow is important because it helps the whole enterprise work together to deliver better value, faster – to customers, employees, and the business.
Enterprise Flow aligns the whole enterprise to deliver value. It helps everyone understand how value actually moves through the enterprise – from strategy to customer experience. It shows where things connect, and where they don’t. That’s vital in today’s complex, fast-moving world. Everyone knows where we’re going and how to contribute, from C-level leaders to operational leve, to frontline teams.
- We see the full picture, not just our piece of it.
Enterprise Flow improves how we work. It gives teams the shared understanding to collaborate better, reduce waste and unnecessary failure demand, remove friction, and deliver outcomes faster. It helps prioritise what really matters. It makes the enterprise more adaptive, agile, aligned, and resilient. It reduces noise and confusion.
- We spend more time creating value and less time fixing problems.
Enterprise Flow improves customer experience and business results. When internal flow is smooth, the customer experience improves, failure demand drops, and employee engagement rises. This leads to better service and stronger performance.
- Customers feel the difference – and so does the bottom line.
Enterprise Flow helps enterprises work better, flow smarter, and create more value – together. It’s a way to make everything else work better – from strategy to systems, from journeys to teams.
Enterprise Flow helps the whole enterprise move in sync – from need to impact. It breaks silos, boosts collaboration, and keeps value flowing to customers, fast and with purpose.
The challenge with today’s enterprises
Most enterprises weren’t designed – they evolved. Piece by piece. System by system. Team by team. Over time, this led to a familiar problem:
- Strategy is disconnected from daily work.
- Customers experience suffers, as customers are forced to navigate complex, poorly designed services that cause extra work (failure demand) and frustration.
- Organisation units and teams operate in silos, struggling to collaborate.
- Technology grows fast, but value flows slow.
The result? Change becomes harder. People feel stuck. And customers feel it first.
It’s Time for a new operating logic
The future belongs to enterprises that work like living systems - connected, adaptive, purpose-driven. They don’t separate business from technology, or customers from operations. They work as one system, designed from the outside in and inside out. At the heart of this transformation is a new model: The Enterprise Flow Model.
Enterprise Flow – Designing the Modern Enterprise as a living system.
What makes the Enterprise Flow model different?
It’s not just an approach or a framework – it’s a way of thinking and doing. It brings structure, flow, and people together. The Enterprise Flow is:
- Systemic – connects the dots across business, tech, and experience
- Holistic – sees the enterprise as one living whole
- Human-centered – puts people (customers, teams, stakeholders) at the center
- Collaborative – built through shared language (EDGY) and co-design
- Composable – made of modular parts that evolve with the business
- Designed – utilises Enterprise Design practices, tools and methods.
Enterprise Flow is not “yet another framework” – it’s a way of seeing the enterprise as a living system of value. It is not a method – it’s a mindset and a lens. Once we start seeing the enterprise in terms of flow, we begin designing systems, teams, and change around value – not around silos.
The Enterprise Flow model is how an enterprise design the whole and deliver the flow. From purpose to product, from journeys to teams. A living model for human-centered, adaptive enterprises.
Enterprise Flow is how an enterprise aligns customer journeys, operations, and development into a continuous, collaborative, and comprehensive flow of value.
HOW?
The Enterprise Flow helps the entire enterprise focus on what matters most: delivering value to customers – today and tomorrow. It connects three key flows:
- Customer Journeys – What customers experience and need
- Operations – How we deliver value efficiently every day
- Development – How we improve, innovate, and adapt
Figure: Enterprise Flow high-level view.
When these flows work together, the enterprise becomes customer-centered, efficient in delivery, and agile in change. Instead of working in silos, everyone is part of a continuous, connected value flow – from frontline to leadership.
In Short:
- Customer Journeys (outside-in) = how value is experienced.
- Operations (inside-out) = how value is delivered internally.
- Development (change) = how value delivery is continuously improved.
Together, they form one continuous Enterprise Flow: from need, to delivery, to improvement – in sync.
The idea behind the Enterprise Flow:
- The Enterprise Flow represents the comprehensive, coherent, and cohesive integration of flows – customer journeys, operations, and development – working together in synergy to create a unified, continuous flow of value.
The Enterprise Flow makes visible the natural, yet often overlooked, processes happening already in modern enterprises. It doesn’t necessarily create something entirely new, but rather brings clarity and structure to what is already occurring or should be occurring for optimal functioning. It clarifies how customer journeys, operations, and development are interconnected and work together to create continuous value.
The Enterprise Flow makes visible and aligns the essential flows happening in a modern enterprise.
The customer journeys, operations, and development flows are the three fundamental pillars of the Enterprise Flow. These flows are inseparable – they work together as one continuous system that creates value for customers and drives the business forward.
Each flow requires the others to function effectively:
- Customer journeys need smooth, efficient operations to fulfill promises.
- Operations depend on development to evolve, improve, and meet changing customer expectations.
- Development is guided by customer journeys and operational needs to create continuous, impactful improvements.
The flows of customer journeys, operations, and development are inseparable and interdependent: each one drives and relies on the others to deliver continuous value and innovation. These flows are meaningful only when integrated as a whole. By aligning these flows, the enterprise can create a seamless Enterprise Flow that ensures both optimal internal operations and exceptional customer experiences.
Integrated flows enable continuous value delivery by connecting what customers need with how the enterprise delivers and improves its services. When flows are integrated, the enterprise can operate efficiently, adapt quickly, and serve customers most effectively.
- Integrating customer journeys, operations, and development flows enables a seamless overall Enterprise Flow, driving optimal performance and delivering consistent value to both customers and the enterprise.
Customer Journeys, Operations, and Development are inseparable flows that need each other to create a seamless, value-driven experience for both customers and the enterprise.
Value delivered
In the Enterprise Flow, each flow – whether it’s a customer journey, an operation, or development work – moves toward a valuable outcome. That outcome is called value delivered. Value delivered can be e.g.:
- A digital product or service that solves a customer need, problem or job(s) to be done
- A change in biz operations that improves efficiency, quality, or cost-effectiveness
- A feature or update (in a product) that enhances the customer or user experience
- A new product, service, process, report or experiment etc. based on innovation
- A business decision based on reliable insights or data
- anything that brings measurable benefit to people or the business.
Value delivered is the useful result of a flow – something that solves a problem, improves a situation, or creates new opportunity.
Value delivered for different groups and audiences:
| For customers | Value delivered means customers get something that actually helps – a product, service, or experience that works, solves the problem. |
| For operational staff (Ops) | Value delivered is the result of the work making things run better – for customers, colleagues, or the business. It’s how our effort creates real impact. |
| For designers | Value delivered means the outcome of the design work actually solves a real user problem and fits into the larger flow of how value reaches people. |
| C-level (Executives) | Value delivered is the measurable outcome of how our enterprise flows – it’s what turns strategy into real-world results for customers and the business. |
Flows create outcomes that matter. In an enterprise, a flow is the movement of work, knowledge, and effort toward a result. That result, or outcome, is what delivers value.
A flow produces something valuable: for the customer (e.g. a product or service), for the business (e.g. a process improvement or new capability), or both.
Value delivered is the useful result of a flow of actions – something that solves a problem, meets a need, or improves things for customers or the business.
Enterprise Flow anatomy
Core Flow – where customer needs meet operational excellence
The Core Flow is where customer journeys and operations meet – the core business in action, showing how value is experienced and delivered in real life. Customer journeys and operations are both flows – two sides of the same coin. Customer journeys show how value is experienced from the outside, operations show how that value is delivered from the inside. They are tightly interconnected – when one changes, the other is affected.
Core Flow:
- connects what customers need with how the business delivers
- links customer experience with operational architecture
- integrates customer journeys and operations
Core Flow aligns customer journeys and operations into one unified flow, ensuring that both sides play complementary roles in delivering value and driving business outcomes
| Customer Journeys | Operations |
|---|---|
| The customer’s experience of getting value. | The organisation’s way of delivering that value. |
| What the customer does (journey steps, needs / tasks / jobs to be done, pain points). | What the business does (processes, roles, applications, data). |
| Outside-in perspective (customer view). | Inside-out perspective (organisation view). |
Core Flow is the heartbeat of the enterprise. It’s where customer experiences and business operations align, creating seamless value delivery.
