ELEVATING KATAS™
Elevating Organizations for High Adaptiveness
The Elevating Katas are a set of practices and principles that can be applied as thoughtful experiments to change the organizational structure, processes, policies, and so forth. We are working toward a collection of Elevating Katas that can be applied to get change going, helping to improve any organization in the thoughtful direction of any topology.
Elevating an organization means moving its org design closer to the upper right on the Org Topologies map. Such moves increase the scope of skills and the scope of work mandate of organizational elements. Note that AI now makes elevation much easier, inviting change as never before.
More on Elevation can be learned from the MADE method and articles below.
Towards a Collection of Elevating Katas
Each Kata focuses on a particular area (such as governance, practices, roles, events, or artifacts) and is designed to shift mindsets, structures, or processes in a way that provides incremental, scalable benefits over time. By repeatedly practicing an Elevating Kata, organizations internalize more adaptive behaviors, enhance their management capabilities, and ultimately create a more responsive and learning-oriented culture.
Elevating Katas:
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Expand the “Product” Definition
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Elevate Product Ownership
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Hold Multi-Team Product Backlog Refinement (PBR)
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Slice Work Vertically
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Merge Product Backlogs
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Define Shared "Done"
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Self-Select with Open Space and FAST
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Implement Beyond Budgeting
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Lead with OBEYA Strategically
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Design Tailwind Career Paths
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Apply AI Strategically
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Measure and Improve Value with EBM
Stories from Trenches
Product Owner
"We did this as a team exercise last week, gauging where on the map the teams thought they were. And then we were able to share our vision on where we want to go next. The great thing is that this helped us stay away from good/bad discussions and focus on something as simple as ‘we are here’ and ‘this is where we want to go next’. Which then opens up the floor to everyone to discuss how we want to get there."
Senior Engineering Manager
"We had three engineering teams who had their disconnected scopes, who owned "features", being at A level - and we had product team, who structured the goals in the way if we were (almost) at B level. The Org Topologies™ Map was the key to explaining this gap to both sides."