Go, go, go. That’s the perfect way to describe the ethos of enterprise product delivery. There’s a constant push to make fast even faster, but faster doesn’t always equal better. After all, when you fixate on beating the clock, you rarely take a moment to think about how you’re getting products to market.
That’s why Value Stream Management (VSM) is a game changer for your business playbook. Success is more than getting products out the door as quickly as possible. It involves maximizing value — value that not only enriches your customer experience but also achieves your organization’s biggest goals.
What does value look like?
That’s the first question we ask our VSM clients! What is most valuable to your customers? What is most valuable to the overall success of your organization? Notice the word “overall.” You can have the fastest, most productive product team in the world, but if their work doesn’t impact the bottom line, it doesn’t matter. In fact, Launch by NTT DATA has gained clients that rolled out multiple product features that had zero adoption. That hard work meant nothing.
VSM may be an oldie, but it’s a goodie
VSM is nothing new. It’s been part of teams’ methodologies for decades. The key is to approach it correctly — and that’s where many organizations fall short. VSM empowers you to not only visualize the entire flow of work from initial customer request to final product delivery, but also get a comprehensive understanding of your value stream. Mapping out every step, process, and team is the beginning, but VSM doesn’t end there. The insights your map provides let you identify areas that need improvement so you can eliminate waste, work more efficiently, and deliver better products and features faster. And, of course, part of the process is identifying which data needs to be collected to measure true success on both sides.
In other words, VSM is how you optimize and supercharge your path to higher-quality product delivery. We think of VSM as a blend of people, processes, and technology that takes you from your current state to your ideal state.
Even smaller enterprises can have hundreds of projects in flight simultaneously. You have hundreds of teams with time to deliver new products and features — but without VSM, they don’t know how to optimize their time. VSM provides the clarity and direction they need to make the biggest impact.
As you master VSM, you deliver continuous value to your customers. As an added benefit, VSM sparks a culture of continuous improvement throughout your organization. VSM takes your organization from a process mindset to a product mindset, which helps keep the needs of your customers, your IT/Engineering team, and your overall business in lockstep.
Where many organizations go wrong, though, is trying to master Agile or SAFe® before tackling VSM. That’s the opposite of what you should do. It would be like focusing on the engine performance of a car without wheels. You should start with VSM, collect data insights, and then base your next steps on that information.
Those next steps are critical
To steer your enterprise in the right direction, you need a consolidated team that partners with you to develop and execute your VSM strategy. After all, the best advisory services aren’t worth much if you don’t have the technical chops to bring them to life. We’re so passionate about this full spectrum of VSM that we’ve created a combination of end-to-end experts that go far beyond a group of cloud engineers. We’ve even incorporated experts from industries with particularly nuanced needs, like financial services, health, and government. After all, the best advisory services aren’t worth much if you don’t have the chops to bring them to life. This group of experts will help enterprises navigate to the right outcomes at the right times for their products.
Intrigued to learn more about our approach? Download our eBook, Mastering outcomes, a 10-step guide to effective value stream management.