Development Flow – the engine of change
Development is the flow that enables change. It supports and improves both customer journeys and operations by building new capabilities, fixing pain points, and adapting to evolving needs.
Development Flow:
- transforms ideas into action, driving continuous improvement and ensuring that operations evolve to meet ever-changing customer needs
- connects change with delivery, empowering the enterprise to evolve alongside customer expectations
- ensures that the enterprise remains agile
Development flow includes all the diverse disciplines and perspectives needed to deliver change: from design and user experience to coding, security, testing, and deployment.
Development is the umbrella term for all activities that close the gap between customer and/or business needs and operations – whether called DesignOps, JourneyOps, DevOps, DevSecOps, or other “Ops” approaches. The role of concept design is to transform demands, coming e.g. from customers, business goals, or strategy, into working solutions that can be implemented and operated successfully. Concept design acts as the bridge in development flow, turning demands into integrated, secure, and valuable solutions by balancing customer needs, business goals, and operational realities – all guided by Enterprise Design and EDGY.
Development Flow ensures that the enterprise remains agile, enhancing both customer journeys and operations through constant innovation, adaptation and continuous improvement.
Overall Flow
Customer Journey(s)
Operations / Operational Value Stream(s)
Development Value Stream
| Flow area | Description |
|---|---|
| Customer Journeys | Flow of value to and from the customer – shaped by needs, experiences, and outcomes. |
| Operations | Flow of value through the enterprise – by turning inputs (effort, data, materials) into services or products. |
| Development | Flow of change across the enterprise – including change demands, ideas, learning, and the actual implementation of improvements, new capabilities, and innovations. It’s how the enterprise evolves in response to strategy, customer needs, and operational insights. |
Triggers and outcomes of flows:
| Flow | Trigger | Outcome / Output |
|---|---|---|
| Customer Journey | A customer need, problem, or job to be done (e.g., apply for service, buy a product) | Customer achieves a desired result (e.g., receives service, gets resolution) |
| Operational Value Stream | A customer action or business event (e.g., order placed, request submitted) | Value is delivered to customer or stakeholder (e.g., product shipped, case resolved) |
| Development Value Stream | A need for change or improvement (e.g., feedback, strategy, regulatory change) | A new or improved solution, service, or capability is delivered |
Enterprise Flow is about making sure that the entire enterprise works together – across teams, silos, and systems – to deliver smooth, valuable customer experiences. It aligns strategy, operations, and development around real outcomes.
The three (3) main flows and how they interconnect
1. Customer Journey Flow (Outside-In) – Starts with the customer and their experience.
- Describes what the customer wants to achieve (needs, tasks, jobs-to-be-done) and how they interact with the enterprise (channels, touchpoints, products, services).
- Reveals pain points, expectations, and opportunities.
- Drives everything else – it’s the starting point of all meaningful change.
Feeds into…
2. Operations Flow (Inside-Out) – Delivers what the customer needs, using business capabilities and processes.
- Translates customer journeys into internal workflows and services.
- Involves people, tools, applications (systems), and data needed to fulfill the customer journey.
- Connects cross-functional teams around end-to-end value delivery.
Needs support from…
3. Development Flow (Change Flow) – Builds, improves, and adapts the operations to better support journeys.
- Includes all change work: strategy execution, concept design, projects, product development, application upgrades, IT-services.
- Uses agile, lean, or traditional methods – but focuses on flowing value, not just completing tasks.
- Works in sync with operations, informed by real customer and operational needs. Leverages appropriate approaches to organise work and teams, e.g. utilising Team Topologies, Domain-Driven Design (DDD), Enterprise Design Hub and multidisciplinary teams.
How they work together (The Flow Loop)
- Customer Journey identifies what needs to improve.
- Operations delivers the experience but highlights internal blockers or gaps.
- Development builds solutions to remove those blockers or improve the journey.
- The improved experience loops back into better journeys, and the cycle continues.
Why this matters?
- Most enterprises split these flows across departments, but customers experience the whole flow as one. Enterprise Flow makes sure:
- Everyone sees and works on the same value.
- Feedback from customers and operations informs development.
- Changes actually improve customer experience, not just systems or processes.
Enterprise Flow models how value flows across the entire enterprise – from customer need to delivery and continuous improvement, all together.
Ecosystem level. Enterprise Flow scales to the ecosystem level by connecting flows across multiple enterprises, each contributing its own customer journeys and related operations to a shared value network.
Enterprise Flow Model
The Enterprise Flow Model is a holistic, systemic and human-centered model for designing and running modern enterprises. It is a view of how an enterprise creates value – from customer needs to running solutions.
The Enterprise Flow Model covers all the models that support the overall enterprise design and development. It brings together all the essential models into one integrated approach.
The Enterprise Flow Model is a holistic, comprehensive view of an enterprise. It combines all the models into one: 1) Customer-centric Model, 2) Business Model, 3) Operating Model and 4) Development Model.
The Enterprise Flow is not just a model – it’s also a mindset and a culture.
- A shared mindset where everyone in the enterprise sees their work as part of an interconnected flow of value – to customers, colleagues, and the broader ecosystem – and takes ownership of continuously improving that flow.
The Enterprise Flow Model isn’t a new framework, it’s a unifying view that works with whatever frameworks, methods, or tools your enterprise already uses. Enterprise Flow can be built on top of any framework like SAFe, Scrum, ITIL, or TOGAF – it connects them to show how value actually flows through the enterprise. It’s framework-agnostic and helps align all approaches around the same flow of value – from customer to outcome.
| Model | Questions | How it’s represented in the Enterprise Flow model |
|---|---|---|
| Customer-Centric Model | What are our customers? What do they need? What do customers experience? What is offered to customers – via which channels? | Captures customer journeys, channels / touchpoints, customer needs (customer insight) and enterprise’s products and/or services. |
| Business Model | How do we create value for customers and the business? What capabilities we need? | Shows how value is created and delivered through value streams and capabilities. |
| Operating Model | How do we create value for customers and the business? What capabilities do we need? | Describes how people, roles, processes, and applications operate to support customers and the business. |
| Development Model | How we develop our operations? | Maps how ideas are turned into working solutions through teams, flows, and applications (systems). |
The Enterprise Flow Model unites customer experience, business purpose, operations, and development into one clear, connected view of how the enterprise actually works.
Figure: Enterprise Flow model.
| WHAT | Holistic, human-centric approach to understanding and managing how value moves through an enterprise – from customer needs to real outcomes. It connects customer journeys, operations, and development into one continuous flow, into one coherent value delivery system. |
|---|---|
| WHY | It helps the whole enterprise work together to deliver better experiences, faster – reducing friction, silos, and waste. Enterprises often operate in silos – strategy doesn’t connect to delivery, and change feels disconnected. Enterprise Flow helps align everyone around what truly matters: the customer experience, the efficiency of operations, and the ability to evolve continuously. |
| HOW | Enterprise Flow aligns strategy to execution through customer journeys, mapping internal operational flows, and improving them with cross-functional teams. |
The Enterprise Flow is framework-agnostic and helps align all approaches around the same flow of value – from customer to outcome.
Enterprise Flow in practice
Enterprise Flow helps everyone see how their work fits into the big picture – and how we can move together toward better outcomes. It connects strategy, customers, teams, and systems into one shared flow.
How to start defining and implementing the Enterprise Flow:
1. Start with customer journeys to understand customer needs.
2. Align internal operational value streams and capabilities to deliver that value.
3. Use a structured development flow to design, build, and implement improvements.
Steps to be taken:
- Start with customer journeys to understand customer needs
- Understand what customers need and how they experience the services of the enterprise by getting the customer insight.
- Identify the journey steps and customer pains and gains. Utilise service design methods and tools with EDGY.
- Choose key customer journeys to focus on first
- Connect customer journeys to operations – the Outside to the Inside (Operations)
- Look at what business capabilities, applications (systems) and teams are behind each step of the customer journey.
