Across any organization, there are countless work processes happening at the same time and many pitfalls to slow them down. Think of them as thousands of boats leaving one port and heading towards another, with many stops along the way.

“If these boats don’t have the optimal travelling conditions, they won't reach their destination at the speed they need to. Value stream mapping lets us look at these pitfalls and remove these hinders,” Karen-Maria Andersson explains.

When you can’t find the right match, why not develop your own? The idea for a digital version of the brown paper has been on Karen-Maria and Thorjan’s minds ever since they began mapping processes. But it wasn’t until our 2020 virtual summer interns entered the stage that the idea became an actual product – which has now turned into Flyt. 

Prototyping by summer interns

Before the virtual summer internships of 2020, Thorjan was asked to pitch an idea for projects the students could work on. He pitched the idea to make a value stream mapping software, which resulted in a team of 6 students working on developing just that during their 6-week internship. 

While they had funding in place, it was far from a massive budget. They needed to be very focused on what they spent time and money on. This meant that the experts, in this case Thorjan and Karen-Maria, really had to understand how software development works and means – and vice versa.

Coming to a mutual understanding

Developers got to work in January of 2021, and in less than a year Flyt has already amassed 400 users. Their shared understanding comes in many forms, but one of the most important ones is creating a shared language. After all, the world of software development and Lean tools is riddled with terms, so you need to make sure everyone is on the same page.

Translating logic

Magnus Grimstvedt Saltnes works on the back end of Flyt and explains that the API it all runs on is a relatively simple REST API, but it’s still a challenge to make all the moving parts work together. 

Flyt runs on our own PaaS Radix. The team also has a large focus on user feedback, making it quick and easy for users to provide them with feedback or requests for new feature, frontend developer Henry Skorpe Sjøen tells us:

Opening up the source

Transparency affects more than just the feedback process – it also affects the code. In Equinor, we believe that if the code can be open source – it should be. So, if you’re interested, you can easily look at the code at the Flyt GitHub repo. 

Henry tells us that one side-effect is more secure code, because you’re less likely to take any shortcuts that could be a security risk. 

Most of the other components the team uses are also open source. This lets them easily review the code for any component they’re implementing, and popular projects have thousands of users that already reviewed the component’s code.

“By exposing our own code, we can more quickly find flaws or holes in our own work. In the long run, open source makes our code more secure and more efficient,” Henry says.

He’s been joined on the frontend development of Flyt by Equinor graduate Marta Benthem Muñiz. She explains that while the surface of Flyt can look quite simple, it doesn’t mean that making it all work is easy. 

Shaping an intuitive experience 

Line Due-Olsen works with UX design on Flyt and tells us that when designing Flyt, she sought inspiration from other similar tools in order to get the setup just right. While certain design elements had to be created from scratch, the team has incorporated a lot of elements from the Equinor Design System.

She explains that when working with design, you want to approach the tasks from a user centered design perspective. This process consists of several phases, from specifying the context and requirements to creating design solutions and then evaluating the design before developing.

“These are all steps we take into consideration when designing for Flyt. We usually start off by discussing new functionalities with our product owners or take user feedback into consideration,” Line explains.

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