85 years ago, the world seemed a much simpler place. If we were to ask our old friend Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, the top three things to worry about were lions, tigers, and bears. Oh my! Today things are more complicated. When we are trying to stay focused and get our work done, there’s no peace. Notifications are dinging, apps are pinging, and our phone’s ringtones are singing. The things we worry about today include Zoom, Slack, and LinkedIn. Oh my! I think anyone who works at a computer recognizes that this is a common experience. But how …
Improving Your Team’s Performance Begins with Understanding Everyone Else’s Metrics
What are your most critical metrics for your job? What is your performance evaluated upon? These you know because they’re most likely tied to your performance evaluation, perhaps they’re tied to a bonus or merit increase. Now think about your colleagues in other departments. What are the most important metrics for them and how they’re being evaluated? Are your goals and metrics aligned? Are they competing? Like most people, you probably haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about those questions, after all, you have a job to do and that can be overwhelming in and of itself. However, since …
Recession or No Recession? Or Are We Already in One? How to Better Prepare for Both
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times…or in our case, what kind of times are we in? I just had two completely different phone calls this morning. One was with a highly qualified prospect and the other was with a client up for renewal. Both companies are in the U.S., operate in the same vertical and size of $500M – $1B, and have the same pain points of siloed teams, disparate tools, and unknown bottlenecks. But when it came to their approach about how to handle the economic uncertainties we are all in, they had …
How Value Stream Automation Helps Regulated Industries Deliver Software at Breakneck Speed
In the last decade, there has been a 10-20% increase in the number of regulations in the U.S. alone across a range of industries, according to RegData’s Industry Regulation Index. This development makes finance and insurance, transportation, healthcare, and manufacturing the most regulated industries in the U.S. on a federal level, among others — leading to Unique challenges regarding compliance and risk management High volumes of data Navigation of rapidly shifting requirements And shockingly, a high percentage of companies in the regulated industries, even today, manage critical compliance data on spreadsheets — despite the adoption of Agile, DevOps, and lean …
Six Ways Value Stream Tool Integration Can Improve Your Software Quality
Testing and quality assurance (QA) in software delivery has never been easy for any enterprise. QA teams need traceability and visibility into requirements as they are being created. The lack of which leads to siloed processes, disparate systems, non-alignment to customer requirements and business goals, delayed product releases, poor customer support and service, and even defects going into production — all affecting the quality of the software. Fortunately, when lean approaches like Value Stream Management (VSM) are implemented, teams can eliminate manual handoffs via emails, spreadsheets, and meetings. They can also implement techniques, such as automation, that enable information to …
Why Should Software Development and Delivery Teams Care About OKRs and VSM?
Should software development teams bother about Objectives and Key Results (OKR), or is it just a fancy term for another performance evaluation metric? Let’s clear this right away: the OKR approach is not task or to-do checklists, or performance evaluations; it is not the same as software development KPIs or MBOs, and it definitely is not a project management target. Despite the perception that executives are the only ones who should worry about OKRs, a well-planned and strategically written OKR — when tied to business outcomes — will have an impact on software development teams. Why? Because an OKR approach …
How VSM Can Help You Steer Clear of These Six OKR Mistakes
In 2020, when a majority of the workforce switched to remote working, organizations of all sizes across the globe turned to Objective Key Results (OKR) to figure out how to stay aligned while responding to rapid change in the business environment. OKRs, as you may know already, are a great way to attain audacious goals. This is because setting OKRs forces individuals, teams, and companies to articulate their goals in a time-bound and measurable fashion. By setting an Objective (a broad mission statement) and several Key Results (shorter, measurable assignments) great strides can be made in a quick and organized …
Five Core Beliefs About VSM ConnectALL Swears By
The software industry is overwhelmed and is drowning in thousands of value stream management (VSM) definitions — some are broad and some are vague. In the last couple of years, the market is also flooding with new vendors who claim to provide VSM solutions to drive agility and velocity and accelerate software delivery — some of which are not even complete solutions. Having worked in the B2B SaaS space and specifically practicing lean methodologies like VSM for over two decades, ConnectALL’s influencers and thought leaders have been advocating the correct understanding and adoption of VSM in the software industry. In …