Quick Start Guide

Ready to get airborne? This guide walks you through setting up your team and launching your first flight. Most teams are up and running in under fifteen minutes.

Create Your Account

Head to app.agile.flights and sign up with your email and password, or use GitHub or Google OAuth if you prefer. The signup process takes about thirty seconds - no credit card required, no onboarding wizard, no twelve-step profile completion flow.

Once you're in, you'll land on the dashboard. It'll be empty at first - no flights, no teams, just a clean runway waiting for its first departure. That's expected. The dashboard comes alive once you set up your team and start loading flights.

Every new organisation starts on the Free plan, which includes 1 team and up to 5 active flights. That's plenty to get started and evaluate the methodology. When you need more teams or higher flight limits, you can upgrade from your billing settings at any time.

Your profile is minimal by design. A name, an email, and an avatar. Flights doesn't need to know your job title, your department, or your favourite colour. The focus is on what you're building, not on filling out profile fields.

Onboarding Emails

After signing up, you'll receive a series of onboarding emails over your first three weeks. Each email is a short introduction to one part of the Flights methodology - from core principles to launching your first flight - with a link to the relevant handbook page. There are seven emails in total, spread across 21 days.

If you'd rather explore the handbook at your own pace, you can unsubscribe using the link in any email footer. Unsubscribing only stops onboarding emails - you'll still receive important account notifications like team invites and password resets.

Set Up Your Team

From the dashboard, create your first team. Give it a name that your team will recognise - "Platform Engineering," "Growth Squad," "Design Team," whatever fits your organisation. Team names should be clear and specific enough that people know which team to join when they receive an invite.

Next, invite your team members via email. Each person you invite will receive a link to join the team. When they accept, they'll appear in your team roster. You can invite everyone at once or add people as they come on board - there's no requirement to have the full team set up before you start flying.

Assign admin roles to team members who should be able to manage team settings, invite new members, and configure the team's defaults. Most teams have two or three admins - enough that team management doesn't bottleneck on a single person, but not so many that everyone is changing settings at once.

Take a moment to review your team settings. You can configure the default flight duration, which gives new flights a sensible landing date automatically. Fourteen days is a good starting point for most teams. You can always adjust individual flight dates later, but having a default saves time when creating new flights.

Launch Your First Flight

Click "New Flight" from your dashboard. This is where the work begins. Give your flight a clear, specific name - not "Q1 Work" or "Sprint 47," but something that describes what you're actually building. "Rebuild Checkout Flow," "Launch Email Notifications," "Migrate to PostgreSQL." The name should tell anyone in the organisation what this flight is about without needing to read further.

Set your takeoff and landing dates. For your first flight, try two weeks - long enough to accomplish something meaningful but short enough that the deadline feels real. The landing date isn't a hard deadline in the traditional sense. It's a planning tool that helps the team maintain focus and urgency. If you need to adjust it mid-flight, you can.

Assign yourself as captain. For your first flight, the person setting everything up should captain it - you have the most context on the tool and the process, and you can model the role for the rest of the team. On future flights, rotate the captain role so everyone gets experience leading.

Add your initial crates. These are the individual pieces of work that make up the flight. Keep them concrete and actionable - "Design the new checkout page," "Implement Stripe payment intent API," "Write integration tests for payment flow." You don't need to load every crate upfront. Start with the ones you know about and add more as the flight progresses.

Hit takeoff. Your flight is now active and visible on the airport board. The clock is ticking, the crew is assembling, and the work begins.

Invite Your Crew

Add team members to your flight as crew. Each crew member will see the flight on their personal dashboard, along with any crates assigned to them. The flight card shows the crew count, so everyone can see at a glance how many people are on board.

Crew assignments are visible to the entire team. This transparency is intentional - everyone should know who's working on what. If someone is overloaded across multiple flights, it's immediately apparent. If a flight is understaffed, the crew count makes that obvious.

Start working through crates. As crew members complete their work, they mark crates as done. The flight card updates in real time, showing progress toward the objective. The captain monitors overall progress and steps in when blockers arise or priorities need to shift.

When the flight's objective is met - or when the landing date arrives - land the flight. Review what was accomplished, triage any incomplete crates, and celebrate the landing. Then start planning the next one.

That's it. No three-day training course. No certification exam. No consultant engagement. You've launched your first flight and you're using the methodology. From here, the handbook covers everything you need to refine your approach - from role definitions to handling emergencies to scaling across multiple teams. But the best way to learn Flights is to fly.