- Identfy, define and visualise the operational processes and related capabilities (internal behaviour) that support the customer journeys.
- Visualise the overall customer journeys with internal operations together with EDGY (utilise e.g. service blueprints). This shows how internal work affects customer experience.
- Organise development work around value flow
- Align strategy, operations, and development efforts with real customer and business value.
- Identify ownership of capabilities and related development teams.
- Use cross-functional Enterprise Design Hub virtual team to handling incoming change demands with coordination, and multidisciplinary teams to own and improve entire flows, not just tasks.
Be customer-driven in everything:
- Everything begins with understanding real customer needs (customer insight).
- Focus on customer journeys.
- Design around the customer’s journey – not just internal structures.
- Decisions and priorities are based on what brings value to the customer.
Collaborate across teams:
- Work together across silos to keep value flowing end-to-end.
Learn and adapt continuously:
- Improve based on feedback – from customers, operations, and each other.
Implementing Enterprise Flow doesn’t mean starting from scratch or reinventing the wheel. It’s about connecting the dots – bringing together what’s already in place, such as design artifacts, customer insights, architecture models, team structures, and operating models. The goal is to integrate existing knowledge, fill in the gaps, and create the missing links. We learn by doing: communicate, visualise, perform, and adapt – tuning the enterprise continuously using iterative cycles (like the OODA loop).
Enterprise Flow Principles:
| # | Principle | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Value flows end-to-end | We design, run, and improve the enterprise around the continuous flow of value – from customer needs to real outcomes, across all parts of the enterprise. |
| 2 | Customer-centricity guides everything | Everything starts with understanding customer needs. We design around customer journeys – not just internal structures – and measure success by the value we deliver. |
| 3 | Operations and development are interconnected | Running the business and improving the business go hand in hand. They are two sides of the same coin and support each other continuously – synchronised and mutually reinforcing. |
| 4 | Flow Over Fragmentation | We avoid breaking work into disconnected parts. Instead, we collaborate, co-design, and work across teams and roles to keep value flowing smoothly through the whole enterprise. |
| 5 | Adaptive by Design | We build our ways of working to be flexible. Our flows are designed to adapt, respond to change, and evolve over time. |
| 6 | Shared Understanding, Shared Direction | We align around common goals and make the big picture visible – what we’re doing, why it matters, and where we’re heading. Enterprise Design helps us move as one team. |
| 7 | Learn and Adapt Continuously | We keep learning and improving together. We balance speed with quality, and short-term progress with long-term growth and resilience. |
Enterprise Flow helps everyone see how their work fits into the big picture.
Flow layers:
Valuable outcome can be diverse things that create value for the customers or the business. For example:
- An output – a tangible or intangible result (object), such as artifact, document, insight or piece of knowledge etc.
- A product – such as a digital product or service created to benefit people by solving a specific customer need.
- A process – a change in operations that improves how the work is done (e.g. through Lean practices, automatisation/RPA, or AI).
Valuable Outcome is anything useful and meaningful that solves a problem, meets a need, or improves something – for people or the enterprise.
Enterprise Flow advanced aspects
A practical implementation of the Enterprise Flow Model brings together five powerful practices into a single, connected approach:
1. Enterprise Design – designing the whole
Enterprise Design gives us the tools to see the big picture – and act on it. It helps us design the enterprise as a whole, across three core facets:
- Identity – Why we exist, what we promise, and where we’re going
- Experience – How people interact with us across touchpoints
- Architecture – The capabilities, systems, and roles that make it real
It also connects what often stays siloed – brand, product, organisation – so we can co-create across disciplines. Enterprise Design thinking is collaborative, human-centered, and holistic. It helps us make sense of complexity – and build better systems with people, not just for them.
2. Journey Ops – flow from the customer perspective
Journey Ops turns customer journeys from static diagrams into living flows.
- It connects real customer behaviour to operations
- Monitors journeys across silos
- Helps teams collaborate around outcomes, not just functions
This is how we make customer-centricity operational, continuously.
3. Business Capabilities – stable building blocks of value delivery
Capabilities describe what the business does, independent of teams, tools, or org charts.
They provide:
- A common language between business and tech
- A modular way to organise, fund, and evolve the enterprise
- A stable anchor point to connect journeys, systems, and teams
4. Domain-Driven Design (DDD) – build what reflects reality
DDD helps us design systems that match the way the business thinks and works.
With clear bounded contexts, shared domain language, and well-defined interfaces, we build software and services that are:
- Easier to understand
- Easier to scale
- Easier to evolve
5. Team Topologies – organise for flow and focus
Teams are the units of delivery. When we design them with intention, we reduce friction and increase flow.
Team Topologies helps us:
- Align teams to value (stream-aligned)
- Support them with platforms and enabling teams
- Design for fast learning and low hand-offs
| Layers | Description |
|---|---|
| Customer Journeys | How customers experience value and interact with the enterprise |
| Business Capabilities | What the business must be able to do to deliver that value |
| Subdomains & Bounded Contexts | How work is logically modeled and structured (DDD) |
| Applications & Systems | How capabilities are implemented and run in technology |
| Teams | Who builds, owns, and operates each part (Team Topologies) |
And, Enterprise Flow includes a feedback loop to help the enterprise learn and improve continuously.
High-level layers are:
- Customer Journeys
- First start from the customer experience and focus on customer journeys and customer needs
- Capabilities
- Next identify business capabilities that are required to realise products and services for the customers
- Systems (applications)
- Finally identify applications that are used by the capabilities for managing the data.
Enterprise Flow is the blueprint of how value moves through your enterprise. It helps you align business, tech, and teams around what matters most: flow, outcomes, and customers.
Enterprise Flow is a systemic and holistic way to build adaptive, customer-centered enterprises that flow with change, not against it.
Enterprise Design – Enterprise Flow analysis and design
Enterprise Flow builds on the Enterprise Design approach and EDGY language. This means we can map intentions, experiences, structures, and platforms in a unified way, and translate strategy into action across the enterprise. This gives structure and credibility, especially to architects, designers, and strategists.
Enterprise Design with EDGY can be used as an integrative thinking tool for the overall analysis in the Enterprise Flow implementation. We can position it as the integrative lens that makes sense of the whole enterprise, from customer journeys to operations to development – all while grounding the analysis in business purpose (mission, vision, strategy, goals) and real-world valuable outcomes.
The EDGY Facet Model (figure below) is a powerful tool to analyse and design the overall Enterprise Flow because it helps map, understand, and align all the essential elements that affect how value flows through an enterprise – from customer journeys to operations and development.
For more details on Enterprise Identity, see Applying Business Identity with EDGY.
For more details on Enterprise Experience, see Applying Experience Design with EDGY.
For more details on Enterprise Architecture, see Applying Enterprise Architecture with EDGY .
The Enterprise Design approach and the EDGY language are particularly well-suited for analysing and modelling the Enterprise Flow and its main parts – customer journeys, operations, and development – because they offer a structured, visual, and systemic way to understand and align complex enterprise realities.
The Enterprise Design approach and the EDGY language are particularly well-suited for analysing and modelling the Enterprise Flow and its main parts – customer journeys, operations, and development – because they offer a structured, visual, and systemic way to understand and align complex enterprise realities. Enterprise Flow is about integration – EDGY makes it visible. Enterprise Flow connects customer journeys, operations, and development into one continuous, value-focused system. Enterprise Design and EDGY give us the elements to see, understand, and improve how value flows through the enterprise – across customers, teams, applications, and strategy.
The EDGY language of the Enterprise Design approach is based on four elements – People, Activity, Object, and Outcome – which are specialised using color to represent different facets and intersections of the enterprise. These four base elements are all we need to describe the behaviour and structure of any enterprise! EDGY is a common language that everyone can understand – it’s simple, easy to learn, and easy to use.
The EDGY language provides a visual, shared vocabulary to map and align all parts of the Enterprise Flow. EDGY provides all the relevant enterprise elements that are needed for overall analysis, design and development of the Enterprise Flow such as Journey, Task, Capability, Process, Asset, Product, Organisation etc. as shown below.
