Value Stream Management - A GUIDE FOR BUYERS - ConnectALL

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Value Stream Management - A GUIDE FOR BUYERS - ConnectALL
Value Stream
Management
 A GUIDE FOR BUYERS
Value Stream Management - A GUIDE FOR BUYERS - ConnectALL
Value Stream Management - A GUIDE FOR BUYERS - ConnectALL
www.sdtimes.com    January 2021   SD Times   25

                                                                                                            Buyers Guide

Value stream management
                  will be a driving force behind
                 successful businesses in 2021
I
    f 2020 taught businesses anything, it        BY CHRISTINA CARDOZA                         doing some form of VSM without even
    is that they need to be able to adapt                                                     knowing it, but 2021 will be the year
    at any moment if they want to stay          ogy that has rapidly been making a            businesses start taking VSM seriously.
competitive and be successful. But in           name for itself in the software develop-         “A lot of companies are realizing,
order to do that, they need actionable          ment industry, and that businesses can        especially with how 2020 went, that we
insight into what is going on throughout        no longer afford to put off, according to     need to start looking at our processes,”
the entire organization and how that is         Bob Davis, chief marketing officer for        said Schuck. “The end-to-end picture
translating into business value.                Plutora.                                      that VSM can provide is getting much
    Mik Kersten, CEO and founder                    “A year ago maybe the question was:       wider. Companies are starting to realize
Tasktop, says too often when a business         is this a good idea? Is this something        there are bottlenecks outside of develop-
takes on a new transformation or reor-          that I should prioritize? Now, people         ment, and are using value stream man-
ganization initiative, they end up cutting      have to get that if they are going to be      agement beyond the scope of IT or soft-
the wrong people, the wrong services,           successful and competitive in software        ware. It’s an end-to-end methodology
and making easily avoidable mistakes.           in their business, they are going to have     that analyzes each facet of the business.”
    “Having a business visible represen-        to get good at software development. In
tation of where the value is for the cus-       order for them to get good at software        Where VSM can help your business in 2021
tomer, and using that to guide both how         development, they are going to have to        COVID response. As the pandemic
you rebalance and how you invest into           transform. In order to transform, they        continues, organizations are going to
all of your activities is key,” he explained.   are going to have to have visibility. In      need to constantly rebalance and reshift
    That visible representation is now          order to have visibility, they have to have   their IT portfolios and reduce or
known as value stream management                value stream management,” he said.            increase budgets to keep up with the
(VSM). It maps people, process, tech-               Bryant Schuck, lead product manag-        changing economy, according to Task-
nology and business value to eliminate          er for HCL Accelerate, a VSM platform,        top’s Kersten. “Organizations realize
waste and improve. It’s a new methodol-         explained businesses might already be                           continued on page 26 >
Value Stream Management - A GUIDE FOR BUYERS - ConnectALL
26    SD Times   January 2021   www.sdtimes.com

