Value Stream Thinking is taking off.

It's not new, but over the last few years there's been a ton of growth in the ecosystem not just across every industry, and across every company activity as well.

When you see your company as a collection of interconnected value streams, the potential here is just showing the start of a complete evolution into an operating model that not only delivers on agility, value, and innovation, but every positive outcome available.

More at valuestream.link

2021 is about 3 themes for me: Clarity, Value, and Flow

Clarity of clear outcomes and end-to-end visibility
Value of a customer focus, and value stream thinking
Flow of work, info, communications, and value - forgetting the org chart and living in the value streams

In a nutshell, understanding that your org is not your org chart, it's a collection of value streams first and foremost, and once you start thinking that way everything starts to flow together in the right direction.

The hard part of mapping shouldn't be laying out the map! Focus on facilitating the most productive workshop. As in everything, the human aspect is the most challenging.

You can (and should!) go much deeper than this by adding tooling, artifacts, dependencies, quality, and value data, but start small and focus on getting the right information from stakeholders.

Using a simple approach to mapping not only makes it easier to produce, it's easier to understand. I've heard too many cases of teams stuck in a room for 4 days, producing maps with hundreds of steps, only to finish with something nobody could understand. Never mind that nobody wanted to ever do it again. Lower the bar for everyone, start small and build on the wins you gain from a simple approach.

Just start mapping!

Of course, if you want to get the best results, I'm just a message away :]

Bob Davis had an excellent conversation recently with Phil Alsop on Value Stream Management benefits for People, ROI, Time to Market, Adaptability, and more.

If you're looking for 'Convince your boss' material, Bob covers a ton of valuable territory here.

I'm so excited to be a part of this event and chatting with Christine Spang about scaling engineering organizations!

CTO Craft Con is 21 sessions from "Measuring Engineering Performance", "Metrics to Determine Platform Efficiency", "Dual-Track and Scaling Agile" and "Hiring in Hypergrowth". Check out the full speaker lineup featuring 40 of the world's best leaders.

Get your tickets [with a limited time discount!] here
http://bit.ly/30TnNrb

Today I was reminded of the origins of the Rose Diagram, and how Florence Nightingale used data to paint a picture, tell a story, and drive change.

The ability to take insight and share it is so powerful. It can truly make the difference to overcome indifference.

Check out the full story here: https://lnkd.in/gC_FjeJ

Just out! My conversation with Brian Dawson on Value Streams, Value Stream Thinking, and Flow Engineering.

"Pursue value. Exactly. So instead of automating everything, automate the things that drive the most value. Really be intentional about things like automation, because it does not come for free, and it is always at the cost of something else that you could be automating. Priority matters and value matters."

We cover:
- Getting out of a change stall
- Beyond DevOps
- Value Stream origins
- Value Stream Management opportunities and gaps
- How I started to think of flow
- Graduated complexity
- Starting from outcomes
- The 4x4 Method
- DevOps
- Jeff Keyes' great value stream ebook

And Brian and I generally just geek out together, which was a ton of fun :]

Thanks CloudBees for making the chat happen!

link: https://vzbl.io/717e70b0

We spend a lot of time asking why things don't work, but we rarely ask why things work.

It's interesting to consider that the most powerful, actionable parts of agile, Kanban, Scrum, and DevOps are just classic lean under the hood.

"Agile methods were developed by assembling the best practices from successful projects. While the combinations of best practices found in agile methods exhibit the core values and principles of a lean approach, it can be difficult to understand the reasons why agile processes work just from examining their practices…​

Mapping agile practices to lean concepts such as value, flow, pull and waste can help explain why agile works, and offer new insights to guide process improvements."
— Paul Hodgetts, Lean is More

Spent some time this morning digging into DSDM a bit and didn't get far before tripping over the basics.

First thing I noticed beyond a bunch of heavy and confusing material is that it seems very problematic to build a house based on common sense and pragmatism.

We all know those two things are notoriously absent from the world, nebulous at best, and elusive even when sought 😄

It's admirable that these terms are clearly defined, but that doesn't make them any more realistic. Specifically admirable is the specific avoidance of dogma by focusing on pragmatism. Sounds great. Then in the next breath it's communicated that Time, Cost, and Quality must always be fixed. What should we call that if we wanted to avoid the word dogma?

I'm not saying these things should be constantly sacrificed, but isn't it often extremely pragmatic to compromise? What percentage of DSDM projects succeed if deadlines, cost, and quality must always be exact to plan?

Please let me know!

Finally, the icing on the cake of this exercise was the cookie banner, where, if you don't feel like accepting all of their undefined cookies, you get kicked to the wikipedia page for cookies! 😙Absolutely delightful. 10/10 experience. 😌Common sense and pragmatism for everyone.

Hey folks, I've been running into this mental model challenge more and more recently. Thinking about how to explain how we got here, and how we've struggled for so long with agility and really getting value from technology and innovation. So I drew it out to share with y'all.

It seems to me that everything up to very recently has either been driven by, or in response to project orientation. Even DevOps has been confused by being positioned on this mindset foundation, and I think it's a huge reason that organizations fail in their efforts (beyond the basics).

Even with flow-focused approaches like Kanban, if they're used on a project-oriented foundation, they're going to fail over the long term. Often times, even in the best cases, Kanban is only used in a narrow, software development context, ignoring the larger value stream.

I think this is a huge factor in why we struggle and why we fail with these approaches. What do you think? What am I missing?