Overview
Relationships are the connective tissue of Segflow’s strategic system. They define how bets (initiatives) and metrics (outcomes) influence each other — forming the structural backbone for how strategy is analysed, visualised, and reasoned about.
Every Flow Board is built on these relationships. They turn isolated data points into a system of cause and effect, enabling teams to move from observation to understanding — and from intuition to structured reasoning.
Relationships are what make the Strategy Graph intelligent — they transform static plans and metrics into a dynamic, analysable network.
Why Relationships Matter
Without relationships, bets and metrics exist as disconnected artifacts. You can see what is happening, but not why.
By defining relationships, you:
- Connect effort to impact
- Understand dependencies across initiatives
- Reveal feedback loops that create compounding growth
- Provide the foundation for all strategic analyses
- Preserve coherence between distributed boards
Relationships make the invisible visible — describing how strategy actually works beneath the surface.
Types of Relationships
Relationships describe directional influence between entities. Each has a source, a target, and a type that defines the nature of influence.
| Type | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Bet → Metric | A bet contributes to or affects a metric. | “Improve onboarding increases signup conversion.” |
| Metric → Metric | One metric influences another — basis for causal and driver analyses. | “Activation rate drives retention rate.” |
| Bet → Bet | One initiative enables or depends on another. | “Infrastructure upgrade enables mobile relaunch.” |
| Metric → Bet | A metric constrains or enables progress on an initiative. | “API uptime enables performance improvements.” |
Relationship Attributes
Each relationship type carries specific analytical attributes, determined by the kinds of entities it connects. Segflow automatically adjusts what metadata and analyses apply based on whether you’re connecting bets, metrics, or both.
1. Bet → Metric
Describes how an initiative (Bet) is expected to influence an outcome (Metric). Used in Bet Impact Analysis and Growth Loop Analysis.
Attributes
- Impact Direction:
positive,negative,neutral - Confidence Level:
low,medium,high - Reach: estimated proportion of users or systems affected
- Lag: expected delay between cause and effect
- Relationship Type:
contributes_to,drives,enables,blocks,depends_on
2. Metric → Metric
Describes correlative relationships between outcomes. Used in Driver Analysis and Growth Loop Analysis.
For metric-to-metric links, the Pearson correlation helps Segflow measure analytical confidence — distinguishing perceived influence from actual data correlation.
3. Bet → Bet
Describes dependencies or sequencing between initiatives. Used for roadmap coherence, cross-team coordination, and dependency mapping.
Attributes
- Type:
depends on,blocks,enables,affects,leads to,correlates with,aligns with,contributes to,maps to,part of,produces,consumes,mitigates,duplicates - Confidence: optional — qualitative (based on delivery risk)
- Lag: optional — may represent project sequencing
How Relationships Power the System
1. Analytical Foundation
Relationships define the logic for all Strategic Analyses — powering calculations of impact strength, correlation, and systemic influence.
2. Cross-Board Integration
A bet or metric can appear in multiple Flow Boards. Segflow unifies its relationships across contexts to provide a 360° view of its system role.
3. Strategy Graph
All relationships form the Strategy Graph — a living, organisation-wide map of causes, effects, and dependencies that Segflow uses to detect conflicts, overlaps, and leverage points.
Relationship Management
When viewing any bet or metric, you can inspect all its relationships across all boards.
This view helps teams:
- Understand an initiative’s system context
- Identify which metrics or bets it touches across teams
- Spot dependency risks early
- Trace how one change cascades through related metrics
All relationships are two-way visible — if a bet connects to a metric, that same link is visible when viewing the metric. This ensures transparency and coherence.
Avoiding Conflicts Between Boards
As organisations scale, multiple teams may work with overlapping metrics or initiatives. Without unified relationships, this leads to fragmentation.
Segflow prevents this by:
- Recognising duplicate entities across boards
- Unifying relationships into a single source of truth
- Highlighting divergent assumptions
- Providing visibility into dependencies across teams
Best Practices
- Be explicit about intent. Define if the relationship is causal, enabling, or blocking.
- Use confidence and lag. These make analyses statistically meaningful.
- Review quarterly. Validate assumptions as data evolves.
- Avoid redundancy. Each relationship should represent a distinct influence.
- Encourage shared context. If multiple teams affect the same metric, align on relationship structure.
Summary
Relationships between bets and metrics form the foundation of Segflow’s strategic intelligence. They link effort to impact and describe how your strategy behaves as a system.
By mapping these relationships — within and across Flow Boards — Segflow constructs a Strategy Graph that powers every analysis, quantifies influence, and keeps your organisation’s strategy coherent, measurable, and alive.