     < continued from page 25                        “I can’t let 700 teams go out there       idea of BizOps will be closely tied to
     that in each of those activities, whether    and just use everything they want and        VSM in 2021.
     they were actually investing more            not be accountable to the bottom line.           “Fundamentally, what knowledge
     because the pandemic meant that some         You have to have some controls that          management is about is making the key
     of their digital offerings were getting      have been put in place,” said Williams.      metrics, the value streams themselves,
     picked up more quickly than before,          “Think about it as you are constantly        visible to the business. BizOps is a way
     whether they were rebalancing to             building Legos. You’re adding more           of expressing that,” he said. Those goals
     adjust with what was happening, or to        Legos, and you’re only using a subset,       of BizOps cannot be possible without
     help their staff whether this is from        but the Legos from the previous build        value stream management. “It’s not
     work from home, or whether they’ve           are still there.” What that does,            enough to do Agile and DevOps to do
     actually cut it, they need a disciplined     Williams explained, is it causes things to   BizOps, you have to be applying the
     way, measure way to do it,” he said.         slow down and it takes up infrastruc-        principles and implementing the infra-
         Improve Agile and DevOps ini-            ture usage. It needs to be removed so        structure, tooling and visibility that val-
     tiatives. According to Gaurav Rewari,        there aren’t any unnecessary pieces in       ue management provides,” Kersten
     CTO and general manager of AI and            the infrastructure that you weren’t          added.
     VSM at Digital.ai, VSM is the next           aware of or forgot about.
     phase in the “logical evolution” of Agile       Treating infrastructure as a valuable     What can you expect to come out of
     and DevOps. It completes the vision of       piece of the life cycle can help busi-       the VSM space in 2021?
     the methodologies, he explained. “Agile      nesses optimize spend while managing         More education and training. Now
     and DevOps are great, and they serve         change and enabling everyone to do           that organizations are aware of VSM and
     very, very important needs… but              their job. “You want to make sure that       all the benefits it can bring, it’s time to fill
     they’re not sufficient,” Rewari said.        as things move through the life cycle of     in some of the missing pieces — mainly
     They serve very specific needs, which        an infrastructure, that when you plan it,    education and training, according to
     was to foster collaboration and be able      when the developers develop it, when         Lance Knight, COO for the value stream
     to have self-organizing, cross-functional    the testers test it, the release people      integration platform ConnectALL.
     teams. But Agile and DevOps                                                                           “Everyone is saying ‘I’ve got
     are missing the business out-                                                                      a tool. I’ve got the tool,’ but
     comes and the value piece.                                                                         nobody says I’ve got the tool
         Value stream management                                                                        services to help you be effective
     “really allows a mindset change                                                                    at it,” Knight explained. “We
     because it’s about being able to                                                                   are still trying to figure out
     prioritize your software invest-                                                                   what VSM is and how to do it.”
     ments based on the value being                                                                        Knight looks at 2020 as the
     realized. Trying to track the flow                                                                 year of awareness for value
     of value across the different                                                                      stream management. And now
     steps,” Rewari explained. “It                                                                      that everyone is realizing they
     goes from building a product, shipping       release it, whatever the practice is, it’s   should be doing this, it’s time to think
     it, and then having customers adopt it.      being maintained and managed in con-         about how to effectively do it.
     It suddenly becomes the metric by            text,” said Williams.                            He explained that there is no “VSM
     which decisions are made, and it’s really       The adoption of BizOps. In order          for Dummies” book yet, or really any
     about aligning the work of technology        to help businesses express and imple-        ways to get certified in this area. As
     with the needs of the business.”             ment their goals as well as connect to       more vendors come out releasing new
         Better infrastructure. According         the development side of things, the          VSM capabilities, businesses need to be
     to David Williams, vice president of         BizOps Manifesto was released at the         educated on what they want to achieve,
     product strategy at Quali, one of the        end of 2020. It’s a framework that           and how the tool will help them. “You
     benefits of DevOps is that it always         addresses the needs of the business and      need someone who is going to educate
     encouraged teams to use whatever             IT, and helps enterprises work towards       and help you understand it, without
     technology they needed in order to           common outcomes. Some of the guid-           charging a large fee,” said Knight. “Val-
     meet their delivery objectives. Howev-       ing principles include: Business out-        ue stream management is human….we
     er, the problem with giving teams that       comes are the primary measure of suc-        need to help engineers. The humans
     freedom is that if it’s not maintained or    cess; and business leaders need to make      need to understand the methods and
     managed properly, it can actually slow       informed technology investment deci-         the processes to remove waste. We all
     the whole process down. There needs          sions that drive business growth,            have to understand that we have to
     to be a way to capture any changes           improve customer experience and              train and educate and formalize what it
     being made so tools and technology           increase profitability.                      means to be a value stream manage-
     don’t bog down the process.                     According to Tasktop’s Kersten, this                         continued on page 28 >
Value Stream Management - A GUIDE FOR BUYERS - ConnectALL
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Value Stream Management - A GUIDE FOR BUYERS - ConnectALL
28    SD Times   January 2021   www.sdtimes.com

