Pace layering is term that Gartner came up with and differentiates between the pace of work, or more correctly the time horizons at the different levels of an organisation such as the executive, business unit, and team. Flight levels are similar and are something that Klaus Leopold introduced which has operation, coordination, and strategic which parallel Gartner’s model. From a day to day perspective what we are talking about are the team, the portfolio or product level and strategic. This makes sense as it is how most businesses operate but typically these are not aligned and coordinated with working being pushed and understanding of alignment to the strategic lacking.

When you come to sort this out you really need to start at the team level and get them to a stage where they know their nominal capability and can start pulling work, stories, or epics. This creates a bit of back pressure and makes it clear that product need to have a clear view of their priorities and understand that positioning does not work. Here Patrick Stewart’s Upstream Kanban is worth looking at as it provides a simple mechanism for coordination and alignment at this section level. Finally, this can be aligned to the strategic agenda and what are the business objectives

One of the key things people miss both the temporal nature of the different levels; the operation is at the weeks to month, the portfolio at the month to quarter and the strategic deals with the longer-term direction of the business. This helps people understand what’s important today and what is not as you can’t have 10 things that are important. Bill Jobs asked his managers to list their top ten priorities and would then cut all but the first three. If you have more you’ll find that it is hard to retain objectivity and focus. Having clarity is key to ensuring that the business is agile and not just the development teams!