How to Design a Flight Level 2 Board for Value Stream Coordination

A Flight Level 2 (FL2) system is a cross-team coordination layer that connects multiple teams working in the same value stream. Its purpose is to make dependencies visible, align work toward shared outcomes, and keep the flow of value moving, without restructuring teams or centralizing control. In practice, an FL2 system provides the missing structure for collaboration across functions, ensuring that strategy doesn't stall between silos.

Let's see how you can create a cross-team coordination system by building a Flight Level 2 board in a Lean PPM tool like Businessmap.

What Is a Flight Level 2 Board?

A Flight Level 2 board is a coordination system.

It connects multiple teams working toward a shared goal - often within a product or service. The board visualizes how work flows across these teams and highlights where alignment, decisions, or intervention are needed.

Unlike team boards (Flight Level 1), which focus on task-level execution, or strategy boards (Flight Level 3), which define direction, Flight Level 2 boards help you:

• Coordinate work that spans teams or domains
• Visualize the current situation across a value stream
• Identify systemic blockers and flow disruptions
• Facilitate meaningful cross-team conversations

How Do You Design a Flight Level 2 Board for Value Stream Coordination?

Designing a Flight Level 2 system involves more than laying out columns and cards. You're designing for outcomes. A successful FL2 system is grounded in five core activities.

1. Define the Outcomes and Measures

Before building the board, clarify what success looks like. Your coordination system should be outcome-driven - not just output-focused.

For example, an FL2 system goal might be:

• Objective: "Build a robust, scalable platform that grows effortlessly with our customers."
• Outcome: Support a 2x increase in concurrent users without degradation of service.
• Throughput: Increase requests per second successfully processed.

In Businessmap, you can create a dedicated workflow view where outcomes and key results are made explicit, allowing teams to track how coordination efforts bring them closer to their desired business results.

These outcome definitions guide every aspect of your FL2 system, including what you visualize, how you interact, and where to make improvements.

Visualizing strategic goals using Outcomes view in Businessmap

2. Visualize the Current Situation

With outcomes in place, the next step is to visualize how work flows across the value stream - not within a team, but across the entire coordination layer.

Start by mapping all the cross-team work that drives your delivery pipeline. With Businessmap's Portfolio Boards, you can structure this layer using custom columns, swimlanes, and initiatives tailored to your value stream. For example, in a product development environment, you might track different types of work at the portfolio level - like prototypes, features, or experiments - and continuously improve them based on market insights or client feedback.

For instance, in a product value stream:

• New feature development might pass through stages like Discovery → Prototyping → Testing → Validation → Release Coordination
• Simultaneously, another swimlane might track ongoing product improvements

Your board should reflect how value is actually delivered. That accuracy is what makes coordination possible.

Visualizing different value streams using Initiatives workflows in Businessmap

3. Limit Work in Progress and Bring Focus

To avoid overloading the system, you need guardrails. Introducing clear limits and policies helps teams focus on progress over motion.

Businessmap supports this focus with several coordination-level capabilities:

• WIP limits to prevent overload across stages or streams
• Work policies that only allow initiatives to begin when the right teams are available
• Entry/exit criteria that ensure items are ready before they move forward

For example, exit criteria from "Discovery" might include completing refinement sessions, dependency checks, and obtaining prioritization approval. These conditions can also trigger Agile interactions, such as syncs or planning meetings, making coordination intentional rather than reactive.

Visualizing work in progress limits and exit criteria for different value streams in a unified view

4. Connect the Value Stream to Delivery

An FL2 system becomes valuable when it connects the coordination layer directly to the teams doing the work.

Businessmap makes this seamless by allowing you to link workflows across levels. Initiatives visualized on the FL2 board can be connected to execution boards owned by Flight Level 1 teams, giving you visibility into who's working on what and where it stands in real-time.

Instead of duplicating work items or requesting updates, stakeholders can trace progress across the delivery system while teams remain focused on execution.

This connection turns your board into a living coordination layer - updated as work progresses, not after the fact.

Visualizing the link between flight level 2 board and individual flight level 1 workflows 

5. Manage Dependencies Across Value Streams

Flight Level 2 systems are not isolated - they live in a network of value streams. One of the biggest advantages of FL2 design is the ability to coordinate across streams, not just within them.

In Businessmap, you can model this multi-stream reality by:

• Linking initiatives between FL2 boards representing different departments or programs
• Visualizing shared dependencies, risk clusters, or resource constraints
• Revealing how progress in one stream impacts timelines in another

This interconnected view creates a real-time map of cross-stream coordination. It enables leadership and delivery managers to align priorities, identify misalignments, and make informed trade-offs based on system-wide visibility.

Visualizing the linking of initiatives between flight level 2 boards

How Do You Set Up Effective Cross-Team Synchronization?

A Flight Level 2 system makes cross-team syncs useful again - not just a calendar drain.

Here's how to make those interactions count:

• Right people: Involve delivery leads, product owners, or system integrators who can speak for teams and resolve issues.
• Right frequency: Weekly syncs for flow, biweekly refinements, monthly retros - tailored to your cadence.
• Right content: Let the board drive the conversation. Focus on blockers, shifting priorities, and new dependencies, not status reporting.
• Right preparation: Ask participants to update their section of the board before the session. Keep meetings short, focused, and decision-oriented.

By grounding these interactions in the FL2 board, you eliminate noise and focus on value delivery coordination, not just project administration.

How Do You Manage Flow from Idea to Customer Across Teams?

Managing flow means seeing the full journey of value.

The FL2 system enables you to:

• Track where initiatives are stalling before execution
• See how upstream discovery connects to downstream delivery
• Spot when items are technically "done" but blocked on legal, compliance, or release
• Tie each initiative back to business outcomes or customer value

Businessmap's integration of Flight Level 2 coordination boards with Flight Level 1 execution boards makes this seamless. You can:

• Drill down from a coordination item into team boards
• Visualize lead time from concept to delivery
• Use custom fields to tag strategic importance, risk level, or customer impact

You're not just pushing work - you're steering flow across the entire system.

Flight Level 2 Is Where Coordination Becomes a System

Flight Level 2 gives you the thinking model to approach it. Businessmap gives you the platform to operationalize it.

By grounding your coordination in outcomes, visualizing real flow, creating intentional focus, synchronizing, and continually improving, you make the conditions for strategy to move through your organization with clarity and speed.