By Donna Knapp For many organizations, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed one of two ends of a spectrum: poorly defined processes, or overly-rigorous processes. At either end of the spectrum, these organizations likely struggled to adapt as the pandemic impacted our lives. For those with poorly defined processes, things were probably pretty chaotic. For those with overly-rigorous processes, things were most certainly taking way too long. Even organizations with well-defined processes felt, and continue to feel, pressure to speed up the flow of work, minimize toil, and automate processes where possible. To do this, they must develop a culture of continuous improvement and learning. Continuous improvement is an ongoing effort to improve all aspects of an organization; its people, processes, tools, products, services, and experiences… all of which are tightly integrated. Whether improvements are large or small, what matters most is that they are constant. The highest performing organizations a
Recently, I am hearing things like “We are the World Leader for Value Stream Mapping” from vendors and managed service providers alike. Why? I thought. Value Stream Mapping (VSM) was originally introduced in 1996. Why is this becoming such a hot item again now? Other tag lines and mantras that you are likely to hear are things like: Experience Management is an Evolution Speed to Value not Time to Market Without continuous flow, continuous integration Continuous Delivery are just an aspire! From Milestones To a Continuous Quality Assurance Flow Shift Left, and Green to Green Every IT executive, manager, or practitioner can surely add to this list. I thought about these and other new ways of thinking and realized we are moving beyond Digital Transformations and understood that true success for any delivery cycle will require Flow Engineering. Without continuous flow service providers are likely not going to be able to meet business and customer requirements