Value Stream Management Microwebinar Series

CHECK OUT ALL 10 TOPICS/VIDEOS BELOW

• Topic 10 – “The Bitter Truth About the State of Value Stream Management”

SPEAKERS FOR THIS SESSION: Lance Knight, President & COO, ConnectALL, Andrew Fuqua, SVP of Products, ConnectALL, David Rubinstein, Editor-in-chief, SD Times

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 pitched their previously unrelated tool as the key to “doing” value stream management?

From analysts to influencers, VSM has been either misconstrued, ill defined or completely misunderstood. The real value of VSM is in realizing the “human” aspect of practicing lean principles. Most companies have partial offerings — some have integration capabilities, some have metrics capabilities, and some say AI and ML is the future. But, are companies like yours really benefiting from using VSM platforms like the way they claim?

The bitter truth is that most companies (including some big names) are only focused on one small part of the value stream — yet, they are lauded as leaders in the space — absolving them of having a half-baked offering. This incorrect perspective is hurting businesses that are unable to implement VSM as it is truly meant to be.

Join Lance Knight, President & COO of ConnectALL during this session as he attempts to cut through the noise and address the misconception that the “consortium of value stream management influencers” have created. It is critical that we do this because we actually seriously care about helping companies and employees be more efficient, less stressful, and ultimately bring predictability to their software delivery.

• Topic 9 – “Managing flow by using value stream management and observability”

SPEAKERS FOR THIS SESSION: Lance Knight, President & COO @ ConnectALL; Sharath Bhaskara, VP of Technical Services @ ConnectALL; Dave Rubinstein, Editor-in-Chief of SD Times.

With DevOps pipelines having a 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 drive 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, we will look at how value stream management uses observability to optimize and manage flow by creating access to insights for continuous improvement.

• Using observability throughout the value stream, so in pre-production and across the DevOps toolchain, means fewer defects and more predictability in production
• Making the value stream visible and making value measurable
• Shortening MTTR means more time for innovation and more time to spend on adapting ways of working to optimize flow and more valuable outcomes delivered to customers

• Topic 8 – “How to Use Value Stream Management to Identify and Eliminate Non-value-added Activities and Control Costs”

SPEAKERS FOR THIS SESSION: ConnectALL’s Lance Knight, COO & President; Dave Rubinstein, Editor-in-Chief of SD Times.

Irrespective of your company’s current financial position and performance, they need to sharpen their competitive edge by applying lean principles like value stream management to cost reduction — that is, the elimination of non-value-added activities or waste in the value stream processes.

By tackling wastes from an end-to-end business process, your company can improve the value of their products and services. They can:

• Achieve significant cost reduction
• Reduce time-to-market
• Emerge stronger with a more competitive profile

Join Lance Knight, president and COO, ConnectALL and David Rubenstein, editor-in-chief, SD Times, in a 10-minute discussion, as they throw light on how VSM can be used for cost savings, higher efficiency, and avoid treating waste elimination as another one-off “tool” or quick fix.

• Topic 7 – “How Tool Integration and Automation Helps Ensure Compliance in Regulated Environments”

SPEAKERS FOR THIS SESSION: ConnectALL’s Lance Knight, COO & President; Norman Miglietta, SVP Marketing; Dave Rubinstein, Editor-in-Chief of SD Times.

In the last one decade, there has been a 10-20% increase in the number of regulations in the U.S. alone across a range of industries. Organizations in industries such as medical/health, pharmaceutical, security, finance, automotive, aerospace, and defense are facing unique challenges pertaining to compliance and risk management, high volumes of data, and navigation of rapidly shifting requirements.

To tackle these, they have to maintain strict control over the development process, from testing to maintenance and release. Test management becomes an important function and the teams need visibility to make sure compliance requirements are met.

And this is where the value stream automation product of a value stream management platform comes into play. It enables software test management and QA teams to connect all the tools in the software development and delivery pipelines. It enables:

• Synchronization for the removal of waste and improved collaboration
• Triggering for interoperability for increased productivity, cost reduction, and controlled flow of information
• Monitoring for amplification of feedback loops, implementation of governance, and capturing of data for key results
• Data collection for data-driven decisions, and regulation and compliance

Want to quickly find out in this 5-10 minute microwebinar how all this is possible? Watch the video below!

• Topic 6 – “How Automating with VSM Unifies Disparate Teams”

We as an industry cannot afford to ignore the dangers of siloed software delivery. The cost of a siloed workforce is staggering, resulting in project delays, declining software quality, and a disconnect from the original project intent. And with the widespread shift to remote work, these silos have become more entrenched than ever.

How can we begin to address the problem?

Join ConnectALL’s Lance Knight (President and COO) and Norman Miglietta (SVP of Marketing) as they sit down with David Rubinstein in the latest SD Times Microwebinar to discuss how automation with value stream management enables organizations to unify disparate teams in every stage of development.

They will discuss why automation is key for any organization struggling with siloed software delivery processes, and what benefits teams can expect from connecting their tools and closely managing the flow of work through the value stream.

• Topic 5 – “The Misconception: Why do I Need VSM if I’m Already Implementing Agile?” 

• Topic 4 – “What is “Automating Your Value Stream?””

When you zoom in on a value stream, you’ll discover what goes into creating a specific valuable element of a software. By streamlining or optimizing a value stream, you can develop recurring principles that can be used repeatedly for value creation. And this is where automating your value stream comes in. In this session, we will show you how automating your value stream improves the performance of your value stream. Automation would involve introducing feedback loops for the smallest action taken. You can bring in consistency by following certain principles repeatedly, making some activities predictable. You can execute many of these tasks at scale and converge the results into something digestible for the next step.

• Topic 3 – “The Surprising Reality About Bottlenecks”

In this microwebinar, we will delve into different perspectives on locating bottlenecks, how they might be useful (or not), and the reason that only using your average cycle time to identify your bottlenecks is not enough to get the job done.

Related Resource: IT organizations often face unpredictability and lack of visibility in software delivery — even after they think they are actively implementing value stream management. So maybe the problem for the industry isn’t that we can’t measure, but that we are measuring the wrong things. At ConnectALL, we believe there are 11 key VSM metrics that you MUST measure in your value stream. Download the guide to learn why these metrics matter, and how they will make your value stream more predictable.

• Topic 2 – “Make your value streams flow: How to start seeing your value stream”

In the last session, we highlighted the difference between value stream management and a value stream, and how you need to start seeing your value stream. In this session, we will tell you how to start seeing your value stream and make meaningful connections. You need to understand what tools you use at every step, the people involved and the processes. Seeing your value stream helps you cut waste, make processes more efficient, align cross-functional teams and business goals, plan for future growth and do the right things.

Related Resource: What if there was a value stream mapping tool that focuses specifically on the tools & processes relevant to software development and delivery? Say hello to the Value Stream Designer – a complimentary tool that makes mapping value streams easy, interesting and fun. Download it today!

• Topic 1 – “What’s the difference between value stream management and a value stream?”

Watch our first five-minute ‘microwebinar’, part of a series with value stream management provider ConnectALL. SD Times editor-in-chief and VSMcon chairman David Rubinstein will be hosting ConnectALL president and COO Lance Knight as we answer the question, “What’s the difference between value stream management and a value stream?”.

Related Resource: If you want to learn more about value streams and value stream management, check out this library of instructional videos!