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Showing posts with the label Value Stream Mapping

Filling the Process and Framework Skills Gap

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

We are the World Leader for Value Stream Mapping?

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

ITIL® 4 and the Evolving Role of Roles

By Donna Knapp In the context of work, a role is typically defined as a set of responsibilities, activities and authorities granted to a person or team. While a role can, at times, represent a full-time job, this is not always the case. In the course of our work, many of us play different roles (i.e., we wear different hats). For example, we may play different roles within our teams (e.g., team lead or team member), or within practices (or processes) (e.g., practice owner, process owner, or practice/process practitioner), or in the context of a framework or methodology (e.g., customer, user, or sponsor; or product owner, scrum master, or scrum team member). Roles are important because they provide greater flexibility than job descriptions, which are often bound to formalized performance plans and perhaps even to contracts. This flexibility is important because organizations are increasingly adopting operating models that are more evolutionary and less structured than most companies h

The Mythical Value Stream Manager

Guest Host Post by Mike Orzen, previously posted on Mike’s Blog ,  March 25, 2021 For decades, the lean community has been talking about the importance of creating and managing customer value across the value stream. A value stream is comprised of all the activities performed to create, manage and deliver value to customers. It includes all the wasteful and broken processes we have come to accept as inherent in the way the work gets done. A key player who focuses on coordinating and aligning the efforts of all pieces of the value stream is the value stream manager. Their goal is to get everyone working together and aligned toward the common goal of optimizing their entire value stream. I like to call this character the “mythical value stream manager” because they are described in books but seldom seen in the wild – much like a unicorn. This person is the master coordinator among silos, conflicting priorities, constrained resources, and localized performance. No small task as most peo

Optimizing Value Streams and Processes

Value streams are getting a lot of attention these days for a couple of reasons. One is that value streams allow us to identify opportunities to minimize waste or bottlenecks across organizations, processes and functional silos, and to improve the flow of value. Organizations adopting DevOps , for example, are using value stream mapping as a way to improve the flow of activities during the software development lifecycle, and to improve cross-functional collaboration. Another reason is that value streams direct our attention to what customers value. For example, organizations can use value stream mapping to streamline new product development activities, improve time-based measures such as lead time and time to market, and identify ways to improve product quality. They can also use it to streamline the activities involved in integrating a new employee into the company and its culture. What these both have in common is that the focus is on optimizing the value-adding activities; with the

Culture Hack Required!

The risk is below the water and we are headed right towards it. Organizational Transformations, Business Transformations and IT Transformations are all at their very core really CULTURE Transformations!  Ok friends, I’ve loaded this one up. For a deeper dive into some of the topics addressed in this blog, be sure to click on the embedded­­ links provided. Culture must be considered to Drive Stakeholder Value - This is POWERFUL! Think about how a culture shift  enables the following: Mapping the customer journey with all touchpoints and interactions. You can potentially map the customer journey and map the stakeholder’s roles and responsibilities brilliantly, but what about the cultural shift to enable these stakeholders? Without it we will likely fall short of our goals. If we have any hope of converting demand into value via IT-enabled services – culture is key!  Properly designing XLAs , SLAs and meaningful measurement models.  Without culture, the risk is high

ITIL® 4 Service Value System and DevOps

The Service Value System (SVS) and Service Value Chain as indicated in ITIL 4 Best Practices give you the big picture macro view that should be the start of every DevOps Pipeline . Without it, you could get swept into the undercurrent and potentially focus too much effort or misdirect resources towards the technical and automation aspects of continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD).  Components of the SVS include:  The ITIL4 Guiding Principles, Governance, The Service Value Chain, Practices, and Continual Improvement. A Service Value Chain and Value Stream Mapping (VSM) exercise provides all stakeholders with a high-level view of the end-to-end steps required for your DevOps Pipeline. Applying the concept of “Systems Thinking” to the overall CI/CD Pipeline is critical but without including the information/data and flow of work we truly miss the mark. This is where Lean  principles and VSM are helpful.  Notice in the above image from our Value Stream

ITIL 4 Guiding Principles - Keep It Simple - Take Two

If there is a way to make something complex it seems like we as IT Service Providers have that technique down to an art. Last week an ITIL 4 Foundation student asked, “Why is that?" The human brain is an intricate organ weighing on average about three pounds. There are about eleven billion neurons and one hundred trillion connections in your brain. The brain is the command central of everything that we think, everything you say and yes, of every solution that we might come up with. Our brain is thirsty for information. The more information we allow in the more eager our brain gets. This cycle generates a demand for stimulation. The more complex something becomes, the more stimulated our brain becomes. Hmmm, this might explain why so many become addicted to tech!     This guiding principle “Keep IT Simple” is just that… SIMPLE! The difficult task is going to be how do we ensure that we have “Just Enough” process and governance moving forward but also how do w

DevOps Leaders Take Action – Key Takeaways

Education, learning and certifications are necessary. Taking ACTION shapes our world. Getting certified is certainly valuable for career driven DevOps practitioners and leaders but what is most rewarding is listening to attendees of the course talk about the results and key take aways. Below are examples of key take aways from learners who attended a recent DevOps Leader course from the ITSM Academy’s DevOps Campus. Read through them. Get some tips for your DevOps leadership! Be inspired and take action! I liked the shared practices and discussion in class for the idea of figuring out who the "friends" of DevOps are. What I learned in this class will stay with me forever. Our value stream maps (VSM) are very detailed and complex. Therefore, I plan to go back and simplify our VSM’s so that we are seeing the highest-level view of the value stream. I learned from the VSM activity in this class how powerful that can be. This will allow us to "sell" the improv

Golden Keys to Unlock Agile Success

Communication and Education before Collaboration  An engineer attending a recent DevOps FND class for certification said “OMGosh! I have been trying to do DevOps and I really did not understand what it really was!” He knew that a self-organizing team was defined as a group of motivated individuals who work together toward a goal, have the authority to take decisions and readily adapt to changing demands. Solutions are derived from inter team collaboration. Innovation is the name of the game for digital transformations. All true but … “authority” without ability is dangerous.  Let’s not forget that before these teams are able to recommend innovative ideas for improvement that we must communicate the strategy and outcomes that deliver value. Also true is the fact that we must educate teams to continuously enhance their skills.  Challenge: During your next virtual or face to face meeting with staff, ask a few questions to validate that all are on the same page. You could as

WARNING! The Titanic is Sinking! Service Providers… Stay CALM & Share!

(DevOps VALUES revisited) We used to talk about the rate of demand for change and how that was forcing service providers to change course.  Service Providers are the current Titanic.  Many believe that they are invincible.  The iceberg today is multifaceted. It is not only speed and quality but the challenge of dynamic business requirements, complexity of new services and rigid silo’s. These all add to the depth and potential threat of this new iceberg.  To avoid sinking, Service Providers must consider the DevOps values and stay C A L M and Share!  There are five DevOps values that will help us avoid the iceberg.  These values include: C - Culture A rigid, “We have always done it this way” culture will break your capability to steer the ship in the direction that you must go to avoid the iceberg.  A Cultural shift will steer your ship in the right direction.  Those shifts include Shift Left Culture – Getting representation for change, compliance, security and operations