Visualise, align, and improve:
- Use maps and views of the flows and related elements for collaborative co-design and common understanding – so everyone sees the same picture.
- Utilise EDGY as a common language, use and/or create visualisations of journeys, capabilities etc., use service design methods when appropriate.
- Fix the biggest blockers, reduce waste, and focus on outcomes.
Enterprise Flow is a systemic and holistic way to build adaptive, customer-centered enterprises that flow with change.
Customer Perspective – the Experience
Customer-centricity is an approach where the customer is placed at the center of all design and decision-making to ensure that products, services, and experiences meet their needs. Customer-first is a business strategy, where the customer is at the core of the business.
Enterprise Flow design from the customer perspective covers elements as shown in the simplification below. EDGY provides concepts with which it is possible to visualise all that is meaningful in the context of enterprise. The customer perspective can be analysed with EDGY elements Task, Journey and Channel, which open up the important aspects from customer’s point of view. These elements cover the outside-in view of enterprise’s business. The inside-out view is then covered with the customer-facing elements Brand and Product, which are then connected to other elements of the enterprise, Capability, Organisation and Purpose.
Figure explained: A customer has task(s) to do that are served by the products and/or services, which are produced by the capabilities of an organisation. A customer traverses a journey (of several steps), that represents what a customer experiences while doing task(s). The customer becomes aware of products and/or services with the help of the brand of the organisation. The customer contacts the products and/or services via channels. Customers’ access journey steps (stages, phases) via channels when they perform their tasks. Tasks are served by the products and/or services (offerings) that require certain capabilities from the organisation
A customer journey represents what a customer experiences – and how they experience the enterprise.
Development Process
Development process (a.k.a. Development Value Stream) refers to the set of activities that create and evolve the systems, products, services, or capabilities that operational value streams use to deliver value.
The enterprise’s development process consists of several key phases that transform needs and ideas into delivered value. These phases typically follow a structured flow, ensuring that change demands are effectively processed from conception to implementation.
The development process can be effectively divided into three high-level phases: 1) Design (Plan), 2) Implementation (Build / Buy & Deliver), and 3) Operation (Run). The Enterprise Design Hub is positioned primarily in the Design phase, but its influence extends into the Implementation phase as well.
Typically the development is based on agile frameworks, methods and tools such as SAFe, Scrum, Kanban and related software tools (such as Jira) that support managing epics, stories and tasks etc.
Development is the flow of change that enables better customer journeys and operations.
Development Capabilities – from Idea to Production
Incoming change demands are handled through the centralised Enterprise Design Hub, where concepts are shaped and then directed to multidisciplinary teams via portfolio management. Finally, digital products are deployed into production and integrated into operational value streams. This development flow of “idea to production” contains certain capabilities such as Demand Management and Portfolio Management, on the way to production.
Enterprise Design Hub
Enterprise Design Hub (Hub for short) is a virtual team responsible for managing change-related demand(s). It steers work toward multi-skilled multidisciplinary teams that turn validated concepts into concrete solutions – including new digital products and -services and operating models.
The Enterprise Design Hub provides a structured process for managing enterprise change demands from concept to operations. By combining service design and business architecture (among others), it ensures that changes align with enterprise goals, and solutions are designed with both the customer and the organisation in mind.
The Enterprise Design Hub is a cross-functional, multi-disciplinary and collaborative. All the relevant disciplines are involved, such as service designers, business architects, innovation specialists, security specialists, risk analysts, process specialists, technology experts – to collaboratively drive enterprise change and innovation.
They share methods and tools, and utilises agile practices. It operates through continuous meetings (e.g. weeklys) and uses a Kanban board to manage tasks, ensuring collaboration and transparency across disciplines. Examples of roles involved are shown in the figure beside.
The Enterprise Design Hub ensures that all changes are processed systematically, using a design governance model that prioritises strategic goals (viability), operational feasibility, and customer value (desirability). This avoids duplication, misalignment, and silos.
The EDGY Facet Model can be used to analyse change demands from multiple perspectives, ensuring a holistic understanding of what the change affects and requires (figure below).
For more details see: Enterprise Design Hub (EDH).
The Enterprise Design Hub is a joint-force practice for managing the change demands of an enterprise.
Team Topologies
Team Topologies provides a practical framework for structuring teams, improving collaboration, and reducing bottlenecks in software development and operations (DevOps). By focusing on flow, clear team roles, and adaptable structures, it helps enterprises achieve better alignment between their teams and their goals, leading to faster and more efficient delivery of value.
Team types:
- Stream-aligned team
- Enabling team
- Complicated subsystem team
- Platform team
The Team Topologies approach provides significant benefits by structuring teams around value delivery, collaboration, and adaptability. It is particularly effective in dynamic and complex environments, such as software development or large-scale systems engineering.
The Team Topologies approach improves employee satisfaction by:
- Reducing cognitive overload.
- Empowering teams with autonomy and clear roles.
- Facilitating productive collaboration and support.
- Providing opportunities for mastery and growth.
- Promoting a culture of continuous improvement and work-life balance.
Team Topologies is a modern approach to structuring software development and operational teams to optimise collaboration, value delivery, and adaptability in an enterprise.
Domain-Driven Design (DDD)
Domain-Driven Design (DDD) is a strategic and tactical approach to software design and development that focuses on creating a deep connection between business needs and software solutions. At its core, DDD is about:
- Modelling the business domain in close collaboration with domain experts,
- Structuring the software around that model to reflect real-world complexity.
DDD core concepts map well to business architecture concepts, especially to business capabilities:
Business capabilities:
- Define what the enterprise must be able to do to deliver value.
- They help identify the most important subdomains in Domain-Driven Design (DDD).
- They guide how teams, systems, and software should be structured.
- They connect strategy to operations and implementation, creating alignment.
It is reasonable and practical to start with business capabilities, because they describe what really matters: the work that delivers value. From there, we identify subdomains, define bounded contexts, and build the systems by the teams.
Business capabilities connect the customer journeys, operations and development.
For more details see Domain-Driven Design and Capabilities.
Domain-Driven Design (DDD) aligns systems with how the business actually works. It helps the enterprise go from features to flow, from silos to service, and from delivery to value.
Roles
While everyone (!) in the enterprise contributes to the flow of value – through customer service, operations, or development – there are specific roles that are notable, emerging, or newly defined in the context of Enterprise Flow. These roles help to see, shape, and steer how value flows across journeys, operations, and development.
Roles are enterprise-specific and should be identified based on what is appropriate for the context – including the required competencies and specialisations. However, certain roles are especially important in the Enterprise Flow, even though the whole enterprise is involved in making value flow.
Examples of roles are grouped based on the focus area as shown below.
| 1. Strategic Mgmt & Governance (Why & Where to Flow) | |
| Role | Description |
| CEO / Managing Director | Champions flow thinking across the enterprise. Ensures strategy, culture, and structure support end-to-end value delivery. Accountable for defining strategic goals. |
| CSO (Chief Strategy Officer) | Connects long-term goals to flow-level initiatives. Makes sure strategic change is translated into operations and development. |
| CXO (Chief Experience Officer) | Ensures positive interactions with enterprise’s customers. Primarily responsible for overseeing an enterprise’s customer experience (CX) strategy, fostering brand and customer loyalty, customer journey management, and ensuring a customer-centric approach to business operations. |
| COO (Chief Operating Officer) | Oversees operational value streams. Focused on optimising business processes and operational excellence. |
| CHRO (Chief HR Officer) | Ensures organisational design, skills & competences, and culture support collaborative flows across silos. |
| CFO (Chief Financial Officer) | Ensures flow performance is tied to financial outcomes. Invests in value streams that drive results. |
| CIO / CTO (Chief Information / Technology Officer) | Ensures technology enables flow, scalability, and adaptability. Oversees development flows and tech capabilities. |
| Chief innovation officer (CINO) | Generates new ideas and identifies opportunities for innovation and change that can propel the enterprise forward. This position is usually at the top of the R&D department. The CINO might work closely with the CTO or CIO to research and implement innovative ideas. |
| Business Owner | Accountable for the business outcome(s) of a specific business of a flow, capability, product, initiative (such as program, biz transformation etc.) or certain area, domain etc. of business. Sets priorities, sponsors change, and ensures value is realised. |
| Portfolio Owner | Accountable for the performance of a value stream or capability, from idea to impact. |
Other C-level roles e.g. CDO (Chief Digital Officer), CMO (Chief Marketing Officer).