             Value stream management platforms vs.
                 value stream delivery platforms
      Research firm Gartner splits the value stream man-                                       • To get customized dashboards and view
      agement tooling landscape into two areas: value                                            product delivery
      stream management platforms and value stream                                             • For a consolidated view of governance,
      delivery platforms.                                                                        security and compliance
          According to the research firm, “DevOps                                              • And for advanced capabilities such as
      value stream management platforms                                                          risk analytics
      (VSMPs) enable organizations to optimize                                                     Don’t use a VSMP: until you have prop-
      end-to-end product delivery lead time. These plat-                                       er experience and success with DevOps
      forms provide greater visibility and traceability                                        software delivery, and when you need a
      into the flow of all product delivery processes,                                         platform for the entire organization and
      from ideation to release and operation.”                            its many stakeholders, according to Gartner.
          While, “DevOps value stream delivery platforms (VSDPs)              Gartner believes VSDPs should be used when
      provide a fully integrated set of capabilities to enable continu-   • The benefit of a fully integrated platform outweighs the cost
      ous delivery of software. These capabilities may include project      and effort to manage a complex toolchain
      or product planning, build automation, continuous integration,      • Specialized VSDP capabilities in one area of the application
      test automation, continuous deployment and rollback, release          delivery value stream are essential
      orchestration, and automated security policy enforcement, and       • The licensing and pricing advantages of VSDPs make it more
      may provide visibility to key value stream metrics.”                  attractive than stitching together a complex DevOps tool-
          Gartner believes VSMPs should be used:                            chain through multiple vendor relationships.
      • To get end-to-end visibility and insight into product delivery        Users should not use DevOps VSDPs when choice dictates
      • Assess the performance, quality and value of products             app architecture; VSDPs don’t integrate with essential tools to
      • Evaluate the maturity of existing product delivery capabilities   support missing gaps; and if product teams aren’t ready to
      • Identify constraints to flow and gaps in insights                 replace existing tools, according to Gartner. z

     < continued from page 26                      prises have either slowed down or            and gaining the awareness of what’s
     ment expert.”                                 paused updates to their applications.        going on. “There is going to be a lot of
         It’s like having a great car in the       However, their customers are relying         need to better standardize, better
     driveway, but if you don’t have a driver’s    on them to innovate more now than            understand the differences between
     license what’s the point? Knight              ever before. The capabilities represent-     simple field mapping and complicated
     explained. “That’s where I see value          ed by these patents enable IT organiza-      logic in terms of how these tools are
     stream management going… to people            tions to continue to rapidly drive value     being used,” he said.
     getting their VSM driver’s license.”          for their customers while mitigating             VSM 2.0. We are still in the early
         More AI being applied to the              risk to the business,” said Rewari.          stages or 1.0 phase of value stream
     space. According to Gartner, predic-             Plutora’s Davis also sees a trend         management, but HCL’s Schuck sees
     tive analytics are going to be a key capa-    towards predictive analytics. “The good      VSM 2.0 on the horizon. “We are close
     bility being offered in value stream          news is you now have all this informa-       to crossing the line of value stream
     management tools as “organizations are        tion. The bad news is, you now have all      management being a nice to have or
     increasingly embracing the value of           this information. How do you take that       cool new thing to VSM becoming an
     analytics to ensure successful deploy-        information and make meaningful              essential in your toolbox,” he explained.
     ments and demonstrate reduced pro-            insights out of it?” asked Davis. He sees    “VSM 2.0 comes with customer suc-
     duction defects.”                             more of a move toward capabilities that      cess, customer use cases, and VSM
         Digital.ai is already dedicated to giv-   help users understand their data better      coaches. Right now, we’re in the
     ing its users more AI capabilities in         and make smarter decisions.                  thought leadership stage with lots of
     2021. The company just announced four            Standardization. As more vendors          DevOps experts talking about the ben-
     new patents: automated health assess-         try to come into the space, there needs      efits of VSM and practitioners testing
     ment and outage prediction; warehouse-        to be a way to standardize or formalize      the VSM waters. We’ll see more people
     based reporting and operational report-       the capabilities so people don’t get con-    diving into value stream management
     ing integration; input gathering system       fused, according to Davis. “We have to       once big companies have well-estab-
     and method for defining, refining or val-     standardize… integrations can’t be the       lished VSM programs, broadcast their
     idated star schema for a source database;     differentiator,” he said. Everyone           results from these programs, and start
     and model-driven reporting.                   should have integrations because they        hiring VSM coaches or other VSM-spe-
         “Given today’s volatility, many enter-    are so critical to connecting the tools      cific roles.” z
Value Stream Management - A GUIDE FOR BUYERS - ConnectALL
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Value Stream Management - A GUIDE FOR BUYERS - ConnectALL
31

