Value Stream Management

Summary

In this episode of The Value Stream Show, hosts Andrew Davis and Steve Pereira talk about value stream management and the process of improving the end-to-end flow of work in an organization. They discuss the complexity of value stream management and how it can expand the scope of a business or technology to see the big picture, while also addressing concerns in the short term. As the IT world matures, value stream management allows for successful optimization by exposing the work process and its inefficiencies. Andrew and Steve also distinguish the differences between knowledge work and manufacturing it.

Host Bios

Andrew Davis is a DevOps and Salesforce specialist and author of the book Mastering Salesforce DevOps. As Senior Director of Research and Innovation for Copado, he leads methodology and training for Copado's customers and partners. He's spent his life working at the intersection of technology, psychology, and culture change, including 15 years as a Buddhist monk. He's working towards a world in which we can all be at peace amidst constant change, and bring energy, creativity, and care to every part of our work.

Steve Pereira is a veteran of software delivery and operations. He founded Visible Value Stream Consulting in 2018 and serves as a board advisor for the Value Stream Management Consortium, a contributor to the Value Stream Management Interoperability Technical Committee, and as a Value Stream Management strategist for Copado. He’s always looking for ways to bring business and technology together by facilitating visual collaboration.

What You’ll Learn

• Understanding the work process within value stream management
• Value stream thinking in the physical world and virtual world
• The pursuit of optimization during challenging times
• Adaptive knowledge work

Quotes

• “What is really important about value stream management is this concept of looking at the work holistically. Looking at the end-to-end flow of work in an organization in such a way that you are focused on improving that flow of work, not just looking at it and measuring it. You are doing that to improve the system.” -Steve [02:07]
• “There is a giant section of the world that is physical and virtual at the same time: building software, building physical products, and integrating those two things. That is an area of the world that is underserved by our focus on the old world and the new world. They are run by different ways of thinking but more and more we are seeing these models blend together.” -Steve [09:35]
• “Unless you lower the water level in the stream you won’t notice all the big boulders in the stream. What we are doing with value stream management partly is lowering the water level and starting to look at the actual work process. You can begin to see you have these incredible inefficiencies that are embedded in the whole work process.” -Andrew [15:55]
• “If you are working for the man, that isn’t giving you that thrill of autonomy or that intrinsic motivator. But mastery, whether that craft is managing finance for the organization, building software, or setting up systems. That is your craft. Every job is worthy of respect and it is providing value to something.” -Andrew [27:30]

Timestamps

[01:03] Intro

[01:27] Defining value stream management

[09:16] What the value stream looks like in the physical and virtual world

[16:34] Knowledge work adaptations

[23:05] Software tools vs. the mindset approach to value stream management

[27:33] Intrinsic motivators

[34:09] Managing time and effort

[36:42] Continuous experimentation in organizations

Resources