| 2. Customer Journeys & Experience (For Whom to Flow) | |
| Role | Description |
| Customer | Uses the services and/or products of the eneterprise. Provides real-life insights and feedback to co-design the journey. |
| Customer Experience Owner | Focuses on understanding and improving the customer journey. Works to remove friction and enhance customer experience. |
| Customer Insight Lead | Gathers customer insight, research, feedback, and data to inform customer journey improvements. |
| Journey Owner | Ensures a specific customer journey delivers value, removes friction, and aligns with strategic goals and business operations. |
| 3. Enterprise Design & Coordination (How to Flow) | |
| Role | Description |
| Flow Owner | Ensures that the customer journey is aligned with operations and development. |
| Capability Owner | Responsible for a single business capability, across both operations and development, making sure it delivers value today and in the future. Designs and owns capabilities that enable flow. Because capabilities are the backbone of how value flows in an enterprise, having a named Capability Owner ensures: accountability over critical business functions, consistency across silos, a clear bridge between strategy, operations, and development. |
| Enterprise Designer | A broad strategic role focused on shaping the enterprise as a whole system – from purpose to operations, from customer journeys to operations – and beyond, when necessary, into the ecosystem. Ensures that the journey perspective is integrated with operations at enterprise level. Bridges strategy, customer needs, operations and applications / systems. |
| Service Designer | Translates customer needs into business opportunities and capability needs (togehether with biz architects). Supports customer-driven approach in every level of the eneterprise. |
| Business Analyst | Gathers and refines requirements from customers and business representatives (units, biz owners, users etc.). Bridges gaps between business needs and technical teams. |
| Risk Analyst | Identifies, assesses, and helps manage potential risks that could negatively impact an enterprise’s operations, strategy, or financial performance. The role is about helping the enterprise make informed decisions by understanding what could go wrong, how likely it is, and what the consequences might be. |
| Innovation Specialist | Helps an enterprise discover, develop, and implement new ideas that create value – for customers, the business, or both. Their focus is on driving change, enabling creativity, and turning ideas into reality. |
| Enterprise Architect | Designs and aligns the enterprise architecture with enterprise goals. Ensures solutions fit holistically within the Enterprise Flow. |
| Business Architect | Translates customer- and business needs into business opportunities and capability needs (togehether with service designers). Designs and aligns the business architecture with enterprise goals. |
| Solution Architect | Designs and aligns the technical solution architecture with enterprise architecture. Ensures solutions fit technically within the Enterprise Flow. |
| Security Officer / Specialist | Ensures all flow activities comply with security, privacy, and regulatory requirements. |
| Continuous Improvement Lead | Monitors flow performance and drives iterative improvements. Uses data and feedback to optimise value delivery. |
| 4. Delivery & Operational Teams (What to Flow) | |
| Role | Description |
| Operations Manager | Manages operational processes that deliver services/products Ensures smooth, efficient daily operations aligned with business goals. |
| Development Lead | Drives changes and new developments in products or services. Coordinates multidisciplinary teams (DevOps, DesignOps, etc.). |
| RTE (Release Train Engineer) | Facilitates Agile Release Trains (ARTs) in the SAFe framework. Acts as a servant leader and coach for teams, ensuring alignment, planning, and smooth execution of value delivery across multiple teams working together. |
| Journey Ops Lead | Coordinates and optimises the end-to-end customer journey by ensuring smooth collaboration across teams, touchpoints, and channels. Focuses on experience flow, removing friction and enabling continuous improvement of customer journeys. |
| Ops Lead | Responsible for ensuring that day-to-day business operations run smoothly and effectively. This role bridges strategic goals and frontline execution, focusing on operational performance, process efficiency, and continuous improvement. |
| Transformation Lead | Responsible for driving and coordinating large-scale change initiatives across the enterprise. This role ensures that strategic transformations – whether digital, operational, cultural, or business model-related – are successfully delivered and adopted. |
| Service Manager | Ensures that IT services are aligned with business needs, delivered effectively, and continuously improved. The role is central in both strategic and operational aspects of IT service management (ITSM). |
| Product Owner | Translates demands into actionable development tasks. |
| Dev. Team Member | Developers, designers, testers, operations staff working collaboratively in multidisciplinary teams. Responsible for daily execution and delivery within their domain. |
| IT support | Supporting IT-related matters |
| Agile Coach | Guides individuals, teams, and the eterprise in applying Agile principles and practices. Helps build a culture of collaboration, continuous learning, and adaptability across development and operational workflows. |
| Technology Specialist | Provides support for certain specific technology, product or platform. |
Obviously, operational (ops) staff and frontline workers as well as certain leadership roles are crucial in operational business, and they are involved in co-design.
| 5. Ecosystem & Partners (With Whom to Flow) | |
| Role | Description |
| Business Actor | Other actor of the network or ecosystem related to the enterprise |
| Partner | Contribute to capability and service delivery. Their role in flows must be managed and integrated. |
| Vendor | Contribute to capability and service delivery. Their role in flows must be managed and integrated. |
| Stakeholder | Any other stakeholder that has interests on the enterprise (such as owner, public/government authority) |
Maps and Views to be utilised
There are several maps and views (diagrams from a certain viewpoint) that can be created and/or used when designing the Enterprise Flow e.g. as follows:
- Customer Journey Map
- Service Blueprint
- Flow of Actions
- People Map (Stakeholder Map)
- Ecosystem Map
- Enterprise Map (Milky Way Map)
- Capability Map
- Application Map
- Organisation Map
- Interaction Map / Cooperation Views: interactions between e.g. business actors, processes or applications.
- Capability View (covering what belongs together, e.g. competence roles of people, processes, data and applications.
See EDGY PowerPoint Templates for Enterprise Design.
Customer Journey Map
Customer Journey focuses on the customer’s perspective, capturing their emotions, needs, and interactions as they engage with a service across different touchpoints.
Customer journeys are focal points of customer-centric enterprises. A customer journey expresses what people go through in their lives: what a person feels, does or experiences over time. A journey represents a ‘slice of life’. It is a chronological and simplified representation of complex experiences.
A customer journey is an end-to-end process that a customer goes through while accomplishing some task(s). A customer journey represents a coherent whole from the customer’s perspective in a certain context. It is a completeness that is meaningful to examine as a coherent whole.
A Customer Journey Map is a visual representation of a customer’s experience as they interact with an enterprise’s products, services, or brand across touchpoints and channels, over time.
- Focus: Customer’s perspective
- Goal: Understand the needs, emotions, pain points, and goals at each stage of their journey
- Typical components:
- Customer stages or phases or steps (e.g. Awareness → Consideration → Purchase → Use)
- Channels / Touchpoints (e.g. website, customer service, app)
- Emotions and thoughts
- Pain points and opportunities
It helps align the enterprise around a shared understanding of what matters most to the customer.
Template:
Customer journey mapping is the process of visually outlining a customer’s interactions with a business to understand and improve their overall experience.
Service Blueprint
A Service Blueprint defines the customer journey, detailing the customer’s activities alongside the services, products, and activities of the enterprise. It enables the analysis of the entire stack, from the customer’s perspective to the organisational perspective. The Service Blueprint provides a holistic, human-centric, and collaborative view of a service, integrating both customer and organisational perspectives.
The Service Blueprint builds on the customer journey map by adding a backstage view: it visualises the people, processes, systems, and technologies needed behind the scenes to deliver the customer experience.
- Focus: Both frontstage (what the customer sees) and backstage (internal operations)
- Goal: Identify how internal processes support the customer journey
- Typical components:
- Customer actions (from the journey map)
- Frontstage interactions (e.g. customer service)
- Backstage processes (e.g. internal processes, applications, and related organisation structures such as teams)
- Supporting processes, applications, teams
- Line of visibility (what is visible to customer vs. internal)
Why it matters: It connects customer experience with operations (processes and assets) – enabling more coherent, efficient, and aligned service delivery.
