The Value Stream Show

Value Stream Management

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
Inside Out: The Power of Value Stream Clarity
Book: Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies
Vuvuzelas!
Bain B2B Elements of Value
Bain B2C Elements of Value
Time and Motion studies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_and_motion_study
“A time and motion study (or time-motion study) is a business efficiency technique combining the Time Study work of Frederick Winslow Taylor with the Motion Study work of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth (the same couple as is best known through the biographical 1950 film and book Cheaper by the Dozen). It is a major part of scientific management (Taylorism).”
 
Connect with us:
Steve Pereira: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website
Andrew Davis: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

Defining Value

In this episode of The Value Stream Show, hosts Andrew Davis and Steve Pereira discuss the vast reach of value, how we define it and how we can measure it. They explore the complex nature of value and the many different factors that influence it. Steve and Andrew talk about the importance of distinguishing the difference between the value of inputs and what has actually been produced. They also talk about how understanding value can create an opportunity for growth and the potential to reclaim past losses in an organization, a market, or as an individual.
 
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
What is Value?
The elements of value
Building individual, customer, and organization value
Distinguishing between input value and output value
Quotes
“Entire organizations are influenced by value streams. The network of value streams that compose the organization and all the activity that is driving outcomes are done by individual contributors. At the end of the day individual contributors are working and moving in different directions.” -Steve [07:37]
 
“We have different time horizons for our understanding of value. My understanding of what is value immediately is usually to the detriment of what is valuable to me in the long term. This is the tension of time and visibility. It is an interesting dimension to consider in the context of value stream management.” -Steve [15:03]
“Value at the end of the day is feeling. How an individual feels about something. But then of course we have to make decisions as a group. So how do we feel as a group about something? Or how does the market feel about something?” -Andrew [03:05]
 
“There is a phenomenal amount of efficiency that can be reclaimed from company processes. If your employees are not feeling profoundly engaged with the company's mission to serve your customers for the greater good of the organization. One way or another their own sense of intrinsic value will they will consciously or subconsciously be dragging their feet and unmotivated.” -Andrew [13:22]
Timestamps
[00:27] Intro
[00:57] What is value?
[05:47] Value applies to the macro
[07:59] Defining value in a business context
[10:40] Relationships between the business, customer, and contributor
[15:57] What is not value
[18:18] The values of the input and output
[23:07] Outro
 
Resources
Inside Out: The Power of Value Stream Clarity
Book: Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies
Vuvuzelas!
Bain B2B Elements of Value
Bain B2C Elements of Value
Time and Motion studies
 
Connect with us:
Steve Pereira: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website
Andrew Davis: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

Re-training our reflexes: Customer Value

In this episode of The Value Stream Show, hosts Andrew Davis and Steve Pereira discuss the challenging process organizations face in asking what is the psychological, cultural, information, and work environment it needs to be maximally effective and engaged. They talk about how engineers are improving tech by leveraging the value stream model. They share why the act of inspiring purpose, autonomy and mastery in workers is a necessary challenge for organizations.
 
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
The strengths and weaknesses of org charts and the value stream
Activating intrinsic motivators in workers within an organization
How to optimize around the right things
Balancing informal networks and formal structure
 
Quotes
“I think we can borrow a lot of power and alignment by leveraging something like a value stream model and looking at more horizontal organizational models. You don’t have to throw away the org chart, but add this layer of flow across it and understand that the org chart isn’t how work happens, the value stream is how work happens.” -Steve [12:19]
 
“The org chart is very useful in having people understand who to go to, to get help and to improve their individual performance. I think that having a clear leader and an escalation path helps individuals feel like they have someone to go to. They have a very clear definition of relationships that they need to develop, foster and maintain.” -Steve [22:48]
 
“The most common map that I see on a day to day basis is the org chart. This hierarchical structure that shows basically how people fit together and what role they are playing in the organization. It is a visualization of an invisible social network. There is agreed upon structure, but fundamentally those interpersonal relationships and obligations are invisible. We are mapping an invisible social structure to try and give form to something that is fundamentally invisible.” -Andrew [04:12]
 
“The terminal units of an organization are people and each of those people need nutrients to survive. They need to get paid, they need to have clarity about what they are doing and how they can get their work done. They need to have a basis to be inspired by the mission of what their role is in the organization. It needs to be something that activates intrinsic motivators.” -Andrew [18:12]
Timestamps
[00:03] Intro
[01:07] How work actually happens
[03:28] Is the org chart outdated? 
[06:16] Making decisions based off of power
[08:23] How the org chart shapes company goals
[11:34] Retaining customer outcomes
[15:28] Optimizing around the right things
[18:27] Activating intrinsic motivators
[20:10] Shared platforms
[21:36] Strengths and weaknesses of org charts
[26:26] The Organism vs. The City Model
[29:11] The resiliency of autonomy and decentralization 
[30:22] Informal and formal social networks
[31:27] Outro
Resources
Inside Out: The Power of Value Stream Clarity
Book: Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies
 
Connect with us
Steve Pereira: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website
Andrew Davis: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

What is a Value Stream?

In the first episode of The Value Stream Show, hosts Andrew Davis and Steve Pereira discuss the concept of value stream thinking and how the evolution of DevOps is changing the way businesses operate. They talk about major changes happening in software development and dive into how people are beginning to reshape the way they look at the interplay between software development and collaboration. They share how organizations can build “reflex arcs” for fast decision making, and the power of value streams as a way of clarifying and optimizing the way we work. 
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
The purpose of value streams 
How to better align and deliver customer value
The importance of collaboration 
How to enable teams to leverage their full capabilities
The power of clarity when creating a value stream
Building “reflex arcs” inside a team
Critical goals in developing value streams
Maximizing an organization’s contributions
 
Quotes
“It is valuable and important to consider the full scope of what’s happening to deliver an outcome. And seeing that as a flow of activity that should be smooth, sustainable and ideally enjoyable for the participants who are involved in it.”  - Steve [11:10]
“What it comes down to for me is, you’re enabled in a business by shortening feedback loops as much as possible. The more you can enable people with the context to act at top speed with the maximum level of autonomy to leverage their full capabilities, is really what it’s all about.” - Steve [15:53]
“There is balance between creating work environments that are optimized for the way humans interact. This sense of belonging and membership whether it is a small team or an organization.” - Andrew [36:03]
“There are a couple of important shifts we need to take in our thinking if we want to capture the benefit of stories and storytelling to create coherence across a team and across an organization. Stories are critically important because they fit the way the human mind works. We love stories. We remember stories. - Andrew [24:43]
 
Timestamps
[00:25] Intro
[02:24] What are value streams?
[05:03] Revenue generating roles today
[07:10] Delivering customer value
[10:04] Focusing on strategy
[13:13] Building muscle memory when creating strategy
[16:27] The value of customer insights
[20:15] The importance of marketing flow
[22:43] Hiring a team of experts and specialists 
[28:19] Establishing reflex arcs in organizations
[30:42] How core streams facilitate strategy and focus
[33:31] Coming together to build trust and better communication
[38:57] The satisfaction of progress
[41:27] Nailing the basics allows for positive outcomes 
[43:30] Outro
 
Resources
Inside Out: The Power of Value Stream Clarity
 
Connect with us
Steve Pereira: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website
Andrew Davis: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website