Connecting Product Management and Software Engineering

DevOps taught us how to connect our agile development teams with our IT Operations people but it stopped short of reaching out into "the business". When we want to outperform our competitors, a key goal is to accelerate the delivery of customer joy, and DevOps focuses on measuring lead time from code commit, forgetting about the fuzzy front end that comes first as the product is ideated, designed, and built. Value Stream Management (VSM) sees products as end-to-end value streams that start and end with the customer reaching through both product management and software engineering. This is how businesses use VSM today to thrive in the digital age.
- How VSM delivers customer joy and better business outcomes
- How to manage products as value streams
- Who uses VSM and why today

Transcript

1. www.vsmconsortium.org CONNECTING PRODUCT MANAGEMENT AND SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
2. www.vsmconsortium.org Helen Beal Helen Beal is CEO and chair of the Value Stream Management Consortium and co-chair of the OASIS Value Stream Management Interoperability Technical Committee. She is chief ambassador at DevOps Institute (now part of PeopleCert) and chair of the DevNetwork DevOps Advisory Board. She also provides strategic advisory services to DevOps and VSM industry leaders. She is the author of the annual State of VSM Reports from the VSMC and the State of Availability Reports from Moogsoft. She is a co-author of the book about DevOps and governance, Investments Unlimited, published by IT Revolution. She is a DevOps editor for InfoQ, and also writes for a number of other online platforms. Helen hosts the Day-to-Day DevOps webinar series for BrightTalk and serves on advisory and judging boards for many initiatives including Developer Week, DevOps World, JAX DevOps, and InterOp. Bringing joy to work
3. 3 The Value Stream Management Consortium exists to serve the global community adopting VSM-oriented principles and practices. We are a not-for-profit organization funded by our members for our members. It is our purpose to create space for sharing, learning, and discovery about VSM ways of working. It is our goal to support the adoption and implementation of these ways of working with the outcome of organizations evolving to experience higher levels of success in their chosen fields and optimize the delivery of customer joy.
4. www.vsmconsortium.org VALUE STREAM MAPPING VALUE STREAM MANAGEMENT A collaborative exercise A set of practices Human-centric, storytelling, and narrative Tools-centric, science, and insights Opinion-driven, qualitative Insights and data-driven, quantitative Visual collaboration Visibility and continuous inspection Walls and post-it notes (virtual!) Integrations, dashboards and AI Creates and recreates business case Ongoing incremental optimization Highlights waste and assumptions Automates for continuous compliance Dependency identification Dependency mitigation Defines present and future Records past and present Team oriented Organization oriented
5. www.vsmconsortium.org The Challenge 5 Improvement initiatives Huge backlog of changes Need do more with less Need to deliver more value Need to keep talent happy Need to improve quality Need to go faster How?
6. www.vsmconsortium.org Delighted customers mean higher organizational performance Optimizing value flow and realization results in sublime customer experience “Value Stream Management is a combination of people, process and technology that maps, optimizes, visualizes, measures, and governs business value flow through heterogeneous software delivery pipelines from idea through development and into production.” Forrester 6 Value stream management optimizes value flow and realization Managing Value Streams Makes Business Better
7. 7 2024
8. Indicators that VSM adoption is advancing 8 Advancements across the VSM Implementation Roadmap An increase in the practice of creating value hypotheses More organizations organizing around value streams More people aligning to value streams Value being measured more frequently DevOps toolchains increasingly connected to value streams Increased adoption of Value Stream Management Platforms (VSMPs)
10. 10 Empirical evidence that VSM practices correlate with organizational performance—higher levels more likely to: Organize around value streams Be working with digital products and use a VSMP Create value hypotheses—across the full scale of work items Define value hypotheses earlier in the product lifecycle Put the customer first when they think about value Have faster flow and measure value realization Understand and see their organization as a value stream network