High-level template (Level-1): business capabilities as high-level abstractions:
At a high level (Level 1), we may not know the details – or they may not be relevant at this stage – so we model internal behaviour using abstractions, such as capabilities. Later, when more detail is known or needed, we can identify the actual processes involved at a more detailed level (Level 2).
Detail level template (Level-2): business processes and assets (such as applications and/or data):
For more details see: Customer Journey and Service Blueprint.
Flow of Actions
Flow of Actions is a simple, high-level Enterprise Flow diagram that visualises how a customer journey and internal processes are connected. It shows key steps from the customer’s perspective alongside the enterprise’s internal actions, with flow relations indicating the logical order and dependencies between activities. This helps everyone understand how value is delivered step by step – from customer interaction to internal execution. The level of detail and scope can vary depending on the context and what is appropriate or fit for the purpose.
High-level view (above) connects the customer needs with the business capabilities that are required to support those needs.
Detailed view (below) connects customer behaviour with the organisation behaviour.
People Map / Stakeholder Map
A stakeholder map typically consists of circles (like an onion), starting from the ‘core’ (inner circle), and then introducing other levels of stakeholders in other circles. Identified stakeholders can be placed into a stakeholder map that can be visualised a) from the customer perspective or b) from the organisation perspective. The customer perspective puts the customer in the middle, and other stakeholders into circles depending on their visibility from the customer’s point of view.
Ecosystem Map
The ecosystem map represents the business actors within an ecosystem and their possible interactions.
Figure: Ecosystem map template.
Interaction Map / Cooperation View
Information flows between actors. A similar idea can also be used between actors (organisations, teams etc.), applications, and processes.
Enterprise Map (Milky Way Map)
A Milky Way Map is a visual representation of the whole business or some part of it. A Milky Way Map is a visualisation of the geography of the business of the enterprise. It shows the big picture in a single view, including what are the customer activities or tasks to be done, and how the enterprise serves those tasks, and why the enterprise is doing all this. The Milky Way Map combines the customer’s perspective and the enterprise’s business perspective. All in one map, the Enterprise Map.
The Milky Way Map is divided into sectors that represent the value stages of the business value flow (a.k.a. value stream). The customer journey steps (or tasks) are shown on the outer circle. The capabilities are positioned in the middle circle, and the purposes, the goals are shown in the inner circle.
For more details see: Milky Way Map with EDGY.
Capability Map
A capability map is the master structure of an enterprise, as it contains all the major abilities from which the business is made. A capability map is a one-page illustration of what an enterprise does. A capability map is the base map of the business.
A business capability map is a visual representation of the enterprise’s key capabilities. It usually categorises capabilities into groups (such as operational, strategic, or customer-facing). This map can be used for assessing the enterprise’s readiness for strategic changes, identifying improvement areas, and guiding resource allocation etc.
A capability map introduces all the capabilities of an enterprise in different levels, typically in 1 to 3 levels. Decomposition of capabilities is breaking down a high-level capability into smaller, more specific sub-capabilities. This helps businesses better understand and manage the individual components (elements) that contribute to overall business success. By decomposing capabilities, an enterprise can more effectively allocate resources, improve processes, and drive targeted improvements according to strategic goals and more operational change activities.
Capability
A capability defines ‘what we are able to do by orchestrating people and assets’. As such, capabilities are organisational business components. They are containers for everything that belongs together and that is needed so that the enterprise is able to perform a certain behavioural part of its business.
A capability is a center of gravity that magnetises things that belong together. A capability exposes its behaviour by products and/or services. A capability can be connected with certain organisation structures. Capabilities are required for producing the offerings (products or services) of the organisation.
A capability defines what we are able to do by orchestrating people and assets.
A capability consists of people, processes and assets.
People represent the skills and competency roles required within a capability.
A process is a series of related activities that are performed in a specific sequence to achieve a particular business outcome.
Assets are resources that the enterprise owns or controls and that have economic value. These assets are used in the operation of the business to create value, provide goods or services, or support the overall goals of the organisation. Enterprise assets are anything of value that the enterprise can leverage to achieve its business goals. Assets can be classified into several categories as shown below.
A capability consists of people, process and assets.
A capability is a composition of elements that belong together: all what is needed so that an enterprise can perform certain capability. As such, a capability consists of people with skills and competences, processes and assets such as applications and data. Capability-Based planning extends the core content of a capability to other aspects such as ownership- and financial aspects. This enables us to connect all the relevant elements around a capability to make visible all what affects or is affected by a capability.
A capability can be connected with aspects such as ownership, costs, risks, goals etc. as shown in the figure below.
Capabilities are business- and outcome-oriented focusing on what the enterprise does.
Capabilities are a foundation for organising people and work in both operations and development
Business capabilities represent what an enterprise must be able to do to deliver value. Because they are stable, business-centered, and technology-agnostic, they provide an ideal foundation for organising both operations and development. When aligned with Domain-Driven Design (DDD), each capability can act as a subdomain, connecting business intent with software implementation.
Capabilities are useful as building blocks that bridge strategy, people, processes, and systems – enabling clear ownership, team alignment, and modular architecture. Capabilities offer a shared structure that connects strategy to execution, making them ideal for organising teams and work across operational and development domains.
Business capabilities provide a stable, business-driven foundation for organising people and work across both operations and development.
Architecture
Component Model for Detailed Architecture in Enterprise Flow
As we move from high-level Enterprise Flow analysis (customer journeys, operations, development) toward concrete architecture and design, we need a way to describe what the enterprise is made of – in detail. This is where the Component Model comes in.
An enterprise consists of structural parts, all of which are components of the whole. An enterprise can be viewed as a component model consisting of high-level components, the capabilities, each of which includes applications that are composed of modules, and so on. As such, an enterprise is a hierarchical system of systems, a system of components, that can be considered fractal by nature. Fractal due to its hierarchical and recursive structure.
The Component Model views the enterprise as a whole comprised of individual components. It is important to understand which components the enterprise consists of and the role each component plays as part of the whole. Capabilities are enterprise-level components, each of which consists of components such as applications, data, processes and people.
Component Model (CM 1-2-3) is an application architecture modelling approach, in which a target application is depicted on different abstraction levels: 1) Context-, 2) Composition- and 3) Component levels. These abstraction levels (CM-1, CM-2, CM-3) cover the architecture of a solution, the solution architecture.
A fractal entity (in this context) refers to a system, structure, or concept that exhibits self-similarity across different levels or scales. This means that its overall pattern or behaviour is mirrored in its smaller subcomponents, regardless of the level of abstraction. A fractal entity is composed of smaller components or subsystems, each reflecting the properties of the whole.
See Component Model 1-2-3 for more details.
All parts of the enterprise are components of the whole.
Enterprise Flow is aligned with the enterprise goals
The Enterprise Flow is closely aligned with the strategic goals of the enterprise by ensuring that the entire enterprise operates as a unified system designed to deliver value to customers while achieving business objectives.
Enterprise Flow as a Meta-Framework
Enterprise Flow model is a meta-framework – a big-picture model that helps the enterprise see, manage, and improve the flow of value across all parts of the business.
Enterprise Flow helps everyone see how their work fits into the big picture – and how we can move together toward better outcomes. It connects strategy, customers, teams, and systems into one shared flow.
Enterprise Flow is close with benefits everyone understands:
| Executives | Middle Management | Teams & Ops |
|---|---|---|
| Better strategy-to-execution alignment | Easier prioritisation and coordination | Clarity on purpose and contribution |
| Reduced silos, faster change | Integrated view of journeys and capabilities | Less friction, better flow of work |
| Stronger customer value focus | More efficient resource use | Support for doing meaningful work |
The Enterprise Flow model is not a competing methodology or rigid framework – it is a meta-framework that provides a shared structure and language to align and integrate various approaches like Customer-centricity, Customer Journey Mapping, Value Stream Mapping, Value Stream Management (VSM), SAFe, Scrum, TOGAF, ITIL4, IT4IT, COBIT, Lean thinking, Systems thinking, Design thinking, Enterprise Design, Jobs to be done (JBTD), DevOps, Team Topologies, Domain-Driven Design (DDD) and more.
