Editor’s note
“Scenius stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. It is the communal form of the concept of the genius.” —Brian Eno
Following the release of our CEO Mik’s book Project to Product in November 2018, we have been blown away by the response from the IT industry and beyond. As Mik said in a recent blog, “I have learned just how open, far-reaching, and fast-moving the scenius that Gene Kim has willed into being through the DevOps Enterprise community is. For example, I have seen individual comments and tweets make it into multiple plenary talks in a matter of days. In other words, speakers not only pay attention to other scenius members, they also incorporate the broader communities’ insights into their talks.”
The author of this blog, Willy-Peter Schaub, is one such member of this thriving community and has written a series of posts in response to the themes and message of Project to Product. Willy is a former Senior Program Manager for the Visual Studio ALM Rangers at Microsoft, and is currently Agile, DevOps, Bits & Bytes Software Engineer and Director at AJATO Transformation Ltd. He has kindly given us permission to share these with you over the coming the weeks.
Get you in touch if you would like to share your review and experience of Project to Product and the Flow Framework™ – Patrick Anderson
The ALM | DevOps Rangers introduced the basics of Value Stream Mapping, a lean management method that identifies and visualizes production events.
As stated by Hamid Shahid, the community was looking for ways to improve from a “come with goods most of the time” delivery model, to one that continuously delivers value.
I had a unique opportunity to be at the heart of the discussions around the process, inefficiencies, and ways to reduce waste. The outcome was a rather scary value stream map, as covered in Value Stream Mapping for ALM Ranger’s VSTS Extensions Work Stream.
I was excited, because we found a platter of inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and potential improvements that would allow us to reduce waste, fine tune our pipelines, and then delight the users of our guidance and tooling continuously. However, excitement turned to frustration as I watched the team’s energy and hours of productive discussions fade. A common pitfall of value stream mapping appeared. We mapped our value streams, but we did not manage them.
When Wesley Coelho, from Tasktop, mentioned that they were working on a book that explored a Flow Framework™ for value stream management, I was both intrigued and excited. When I received an unedited manuscript of the Project to Product book, authored by Mik Kersten, I parked all other reading material.
The book is an infectious read, based on real-world experiences and realizations, and “offers a kernel of hope” for organization embarking on a digital transformation. Hopefully, it will even reenergize the Rangers quest to embrace their value streams.
In the next couple of posts, I will share my personal thoughts and align learnings with the ALM | DevOps Rangers, based on the three parts of Mik Kersten’s book – Flow Framework™, Value Stream Metrics, and Value Stream Networks.
This blog was originally posted on Willy-Peter Schaub’s website on 22nd October 2018.
The Flow Framework™ is a framework created by Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop Technologies Incorporated (“Tasktop”). The Flow Framework™ diagrams, images, graphics and other materials referenced herein in relation to the Flow Framework™ is protected by copyright laws and may not be copied, modified or distributed without the express written permission of Tasktop.
Tasktop® and the Flow Framework™ are trademarks of Tasktop Technologies Incorporated.
