View Post

Best Value Stream Management Tool: What Is ConnectALL’s Secret Sauce?

In Business Value, ConnectALL, Value Stream Management by Soumya Menon

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” — Peter Druker, the management guru who thought about Agile even before it existed. This is the simple principle that has driven a value stream management (VSM) company to build an army of Agile workforce and create solutions that enable software development companies to remove waste and become more predictable. As in the words of its President & COO Lance Knight, “You see waste, eliminate it. But, first, you need visibility. And ConnectALL will enable you to do just that.” ConnectALL, a value stream …

View Post

Control the Flow in Your Software Delivery Value Stream Like Never Before: Introducing Logic Flow Adapters and Other Advanced Automation Capabilities in ConnectALL v2.11

In Business Value, ConnectALL, Product Updates, Value Stream Management by Soumya Menon

In a rapidly changing, chaotic, and unpredictable software world, the need is to empower humans to visualize and control a business’s flow from customer requests to customer usage. Leading companies are becoming predictable by implementing value stream management (VSM) and according to a leading analyst firm, 93% of companies will adopt or expand their value stream management use by 2024. With companies adopting VSM as a means to improve flow across their software delivery value stream, visibility needs to be simplified rather than complicated. To meet this challenge and empower users like never before, ConnectALL, the value stream management company, …

View Post

Recession or No Recession? Or Are We Already in One? How to Better Prepare for Both

In Business Innovation, Business Value, ConnectALL, Value Stream Management by Soumya Menon

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 …

View Post

Address Your Company’s ‘Rock’ Or It Will Impede Forward Momentum

In Business Innovation, Business Value, ConnectALL, Tech Talk by Lance Knight

Note: Originally published on Forbes I recently was a guest on a podcast and discussed value stream management—the mechanisms of mapping the value stream, understanding flow and removing waste. I thoroughly enjoyed my session and felt that the moderator asked me some really great, thoughtful questions. I talked about one of my favorite quotes famously attributed to Peter Drucker, which is, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” While I agree wholeheartedly with this and have taken that approach throughout my professional career, another one of the quotes I shared was, “You are not managing something …

View Post

Not Everything That is Necessary Adds Value

In Business Value, ConnectALL, Value Stream Management by Lance Knight

Note: Originally published on DevOps.com Since the Lean production method for manufacturing arose in the 1930s, organizations everywhere have been seeking ways to apply it to reduce waste and increase productivity. This model has served thousands of companies well, from manufacturing and product design to software development. Yet, one difficulty that comes up when discussing or applying Lean in software development is the debate about what is and isn’t considered value-added work. Some people get defensive when certain activities are labeled non-value-add (NVA). Others argue that if a customer expects an activity and is willing to pay for it, it must be value-add …

View Post

Tick Tock, Tick Tock, Tick Tock: A Case Study on How to Be Agile and Save Time by Automating and Optimizing Your Value Streams

In Agile Transformation, Business Innovation, Business Value, ConnectALL by Soumya Menon

“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, …

View Post

Get Started Marketing at the Speed of Tomorrow Now

In Business Innovation, Business Value, ConnectALL, Marketing, Tech Talk by Lance Knight

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 …

View Post

What People Don’t Get About Value Stream Management

In Business Value, ConnectALL, Tech Talk, Value Stream, Value Stream Management by Andrew Fuqua

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 …