If anyone ever tries to tell you that watching mindless YouTube videos is a waste of time, point them to this blog post. Why? Because I realized something very relevant about value stream management (VSM) recently thanks to my wife & YouTube comedian Trey Kennedy. My journey to enlightenment started by watching Trey’s video Wife School, which he did in collaboration with another YouTube comedian (Dude Dad). This video taught me absolutely nothing about VSM. However, it did help me learn that my wife isn’t the only one who wants new countertops. It also taught me that I’m more of …
Five Reasons You Must Start Visualizing Your Value Stream Now
How many times have you heard this before? Your boss telling you that the organization needs budget cuts, asking you to reduce costs, improve SLAs and quality of products, increase renewal rates and retain customers. And all you have to do is FIX IT! Sounds simple right? Only if it were that easy! You could be in a financial firm trying to find ways to reduce waste and leverage new technology practices to increase efficiency and ultimately drive the business. Or in a healthcare organization constantly faced with challenges around lead time and costs. Or you could be in an …
Do You Believe Value Stream Management Is a Feature? Why or Why Not?
Lance Knight (COO & President), Andrew Fuqua (SVP of Products), and Eric Robertson (SVP Strategic Advisor) recently had a riveting debate about value stream management (VSM). Here’s a snippet from that video centered around the question: “Do you believe value stream management is a feature? Why or why not?” Follow along with the video clip or read the transcript, and form your own point of view on the question! Tim: So our first question of the day and kind of the general theme of what we’re going to be talking about. Do you believe value stream management is a …
Tick Tock, Tick Tock, Tick Tock: A Case Study on How to Be Agile and Save Time by Automating and Optimizing Your Value Streams
“Come on boss, I’ve been waiting for somebody to pick up my code, uh Uh, well don’t waste time, give me a sign, tell me how you wanna roll, uh, mm I want somebody to speed it up for me, then go with the flow, there’s enough room for both Well, I can handle that, you just gotta show me where it’s at, are you ready to go? are you ready to go?” All you developers, testers, engineers, project managers, customer service and support team members, can you imagine singing this? Familiar lyrics? Well yes, it’s Madonna, the Pop Diva, …
Get Started Marketing at the Speed of Tomorrow Now
Note: Originally published on Forbes I was preparing a webinar for my company when I decided to do a little research to uncover the current optimal length for a product or promotional webinar. I started cruising search sites and was surprised by what I found. A global marketing company with eight offices and 350 employees stretching around the globe had posted an article on that very topic. One of the “cardinal rules,” the author stated, was to never let webinars be longer than 90 minutes. They recommended 60-90 minutes and said anything more than 90 would cause the audience to …
What People Don’t Get About Value Stream Management
Note: Originally published on TechBeacon There’s nothing wrong with value stream management (VSM) itself, but there’s plenty wrong with how it’s being considered and discussed by bloggers, industry marketing types, and others, who often conflate it with DevOps and Agile. It’s not the same thing. When you read about value stream management, you need to be able to recognize bogus information when you see it. Here are five things obfuscating the truth about VSM—and what you should be focusing on instead. 1. Misattribution, personification, and wishful thinking The first problem relates to the many unsubstantiated claims about the benefits VSM can provide. Beware of statements that …
Resiliency and Determination: How the Challenges of 2021 Made for Remarkable Opportunities
Note: Originally published on Forbes Last year saw a tremendous upheaval as everyone — businesses, governments, families, doctors — experienced challenges and even loss. Yet, it was also a year of heroism and defiance as the world faced a common foe in Covid-19. Although vanquishing that foe is still a question mark, business leaders understand they must move forward. They are asking themselves, “What can I do now to position my firm for recovery and growth?” This isn’t an easy question to answer, and because the pandemic left a significant number of businesses with economic uncertainty and revenue losses, it …
Building DevSecOps With Value Stream Management
Note: Originally published on DevOps.com As teams develop software, testing for potential security risks and flaws is mission-critical, just as it has always been. Yet, cyberattackers continue to exploit code vulnerabilities as open source code remains the foundation for the majority of commercial applications across all industries. Security firms are churning out solutions at an aggressive rate, and both project managers and their teams hope they can purchase some bolt-on tool or license a service to take care of security, painlessly. In the end, vulnerabilities still occur. The most effective pathway to secure software code has always been to eliminate …