12. 12 A value stream is an end-to-end set of activities which collectively creates value for a customer. James Martin, “The Great Transition’ Value The value-stream designers search for ways of achieving “outrageous” improvements in critical measures such as speed, cost, quality, and service. End-to-end The value stream team is concerned with all the activities, from start to delivery of results, and confirmation of satisfaction. Customer The value stream team is intensely focused on the customer (an external customer or an internal user) and is concerned with how to delight the customer.
13. An Example Digital Value Stream Product management Software Engineering Design Market research Design thinking workshops Opportunity identification Business strategy alignment Build business case Define success User testing Refine backlog Develop Test Security GRC CAB Deploy Observe
14. www.vsmconsortium.org CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION Code is created, artifacts incorporated, versions controlled, code is built in a trunk based manner. CONTINUOUS DELIVERY The changes are approved, released and operated in the live environment. CONTINUOUS TESTING Functional and non-functional testing takes place at every commit at every step or gate through route to live. 14 PORTFOLIO AND BACKLOG Vision and goals are set and aligned to epics, features, PBIs and user stories. INSIGHTS AND ANALYSIS Monitoring and observability provide insights into customer reaction to changes and report on value realization. The Value Cycle
15. VSMPs: GLOBAL OPTIMIZATION 15 Value Stream Management Connect planning to delivery Visibility into cross value stream changes Trace user stories as they travel Continuous compliance Manage dependencies while you break them Gain insights into waste; optimize flow Inspect real-time data and adapt
16. MEASURING FLOW: METRICS DEFINITION 16 Lead time: time from code commit to in production. Cycle time: idea registered to change is used by customer.
17. www.vsmconsortium.org Before After Total waste time => 50% Time for innovation, improvement, learning Faster delivery, feedback, pivots Less friction, toil, waiting, context switching Waste Removal = Increased Efficiency and Effectiveness
18. www.vsmconsortium.org Your organization is made of value streams You Exist in a Value Stream Network Define Design Develop Deploy Enable Test Define Design Develop Deploy Enable Test Define Design Develop Deploy Enable Test Define Design Develop Deploy Enable Test Define Design Develop Deploy Enable Test Product A Cloud platform Product B Sales & Marketing APIs Define Design Develop Deploy Enable Test Product C
19. www.vsmconsortium.org 19 Your Organization
21. 21 Connect the digital parts of your product delivery pipeline, aligned to the steps in your value stream map to start getting real-time data & insights into your value stream’s flow Connect Start Get going from wherever you are. Assess Where you are today? Scale your assessment from super-light, to whatever weight you need to spark the depth of evolution you want. Vision Set your long term vision and goals. Identify Identify your value streams—anything that delivers a product or service. You’re aiming to accelerate the flow of value to the customer. Organize Find the people accountable for every step in each value stream. Map Bring the players in your value stream together for a mapping exercise. Find where the idea starts, and track every step until the value is delivered. Inspect You’ve automated your value stream map, now use it! Set goals for your value stream and use retrospectives to determine where you are. Adapt Use your insights to design and perform experiments that adapt and optimize your flow so you can continually delight your customers.
22. www.vsmconsortium.org The Improvement Outcomes Cost: Reduction in how much it costs to deliver value Value: Higher % of your time spent creating value Quality: Better consistency in your results Velocity: Accelerated speed at which you deliver work Capacity: Increased amount of work you can handle Complexity: Reduced cognitive load, dependency & risk
23. www.vsmconsortium.org VSM CAPABILITY MATRIX Dimension Emerging Learning Practicing Evolving Insights-Driven Data manually extracted Data is aggregated Tools have been integrated A single tool connects all parts and automates insights Dependencies Aware of dependencies Managing dependencies Breaking dependencies Loosely coupled/ autonomous teams and systems DevOps Toolchain Building continuous integration Using continuous delivery Architected from idea to value realization Work is traceable around entire cycle - automated value stream map Metrics Incident rate, change fail rate Deployment frequency, MTTR Lead time, cycle time Flow velocity, efficiency, value realized Organizational Starting to use value stream mapping Naming value streams, some roles Teams directed around value streams and customer journeys All teams organized around value streams, dedicated roles 23
24. www.vsmconsortium.org projectoproductsummit Go to: https://vsmconsortium.thinkific.com/ USE CODE: For $50 off Annual Individual Membership to the VSMC 24