The Enterprise Flow :
- Focuses on flow as the primary unit of design, coordination, and improvement – not on specific roles, processes, or stages.
- Helps visualise and connect how strategy, design, operations, and IT contribute to end-to-end value flow.
- Provides a coherent backbone (e.g., journeys, value streams, capabilities) on which other tools and frameworks can operate effectively.
- Brings together different approaches, tools, and models (like customer journeys, capabilities, agile methods, portfolio management, DevOps, etc.) into one coherent, holistic view of how an enterprise works and transforms. It doesn’t prescribe one method or structure only.
- Connects the dots across strategy, design, operations, and development, helping everyone – from leadership to delivery teams – see and improve how value flows through the entire enterprise, with a shared language (EDGY) and visual thinking.
Enterprise Flow doesn’t replace current tools or frameworks – it helps align them. It’s like a map that helps everyone see how things connect. It helps leadership see the big picture – and helps teams see how their work matters. It’s the common language that ties strategy, design, operations, and technology together. Enterprise Flow works with what you already use. Whether it’s TOGAF for architecture, SAFe for scaling Agile, ITIL for service management, or Lean for operations – Enterprise Flow helps align them around value.
Key principles that make Enterprise Flow a meta-framework:
- Customer-centricity: All frameworks are aligned to customer journeys and value creation.
- Flow-first thinking: Emphasises outcomes, feedback loops, and minimising handoffs.
- Structural alignment: Uses value streams and business capabilities as fundamental building blocks (business components, core DNA of the business).
- Framework-agnostic: Works with any toolset or methodology, providing integration without disruption.
- Holistic, system-of-systems view: Helps leaders see how strategy, work, architecture, and delivery all interrelate.
A meta-framework is a framework of frameworks. A meta-framework organises and connects multiple other frameworks, methods, or models so they can work together in a structured and flexible way.
Enterprise Flow model is a meta-framework – a big-picture model that helps the enterprise see, manage, and improve the flow of value across all parts of the business.
Enterprise Flow discussion
The Enterprise Flow connects customer experience and operational architecture with the identity and purpose of the enterprise.
Enterprise Flow is a comprehensive model that connects everything in the enterprise – from strategy and goals to daily work – including support functions like HR, finance, cybersecurity, data protection, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), and governance, so the whole enterprise can work together to deliver value in a customer-centric way.
An example of a high-level overview of the Enterprise Flow is shown below.
The Enterprise Flow is a practical model for implementing a flow-based, holistic and comprehensive approach within an enterprise (a flow-based system).
The idea behind the Enterprise Flow is related to other approaches, e.g.:
- The Flow Manifesto, an open initiative to help enterprises become better and more purposeful.: https://flowmanifesto.io/
- The Flow System™, “provides a re-imagined system for organisations to understand complexity, embrace teamwork, and autonomous team-based leadership structures.” https://flowguides.org/guide.php
- The Flow Framework® , https://flowframework.org/, set of best practices for measuring and improving flow in software delivery organisations.
- The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), https://safe.scaledagile.com/, references the concept of flow (e.g. here and here ).
Flow as a concept
“Flow” exists in all levels and aspects of an enterprise, you can describe it as the core movement of value, work, and change – from strategy to service delivery, from individual tasks to enterprise-wide transformation.
What flows in Enterprise Flow context, examples shown below:
- Customer steps with customer needs on customer journeys
- Work and services
- Information, decisions, and collaboration
- Improvements and new solutions
The flow as a concept especially in the context of the Enterprise Flow, is defined as follows:
- Flow is how value moves, how people collaborate, and how the enterprise adapts.
- Flow is the continuous movement of value through the enterprise – from customer need to delivery and improvement.
Flow is the continuous movement of value through the enterprise – from customer need to delivery and improvement.
There are types of flows in and around an enterprise is essential for designing an effective Enterprise Flow. These flows represent how value, information, and work move across the enterprise and its ecosystem. Here’s a high-level classification:
1. Value Flows – These are core operational flows that deliver value to customers and stakeholders.
- Customer value flows (a.k.a. operational value streams): From customer request to fulfillment (e.g. order-to-cash, claim-to-resolution).
- Product/service delivery flows: How services or products are developed, maintained, and delivered.
- Support flows: How internal functions (e.g. HR, finance, IT) support value delivery.
2. Information Flows – These describe how knowledge and data circulate across the enterprise.
- Decision-making flows: Business intelligence, strategy updates, governance directives.
- Feedback flows: Customer feedback, usage analytics, incident reports.
- Knowledge flows: Internal learnings, best practices, training content.
- Data flows: Process- and application intearctions, data-swithcing between applications.
3. Work Flows – These include how tasks and initiatives are planned, executed, and iterated on.
- Project and initiative flows: From concept through design, implementation, and delivery.
- Change and demand flows: How new requests (features, fixes, improvements) move from intake to implementation.
- Incident and operations flows: How incidents, risks, or outages are managed.
4. Capability and Evolution Flows – These relate to enterprise adaptability and capability development.
- Capability evolution flows: How business capabilities are discovered or improved.
- Innovation flows: Idea to incubation to scaling. From idea to production.
- Technology and platform flows: Evolution of platforms, APIs, technical building blocks.
- Business transformations: how enterprise changes through transitions.
5. External and Ecosystem Flows
- Flows that cross enterprise boundaries.
- Partner and supplier flows: Contracts, orders, data integration.
- Regulatory flows: Compliance reporting, audits, legal interactions.
- Market and environmental sensing: Trends, competitive intelligence, policy shifts.
6. Financial Flows
- Revenue and cost flows: Cash-in and cash-out tracking.
- Investment flows: Budget allocation, ROI tracking.
- Pricing and value capture flows: Monetization and value measurement.
In general, typical flow types in an enterprise are e.g. as follows:
| # | Flow type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Information Flows | Movement of data, knowledge, and communication. Examples: Business objects (such as Customer data), data (data elements and -structures), reports, decisions, design specifications, customer feedback. Can be structured (data pipelines, dashboards) or unstructured (emails, conversations). |
| 2 | Cash (Financial) Flows | Movement of money in and out of the enterprise. Examples: Payments, invoices, salaries, investments, cost allocations. |
| 3 | Material Flows | Physical movement of goods and resources. Relevant in manufacturing, logistics, retail. Examples: Raw materials to factory, products to customers, returns. |
| 4 | Work Flows | Movement of tasks or processes through systems or people. Examples: Order processing, onboarding, software development cycle. |
| 5 | Energy Flows | Especially in production or infrastructure-heavy industries. Includes electricity, fuel, water, etc. Can also relate to computational energy in data centers. |
| 6 | Human Flows | Movement or interaction of people across roles, teams, or geographies. Examples: Staffing, role transitions, support handovers. |
| 7 | Service Flows | Provision and consumption of services. Includes both internal and external services. Examples: IT helpdesk support, API calls between services. |
| 8 | Decision Flows | How decisions are initiated, escalated, and finalised. Includes approval processes, governance, and strategy deployment. |
These above-mentioned flows often interact and influence each other.
For example:
- A customer order initiates information flow (order confirmation), cash flow (payment), and material flow (product delivery).
- A feature request creates an information flow that turns into a work flow in development, possibly impacting cash flow if it adds new value.
Business transformation is an example of a high-level evolution flow.
Mapping these flows holistically is central to Enterprise Design and supports flow-optimised operations.