What do you need to be successful at value
                                                                                                 www.sdtimes.com     January 2021   SD Times

stream management, and how can you help?
               Lance Knight, COO for the         there are typically two separate value          With value stream management being so
               value stream integration          stream efforts or approaches that occur:        new to the software space, you’re going to
               platform ConnectALL               value stream management and value               get a lot of pushback that the metrics
               The goal is to help you under-    stream delivery.                                brought forward aren’t what you should be
stand software delivery, to look at things           Digital.ai value stream delivery solu-      measuring. You have to balance capturing
through the lens of a value stream, to look      tions connect strategic agile planning to       key core metrics with trusting that these
for ways to remove dependencies, under-          DevOps software delivery to provide a           new metrics are what the business should
stand where your bottlenecks are, and do         complete end-to-end process from ideation       care about and what teams should focus
that from a business value mindset.              through production. This approach enables       on. Overall, you need to shift the conversa-
    If I can bring in ConnectALL and hook        organizations to automate release               tion toward outcomes rather than outputs.
up everything in your value stream to see        processes to deliver software faster, more           HCL Accelerate was built to automate
this information, the analytics, the             reliably, and with greater visibility. What’s   the delivery and interpretation of data so
orchestration that’s great, but you won’t        more, by collecting data from across the        businesses can make faster, more strategic
know what to do with it.                         lifecycle and applying AI-based analytics,      decisions. Typically, teams within an organ-
    I think the next phase is actually finding   Digital.ai enables IT organizations to con-     ization use the tools they prefer, which cre-
a way to educate people and give them the        tinuously improve process, tools, and tech-     ates silos, gaps, and tribal knowledge
knowledge not to buy a value stream man-         nologies. Digital.ai also provides security,    about what processes are in place and how
agement solution, but to know how to hold        governance, and traceability to ensure          they work. HCL Accelerate combines all
a value stream optimization workshop or          compliance and adherence to best prac-          the data from all these teams and tools to
how to implement value stream manage-            tices and standards.                            add that single microlevel traceability on
ment principles in organization, and                 Digital.ai value stream management          each piece of value to allow businesses to
nobody’s sat down to define those.               solutions align the software lifecycle with     align and govern across many applications
    We are going to be converting val-           the needs of the business, creating a uni-      and tools to deliver faster with better qual-
uestreammanagement.com into just that            fied, data-driven view that improves visibil-   ity. Instead of reaching out to several peo-
— into a type of training body where peo-        ity and decision making throughout the          ple for one piece of information, you can
ple can get some education and go learn          organization. Digital.ai value stream man-      find all the answers to your pipeline ques-
about it. We also have value stream man-         agement solutions collect data from across      tions instantly in HCL Accelerate. HCL
agement consultants. We can go look at           the software lifecycle, providing deep          Accelerate isn’t just about visibility — yes
your end-to-end delivery, look at how infor-     insights and enabling AI/ML-powered pre-        that’s a great benefit, but what we’re real-
mation flows, and make recommendations.          dictive analytics. These insights enable        ly using all this aggregated information
    We are trying to help the market             businesses to prioritize product backlogs       for is to automate governance and stream-
mature, and at the same time the solution        based upon the value being delivered,           line processes.
will come along for it. If I can educate the     identify and remove bottlenecks, predict
world, if I can help put together programs       and mitigate risk, and so much more.                          Bob Davis, chief
that help everybody understand why this                                                                        marketing officer for the
is important, how to hold a value stream                    Bryant Schuck, lead product                        value stream management
management optimization session, which                      manager for HCL Accelerate,                        platform Plutora
we are doing now, and how to use that                       a VSM platform                       We see fundamentally three main chal-
information then I can improve flow.                        It all comes down to people.         lenges that organizations struggle with. 1.
                                                 You need buy in at all levels, alignments       They don’t have visibility across the
             Gaurav Rewari, CTO and gen-         between teams, and trust in the process.        pipeline. 2. They don’t have visibility
             eral manager of AI and                                                                      across the portfolio and 3. They
             VSM at Digital.ai                                                                           aren’t able to connect diverse
             Value stream manage-                                                                        methodologies.
ment (VSM) enables organizations                                                                             Furthermore, these three chal-
to drive digital transformation by                                                                       lenges conspire against improve-
focusing not only on the flow of work, but                                                       ment. If you don’t have visibility across
also the flow of value across the business.                                                      your entire portfolio, you can’t manage
With VSM, businesses deliver products                                                            your strategic outcomes, or understand
and services that achieve strategic goals                                                        how your development processes are per-
and provide better customer outcomes.                                                              forming in achieving those outcomes.
While the idea of a value stream plat-                                                                And all of this visibility and manage-
form gives the impression of a sin-                                                                      ment is needed regardless of the
gle, unified entity, the reality is                                                                        tools being used — they all need
that for most organizations                                                                                        continued on page 35 >
Value Stream Management - A GUIDE FOR BUYERS - ConnectALL
32   SD Times   January 2021   www.sdtimes.com

