View Post

Celebrating Women in Technology: The Betty Knight ConnectALL Technology Scholarship Takes Its Second Stride

In ConnectALL, Tech Talk, Value Stream Management by Soumya Menon

For every woman that made the history books, there were many others who simply made history. One of these was Elizabeth “Betty” Amelia Roller Knight. ConnectALL continues to commemorate all the women in technology by funding a scholarship to the University of North Georgia (UNG) in honor of technology pioneer Betty Knight.

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

The Bitter Truth About the State of Value Stream Management

In by Jenna PottsLeave a Comment

As we get closer to the beginning of the new year, we feel obliged to give you all a “state of value stream management” report. The value stream management space has been heating up faster than it is being defined. Amid the confusion, there has been a noticeable shift in what we believe to be the wrong direction. In pursuit of this hotness, over 20 small, mid-sized, and large companies now claim to provide VSM solutions, but are all of them helping with digital transformation goals, DevOps initiatives, or Agile transformation? Or have they simply jumped on the bandwagon and …

View Post

A Christmas Miracle with Value Stream Management: How Four Elves Helped a Shoemaker Deliver High-Quality Shoes

In by Soumya MenonLeave a Comment

“We have just one piece of cloth left. How do I make any shoes to sell?” This is the story of a shoemaker who ran out of business and became bankrupt. He did not know how to survive without making shoes. He had no idea what his shoemaking value stream looked like He did not know how to use the little he had to maximize productivity and quality He was unaware of all the things that were affecting his shoe-making business And one night changed his life when four elves used that piece of cloth, left on the kitchen table, …

View Post

How to Automate Your Workflow Between Jira & Rally in Minutes

In by Jenna PottsLeave a Comment

Have you ever felt frustrated by long wait times and lack of communication when calling into tech support? What could it be costing your business if your customers are feeling the same way? When a customer reports an issue, they expect to know what’s happening and when they can expect resolution. However, customer support and development are typically handled by two different teams. This can easily create a communication breakdown where development doesn’t get the information they need, support doesn’t get timely updates, and the customer just gets mad. Outside of making your developers moonlight as customer service reps (or …

View Post

Managing Flow by Using Value Stream Management and Observability

In by Jenna PottsLeave a Comment

With DevOps pipelines having myriad of tools and DevOps teams not having an integrated tool architecture, the need for observability and lean practices like value stream management is imperative. DevOps leaders need to map out the data from their pipelines for metrics in analytics that drives critical business decisions. Observability in DevOps is the software tools and methodologies that help Dev and Ops teams to log, collect, correlate, and analyze massive amounts of performance data from a distributed application and glean real-time insights. And value stream management provides the ammunition to boost the impact of observability. In this short webinar, …

View Post

How to Streamline Your Application Lifecycle in Minutes: Connecting SAP Solution Manager and Jira

In by Jenna PottsLeave a Comment

Are you currently using manual steps to manage the flow of information throughout your software delivery value stream? Using a tool like SAP Solution Manager to manage your application lifecycle is helpful. However, if you choose to do so manually, then you are probably noticing either delays or breakdowns in communication between the teams involved with governance, development, and operations. Best case: you are adding layers of waste to your software delivery processes. Worst case: critical information is not being communicated properly between teams. So what can you do to automate the flow of your software throughout the entire application …

View Post

Charting the Final Frontier (of Software Delivery): A DevOps Value Stream Mapping Workshop

In by Jenna PottsLeave a Comment

Like Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek, most IT leaders and practitioners have a desire “to boldly go where no man has gone before.” What do we mean by this? Over the years, software delivery has gone through radical changes. Waterfall has led to Agile, and Agile led to DevOps. We’ve hired scrum masters, scheduled daily standups, and set up our kanban board. All of these efforts stem from the same end goals: work faster, build better, and don’t go over budget. Now that we’re in the age of DevOps and moving faster than ever, we’re done right? Not …