All in all, flow exists everywhere in the enterprise and in every level:
| Levels | What flows |
|---|---|
| Strategic level | Intent, goals, decisions, investment |
| Operational level | Processes, work, services, products, customer interactions |
| Customer level | Needs, journeys, emotions, expectations |
| Team level | Collaboration, tasks, communication, ownership |
| Individual level | Focus, energy, contributions, feedback |
Flow exists across all aspects:
| Aspect | What flows |
|---|---|
| Customer journeys | Needs → steps → experiences → outcomes |
| Operations | Demands → work → decisions → services → outputs/outcomes |
| Development | Ideas → designs → solutions → value |
| Information systems | Data → signals / impulses / triggers / events → decisions |
| Governance | Intent → guidance → prioritisation |
| Culture | Values → behaviours → norms |
Flow is how the enterprise lives and breathes.
At its core, a flow is a process.
While we may abstract flows into concepts like value streams or customer journeys, what we’re ultimately dealing with is a sequence of activities – a process. The term ‘flow’ emphasises the continuous, dynamic nature of this movement. It’s a simple but powerful way to understand how value moves through an enterprise.
At the end of the day, flow is a process. It may sound abstract, but in practice, flow is simply how work gets done – step by step, from trigger to outcome. We can talk about customer journeys, value streams, capabilities, or systems – but behind every one of them, there is a process. A process is a flow of actions. A process is a flow.
Flow is just a clearer, more human way of seeing that everything moves, and everything happens through a process:
- A customer need becomes a request
- A request becomes an action (activity)
- An action becomes an outcome
- And that sequence is a flow – a process in motion.
Why say “flow” instead of just “process”? Because:
- Flow puts focus on movement, not just steps
- Flow invites us to ask: is it smooth, fast, meaningful?
- Flow helps us see the big picture, across silos
- Flow aligns better with how customers experience our work
Flow is a higher-level, unifying concept. It describes all the meaningful movement of value, needs, work, information, and change in and around the enterprise.
It covers:
- Customer Journey Flow – the customer’s path from need to outcome
- Operational Flow – how the enterprise delivers value day-to-day
- Development Flow – how the enterprise adapts, improves, and evolves
- Decision Flow – how choices and governance move through the system
- Information Flow – how knowledge is shared and used
- Value Flow – the result of it all – value moving toward impact.
A flow is a high-level abstraction of a process, and a customer journey is a specialised form of process focused on the customer’s perspective.
Flow is the pattern that connects. Instead of managing isolated parts (projects, silos, systems), we focus on how everything flows together – from purpose to outcome.
Flow is the enterprise’s “big motion picture” – it shows how everything moves, aligns, and delivers.
We can call it a process, a journey, or a value stream. But when it works – when it really delivers - it flows.
In practice, the flow is the process – and the process is the flow.
Understanding Enterprise Flow as a concept
Why is understanding the Enterprise Flow essential?
What is the (business) case for Enterprise Flow: why it matters?
Why focus on Enterprise Flow: what’s the value?
Here are a few answers:
- Understand the whole: what is the behaviour and structure of our enterprise?
- See how everything is connected: customer journeys, operations, development, teams, and applications.
- See how customers actually experience the business
- Understand how customers use our services and products, and how they connect to our internal operational processes.
- Make the business visible
- Reveal how enterprise actually works, how value flows through people, processes, and platforms.
- Clarify how development supports the business
- Align development with real operational needs, not just technical ideas or internal requests.
- Create a shared map of change
- Visualising the overall flow makes it easier to plan improvements, onboard people, and communicate strategy.
- Improve Communication and Collaboration
- Help teams talk the same language and work toward the same goals – no more working in silos.
We analyse and visualise the Enterprise Flow to understand how value moves – so we can improve how customers are served, how people work, and how the business evolves.
Enterprise Value Flow Manifesto
Too many enterprises are fragmented. Strategy, business units, customer experience, business operations, and technology pull in different directions. As a result, customer value is lost, employee energy is wasted, and change feels chaotic.
There’s a better way:
to design and develop enterprises as coherent, living systems – shaped by real customer needs, business purpose, and continuous flow of value.
The purpose is to:
- Deliver the right value to the right people at the right time
- Build a deep connection between strategy, design, and delivery
- Shift from organisational silos to systemic flow
- Reduce waste and failure demand
- Align capabilities and teams around value streams
- Make the enterprise visible, composable, and adaptable
Values and principles:
- Value is not delivered in functions, but in flows
- Customer journeys and business capabilities must co-evolve
- Enterprises must be designed with intention, not inherited by default
- Enterprise Design is not architecture or UX – it’s the discipline of aligning everything for value
- Visual, shared models like EDGY are essential for shared understanding
- Everyone deserves to see how their work fits into the bigger picture
Practices, tools and methods:
- Visualise enterprise design with the EDGY visual language
- Align value flows, capabilities, and teams
- Combine service design with strategic business architecture
- Make sense of complexity using maps and views such as service blueprints, capability maps, Milky Way Enterprise maps.
- Guide transformation with Enterprise Design.
Everybody’s invited:
Enterprise Value Flow movement is an inclusive, cross-disciplinary, and collaborative. We are strategists, designers, architects, developers, researchers, and change-makers. We work across silos, across disciplines, and across perspectives.
The Enterprise Value Flow is not just a framework. It’s a way of thinking, seeing, and shaping the enterprise. A movement for everyone who wants to make business better – by design.
Enterprise Value Flow is a movement for coherent, customer-centered, value-driven enterprises.
Enterprise Flow as a Brand
Enterprise Flow is a holistic way to understand and improve how value moves through an enterprise – across customer journeys, operations, and development. It connects strategy to execution, breaks silos, and aligns people, processes, and systems around real customer and business outcomes. By making flows visible and actionable, Enterprise Flow helps enterprises work smarter, adapt faster, and deliver better experiences – together.
Enterprise Flow is a way of seeing, designing, and improving how value flows through an enterprise – from customer journeys to operations and development. It helps everyone focus on what matters most: creating better experiences and real outcomes – for creating better enterprises.
Enterprise Flow is not just a model – it’s a way of thinking, working, and improving together.
Enterprise Flow Executive Summary
Enterprise Flow is important because it helps the whole enterprise work together to deliver better value, faster – to customers, employees, and the business.
Why it matters:
- It puts customer experience first
- In fragmented enterprises, customers feel the pain first. Enterprise Flow aligns all parts of the business – strategy, operations, and development – around customer journeys and outcomes. It helps ensure that what we do internally actually improves what people experience externally.
- It connects strategy to daily work
- Many teams don’t see how their work fits into the bigger picture. Enterprise Flow helps connect high-level goals to frontline execution. It brings clarity and alignment to all levels, so people can work with purpose – not just complete tasks.
- It breaks down silos
- Silos slow down decisions and create duplicate effort. Enterprise Flow encourages collaboration across business units and teams. It focuses on how value moves across the enterprise, not just within one function.
- It improves speed, adaptability and agility
- Enterprises need to respond faster to change. Enterprise Flow helps us to see where work gets stuck, where value leaks, and how to fix it. It makes the whole enterprise more responsive and resilent, not just individual teams.
- It supports smarter investments
- It’s not about doing more – it’s about doing what matters. Doing the right things, at the right time, with the right people involved. With clear flow, we can prioritise better: which journeys to improve, which capabilities to strengthen, which applications (systems) to modernise. This avoids waste and boosts ROI.
- It builds a shared culture
- People want meaning in their work. Enterprise Flow fosters a flow mindset and culture – where teams are connected by purpose, not just process. Everyone understands how their work contributes to something bigger.
In Summary:
Enterprise Flow is how we move from effort to impact – together. It brings coherence, speed, and focus to the entire enterprise by aligning around what matters most: creating meaningful value through better experiences.
References
[1] Intersection Group pages, https://intersection.group
[2] Enterprise Design with EDGY pages, https://enterprise.design/
[3] EDGY language foundations, book, 2023, (available as pdf), link
[4] EDGY 23 Language Foundations, Online course (4 weeks), Milan Guenther & Wolfgang Goebl, link
[5] Enterprise Design Patterns, Intersection Group book, 2020, (available as pdf), link
[6] EDGY 23 product release, launch on 29th March 2023, webinar recording, Milan Guenther & Wolfgang Goebl, link
[7] EDGY Cookbook (pdf), https://hosiaisluoma.fi/Enterprise-Design-Cookbook.pdf
— Eero Hosiaisluoma