The ship Ever Given was removed from blocking the Suez Canal — how did that happen? One value stream management company played an important role in opening up this critical global supply vein. ConnectALL’s team has worked tirelessly with both the Egyptian authorities and excavation crews on the ground to create strategies to improve the flow of the Suez Canal. While the company normally specializes in optimizing software delivery, this recent event has provided a unique opportunity to apply value stream management concepts to the delivery of physical cargo. In close collaboration with ConnectALL, salvage crews were able to see, measure, and automate the flow of this valuable freight through the canal.
What Can Super Bowl LV Teach Us About VSM?
In the United States, the first Sunday in February is Super Bowl Sunday, perhaps the most famous “unofficial” holiday in America. This year, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs 31-9. We thought it’d be a great idea to analyze this most-loved and most-watched American sport and what it teaches us about value stream management. The purpose of this blog post is to to better understand the best practices associated with effective value stream management. We have outlined how we can utilize the three key steps of value stream management (See, Measure, Automate) to understand the reasons why the Buccaneers defeated the Chiefs and how this process can then be applied to improving the outcomes of software delivery.
ConnectALL’s Second FedEx Day: Innovation at the Highest Level
After the successful launch of ConnectALL’s first FedEx Day in May 2020, we executed our second 24-hour event in December 2020. And this time it was unimaginably innovative. It came with the continuing momentum and the growth and success that came along in 2020. As you may already know, a FedEx Day is a 24-hour event that allows employees to contribute innovative ideas to their company. And like its namesake, participants have to deliver their ideas overnight. The goal of a FedEx Day is to boost motivation and creativity. And, if all goes well, the company has new features to add to its products.
Can You See Your End-to-End Value Stream?
Most companies that have adopted value stream management (VSM) to help make work visible haven’t really got it right. Why? To see across the value stream would mean having control over the value stream with an end-to-end view into enterprise workflows, and not just focusing on orchestrating or automating lower-level activities. The challenge in managing these end-to-end value streams is that they inevitably span several systems, some of which are even on the cloud. Without visibility or dynamic flexibility, organizations can’t address issues in a timely fashion.
Uncovering the Secret to ConnectALL’s Success in 2020
We’re often asked, “how did ConnectALL accomplish so much in 2020?! What’s the secret sauce you guys are cooking up over there?”
2020 was an extremely exciting and action-packed year at ConnectALL, with a tidal wave of momentum leading to mentionable and proud moments. ConnectALL is a true pure-play Value Stream Management Solution Platform, as recognized by leading industry analysts. With the world changing to adapt to the pandemic, we set foot into a world of unknowns and have come out a leader. We’ve changed the software landscape by highlighting the unlimited possibilities Lean-Agile practices like value stream management bring to the table. In short, we have set the ball rolling for a new era of making everything agile with a differential human aspect to software development and delivery.
ConnectALL Training: Learn the Art of Value Stream Integration
What do Rocky Balboa, Luke Skywalker, Mulan, and Batman all have in common? Each of these movie protagonists engaged in focused training with an instructor in order to unlock their full potential.
We here at ConnectALL also understand the importance of training, especially when you are evaluating or learning to use new software, or you’re learning a new discipline like value stream management. While we currently offer many different types of focused training, as well as VSM services, this post will specifically focus on two levels of hands-on, complementary (and free) training that help users understand how to get the most out of ConnectALL’s Value Stream Integration Platform: Basic & Advanced Integration Training.
How to monitor business goals with value stream management
Even as organizations and their teams work to stay abreast of meaningful improvement practices, many are still missing a big piece of the puzzle—tying software initiatives to business outcomes. Software system optimization from a technical perspective is a worthwhile accomplishment overall, but benchmarking its value can be elusive. This is problematic, since these efforts must further business objectives for corporate executives (and bean counters) to quantify the bottom-line value. How can management substantiate the assertion that software improvement promotes desired business outcomes? By incorporating objectives and key results (OKRs).
The Role of DevOps Feedback Loops in Your Value Stream
In the past couple of years, there is a rise of VSM adoption to map and track software flow. However, companies aren’t mapping everything necessary to optimize software delivery. The focus on value streams is causing them to ignore or overlook the flow of work. And they are still not achieving the best possible outcomes with VSM. This is significant because the cost of poor-quality software is astronomical. The solution to this profit-killing challenge is to implement a rigorous governance program. In this blog post, we look at what good governance is, how you implement it, and how you make it better.