     A guide to value stream management solutions
                                                                                                 n Atlassian offers Jira Software, the #1
                               n   FEATURED PROVIDERS n                                          software development tool used by agile

     n ConnectALL is a value stream management company dedicated to helping cus-
                                                                                                 teams. As an agile project management
                                                                                                 tool, it helps teams plan, track and move
     tomers achieve higher levels of agility, traceability, predictability and velocity. We do
                                                                                                 work forward. Atlassian’s Jira Align
     this by connecting people, processes and technology across the software develop-
                                                                                                 extends the power of teams working in
     ment and delivery value stream, enabling companies to align digital initiatives to busi-    Jira by connecting business strategy to
     ness outcomes and improve the speed at which they deliver software. ConnectALL’s            technical execution while providing real-
     value stream management solutions and services allow companies to see, measure              time visibility at enterprise scale. It allows
     and automate their software delivery value streams.                                         enterprises to aggregate team-level data
                                                                                                 and makes all work visible across the
     n Digital.ai value stream management and value stream delivery solutions opti-              organization in real-time.
     mize and align the software and delivery lifecycle with the needs of the business,
     improving visibility and decision making throughout the organization. Its offerings         n Blueprint accelerates agile transfor-
     provide global enterprises and government industry leaders a cohesive, data-driven          mation and drives real business value
     approach to ideate, create and orchestrate the flow of value with measurable busi-          through value stream mapping. It can
                                                                                                 map, visualize, measure and govern the
     ness outcomes. Learn more at www.digital.ai/value-stream
                                                                                                 flow of business value from ideation to

     n HCL Accelerate is a data-driven value stream management platform that pro-
                                                                                                 delivery. Its governance and compliance
                                                                                                 capabilities not only supports regulatory
     vides next-level visibility and governance to your DevOps strategy. By integrating
                                                                                                 processes by mapping requirements, but
     with the tools you’re already using, HCL Accelerate aggregates data from across
                                                                                                 provides traceability and impact analytics.
     your DevOps pipeline to give you actionable insights so you can get the most out
     of your DevOps investments. HCL Accelerate is part of HCL Software DevOps, a                n CloudBees CD brings order and scale to
     comprehensive DevOps product suite comprised of powerful, industry-proven soft-             enterprise software delivery with release
     ware solutions.                                                                             orchestration, deployment automation,
                                                                                                 and pipeline and environment manage-
     n Plutora provides value stream management solutions for enterprise IT, improv-             ment all in a single, flexible solution. By tak-
     ing the transparency, speed and quality of software development and delivery by             ing the manual effort and risk out of
     correlating data from across the toolchains and analyzing critical indicators of            releasing software, CloudBees CD gives
     every aspect of the delivery process. Acting as the “catwalk above the factory              developers the analytics to measure, audit
                                                                                                 and improve results. Organizations with
     floor,” Plutora ensures organizational alignment between software development
                                                                                                 highly regulated and complex environ-
     with business strategy and provides visibility, analytics and insights into the entire
                                                                                                 ments can safely and predictably release
     value stream. This approach guides continuous improvement and digital transfor-
                                                                                                 new applications and adapt to change at
     mation progress through the measured outcomes of each effort. Plutora ensures
                                                                                                 any speed demanded by the business.
     governance and management across the entire portfolio by orchestrating release
                                                                                                 CloudBees CD also includes a robust set of
     pipelines, managing hybrid test environments, and orchestrating complex applica-            audit-ready pipeline capabilities so cus-
     tion deployments — all independent of methodology, team structure, technology,              tomers can easily perform software deliv-
     and level of automation.                                                                    ery audits based on evidence links,
                                                                                                 approvals and pipeline duration.
     n Tasktop transforms traditional businesses into high-performing tech companies
     by instantly providing an outside lens for accelerating software delivery. Many             n IBM UrbanCode Velocity provides val-
     organizations are flying blind when it comes to digital transformations because the         ue stream management, pipeline orches-
     tools used to do the work provide limited views and proxy metrics. Tasktop’s Value          tration and real-time analytic capabilities.
     Stream Management platform sits above the entire toolchain, integrating all the             It is designed to help development teams,
                                                                                                 DevOps teams and business leaders visu-
     underlying tools and objectively measuring flow. Within days, Tasktop customers are
                                                                                                 alize work and create value from idea to
     able to understand the way they are delivering value and where to implement
                                                                                                 customer.
     changes that reduce time-to-market.
                                                                                                 n Intland: codeBeamer ALM is a holisti-
     n Quali CloudShell Colony is a SaaS platform for delivering Infrastructure                  cally integrated Application Lifecycle
     Automation at Scale for complex application-centric environments on cloud tech-             Management tool that facilitates collabo-
     nologies including AWS, Azure, and Kubernetes. IT leaders and DevOps innovators             ration, increases transparency, and helps
     around the world trust Quali to enable self-service automation and governance to            align software development processes
     streamline application development, testing, and release to production. z                                      continued on page 35 >
The Proven Platform for
Accelerating Software Delivery.

