The Lakede Development Framework is my go-to blueprint for turning scattered ideas into shipped outcomes. It blends lean execution with systems thinking so that teams can move fast without breaking context. In this guide, I’ll map the framework’s structure, show how strategy flows into day‑to‑day work, and share success patterns you can reuse.
What Is Lakede? The Core Model
Lakede is built around five layers that connect vision to results:
- Lens: A shared way to see the problem and the opportunity
- Architecture: Guardrails, domain boundaries, and platform choices
- Kinetics: How work moves—cadences, queues, and flow states
- Experiments: Hypotheses, metrics, and learning loops
- Delivery: Releases, quality bars, and feedback integration
Why this structure works
- It keeps strategy alive at every level instead of trapped in a slide deck.
- It treats speed as flow efficiency, not just more hours or headcount.
- It bakes measurement into the loop so learning compounds.
Strategy That Breathes: From North Star to Next Sprint
A plan that can’t change is a plan that won’t survive. In Lakede, strategy is a living stack:
1) North Star and Outcomes
- Define a single North Star Metric that signals real customer value.
- Pair it with three Outcome Metrics (leading indicators) you can influence weekly.
2) Bet Portfolio
- Frame initiatives as “bets” with explicit upside, risks, and timebox.
- Maintain a balanced mix: foundational (enable future speed), growth (drive the metric), and learning (reduce uncertainty).
3) Operating Rhythm
- Quarterly: Shape the portfolio, retire bets, add new ones.
- Monthly: Reallocate capacity based on signals.
- Weekly: Sprint plans tie directly to bet hypotheses and metrics.
The Structure: Teams, Domains, and Interfaces
Lakede favors small, accountable units with crisp boundaries.
Team topology
- Value Stream Squads: Cross‑functional teams owning a customer journey slice.
- Platform Guilds: Specialists who own shared services (auth, data, payments).
- Enablement Cells: Tools and DX wizards who unlock delivery speed.
Domain boundaries
- Explicit contracts: APIs, schemas, and SLAs are artifacts, not folklore.
- Autonomy with alignment: Teams decide “how,” leadership defines “why.”
- Change isolation: Strive for change in one domain without shrapnel in others.
Interfaces that scale
- Versioned APIs with deprecation windows.
- Consumer‑driven contracts to prevent breaking callers.
- Golden paths: Opinionated templates that make the right thing the easy thing.
Kinetics: How Work Flows
Movement is the message. Lakede optimizes for flow, not frantic motion.
Intake and triage
- Funnel all work through a single intake, tagged by domain and bet.
- Triage daily; reject or reshape work that doesn’t map to outcomes.
WIP discipline
- Constrain work‑in‑progress to surface bottlenecks.
- Use pull systems; avoid heroics and expedite lanes except for true incidents.
Cadence and visibility
- Daily: thin standups focused on flow blockers, not status theater.
- Weekly: demo what shipped; decide what stops, starts, or continues.
- Async: dashboards that show outcomes, flow load, and quality.
Experiments: Make Learning Inevitable
Lakede treats every meaningful change as a hypothesis.
Hypothesis framing
- If we [intervention], then [user behavior] will change, measured by [metric], because [insight].
Test design
- Favor minimum viable experiments (MVXs) over full builds.
- Use A/B, feature flags, or synthetic traffic where possible.
- Pre‑register guardrails: performance, error budgets, and ethical limits.
Evidence and decisions
- Timebox experiments; decide: scale, pivot, or sunset.
- Archive learnings in a searchable log; future you will thank you.
Delivery: From Clean Diffs to Confident Releases
Shipping is a habit. In Lakede, delivery is engineered for repeatability.
Engineering practices
- Trunk‑based development with short‑lived branches.
- Progressive delivery: canary, staged rollouts, and auto‑rollback.
Quality signals
- Unit, contract, and property‑based tests for critical paths.
- Observability first: structured logs, traces, and SLOs wired from day one.
Feedback loops
- In‑app prompts, session replays, and support signals feed the backlog.
- Post‑release reviews focus on flow and learning, not blame.
Strategy-in-Action: A Sample Playbook
Let me show how the pieces fit using a hypothetical feature launch.
The scenario
- Goal: Lift activation by 10% for new signups in Q2.
- Bet: Guided onboarding with personalized checklists.
The moves
- Lens: New users stall at step 2; friction is hidden in setup.
- Architecture: Add a lightweight checklist service; events stream to analytics.
- Kinetics: Limit WIP to checklist MVP, push other work to backlog.
- Experiment: A/B test guided vs. classic onboarding for 20% traffic.
- Delivery: Flagged rollout, SLO: <1% error, TTI < 2s.
The outcome
- Decision gate at week 4: if guided onboarding lifts Day‑2 retention by ≥6%, scale to 100%; else pivot to education emails.
Governance Without Drag
Lakede keeps governance light but effective.
Risk controls
- Pre‑approved guardrails for privacy, security, and accessibility.
- Incident severities with playbooks and on‑call ownership.
Investment reviews
- Portfolio health checks: capacity split across foundational/growth/learning.
- Kill criteria: clear rules for sunsetting zombies.
Scaling the Framework Across Teams
Frameworks fail when they rely on heroes. Lakede scales by design.
Templates and tooling
- Repo templates for services with observability and CI wired in.
- Bet brief templates that auto‑generate dashboards.
Leadership behaviors
- Leaders narrate intent, not tasks.
- Celebrate learning velocity and deleted code, not line counts.
Cultural anchors
- Default to openness: RFCs in the open, public demos, searchable decisions.
- Psychological safety: dissent welcomed; curiosity is currency.
Measuring Success the Lakede Way
What gets measured improves—if you measure the right things.
Outcome metrics
- North Star, plus three leading indicators mapped to user value.
- Customer‑centric quality: failed sessions, time‑to‑value, task success rate.
Flow metrics
- Lead time for changes, deployment frequency, change fail rate, MTTR.
- WIP and queue aging to find and fix flow debt.
Learning metrics
- Experiment cycle time, adoption of learnings, percent of code behind flags.
Getting Started in Two Weeks
You don’t need a reorg. Start small, then expand.
Week 1
- Define the North Star and pick three outcomes.
- Inventory work; map to bets; kill or pause orphans.
- Establish a single intake and WIP limits.
Week 2
- Stand up templates, tracking, and dashboards.
- Ship one MVX aligned to a bet; review evidence on Friday.
- Write down what you’ll stop doing next week.
Final Thoughts
Lakede isn’t another heavyweight process. It’s a clear path from strategy to shipped value, with learning baked in. Start with one team, track the signals, and let results pull the framework across the org. I’ve seen it reduce chaos, lift morale, and—most importantly—move the needle where it counts.