                                                                                Context switching
                                  Unplanned work

                                                                           Too much WIP
Conflicting priorities

                                                             Invisible dependencies

Align with business goals and communicate with
metrics understood organization wide.
Tasktop is the only value stream management platform that transforms traditional businesses into
high-performing tech companies with an outside lens for accelerating software delivery at scale. Fortune 500
companies rely on Tasktop to quickly understand the way they are delivering value and where to implement
changes that reduce time-to-market.
  Named a leader in Value Stream Management solutions in the Forrester Wave: Value Stream Management
  Solutions, Q3 2020 and the GigaOm 2020 Radar Report on VSM

                                                                                        Master Software at Scale
www.sdtimes.com      January 2021   SD Times     35

< continued from page 31                         rity. It should bring your teams together        < continued from page 32
to be integrated into the value stream           and enable you to get control. It’s tactical.    with your strategic business objectives.
management platform.                             It’s about scalability. It’s the ability to be
     Plutora provides deep tool integration      able to say no matter where you are in           n Kovair with its tools provides a com-
that populates our rich common data mod-         the maturity of your organization, you           plete Value Stream Management Platform
el and is the backbone of our platform. The      have the technology that can help you.           to organizations enabling them to reap
resulting converged toolchain operates as             Quali provides a modern infrastruc-         every benefit of Value Stream Manage-
one, with critical information and actions       ture automation platform with all the            ment and ensure customer satisfaction.
orchestrated across the different tool sets      guardrails allowing DevOps teams to exe-         Starting from capturing the voice of the
and methodologies. It supports a com-            cute more efficiently without taking away        customer and defining what is of value for
plete set of dashboards and analytics. But       the control they need. That’s what we do         them, Kovair’s VSMP provides a struc-
we don’t stop there. With what we call our       at Quali. We look at the infrastructure          tured visualization of the key steps and
action layer, we help customers orches-          requirements and decisions being made            corresponding data needed to understand
trate and manage release pipelines. We           today, evaluate the impact of near- and          and intelligently make improvements that
help them with the governance and com-           longer-term infrastructure change and            optimize the entire process.
pliance that is so often required. We help       deliver the platform to allow organiza-
them manage their pre-production test            tions to leverage what they use now while        n Plandek’s unique capabilities enable it
environments. We help them incorporate           ensuring the management of the IT infra-         to integrate with multiple Value Stream
requirements that are outside of the tool-       structure immediately adapts and deliv-          Delivery tools-sets (e.g. Jira, Git, Jenkins,
chain itself, such as security or architectur-   ers on future market, organizational, and        Azure DevOps) and mine the data-footprint
al reviews, that come up along the way, and      strategic business needs.                        of software delivery teams in order to sur-
in doing so, help accelerate and improve                                                          face meaningful end-to-end delivery met-
software delivery.                                             Dr. Mik Kersten, CEO and           rics used to improve software delivery effi-
                                                               founder of value stream            ciency, quality, velocity and predictability.
                                                               management solution
                                                                                                  n Planview ensures teams are doing their
             David Williams, vice presi-
             dent of product strategy at                       provider Tasktop
                                                 The best practice we’re seeing is just to        best to deliver on strategy. The company
             Quali, a infrastructure
                                                 start measuring. Basically, find whatever        offers portfolio and work management
             automation company
                                                 the key metric is that is the most impor-        solutions to transform and drive strategic
To be successful, IT infrastructure cannot
                                                 tant thing to you as a business. Find that       initiatives. Its portfolio includes Spigit for
be assumed, you have to make sure it is
                                                 North Star for yourself. For some compa-         culture innovation and employee engage-
enabled to ensure the delivery of the
                                                 nies, that might be bringing more fea-           ment; Enterprise One for enterprise-wide
business’ outcome objectives. The infra-
                                                 tures and innovations to market faster or        portfolio planning and delivery; PPM Pro for
structure supports all DevOps practices,
                                                 making customers happier and more                work management; LeanKit for enterprise
and as such must be accountable to deliv-
                                                 engaged with their products and services.        Kanban for IT and business teams; and Pro-
ering value to different individuals, teams,
                                                 Find that identifier, and then use the Flow      jectplace for project-centric collaboration.
functions and types of DevOps practices.
                                                                                                  n The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
                                                 Metrics to tie it into everything that
     For example, small DevOps teams will
                                                 you’re doing, and just start measuring.
need IT infrastructure automation tools                                                           is the leading framework for scaling Agile
                                                     For example, where speed to business
that allow them to do a broad range of                                                            across the enterprise. It is designed to
                                                 value is most important, that’s going to be
things, no matter how complex the infra-                                                          help businesses deliver value on a regular
                                                 measured with Flow Time. The entire goal
structure stack becomes. This means pro-                                                          and predictable schedule. It includes a
                                                 for you, for your technical teams and for
viding capabilities that enable them to do                                                        knowledge base of proven principles and
                                                 your leadership teams is just shortening
everything like providing technology with                                                         practices for supporting enterprise agility.
                                                 that Flow Time — and to do it in a meas-
guardrails, guidance, automation, and
                                                                                                  n ServiceNow’s approach to Value
                                                 ured way. Ask if you got the impediments
intelligence to optimize the skills within
                                                 out of the way of the development team, of
each team.                                                                                        Stream Management leverages key capa-
                                                 the operations team, of the testing team,
     For DevOps teams that are larger with                                                        bilities, from ServiceNow DevOps and IT
                                                 of the product managers or business ana-
more focused skills, you must be able to                                                          Business Management, and the Now Plat-
                                                 lysts. Everything becomes centered around
build the capabilities and the technology                                                         form, working seamlessly with IT Service
                                                 that one key result you are after — reduc-
that enable them to go deep, but also                                                             Management, IT Operations Management
                                                 ing the Flow Time from, let’s say four
extract it up to be shared across different                                                       and Governance, Risk and Compliance.
                                                 months to four days, so you can innovate
                                                                                                  n Targetprocess: To connect portfolio,
teams. Success is based upon using the           at the pace of a tech giant or startup.
technology that meets the requirements of            That’s exactly where we’re focusing all      products and teams, Targetprocess offers a
the organization you currently have. And         of our efforts at Tasktop: making sure that      visual platform to help you adopt and scale
then using the value you get from that and       the journey is measurable, fast and measur-      Agile across your enterprise. Use SAFe,
expanding to the left and the right              ing the rate of improvement. It’s all about      LeSS or implement your own framework to
throughout the continual DevOps process.         data-driven continuous improvement.              achieve business agility and see the value
                                                                                                  flow through the entire organization. z
     You should provide a capability that            The key is to start your journey and to
will grow as you grow your DevOps matu-          start measuring it. z
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