Do you only focus on increasing efficiency OR…?

 As a change agent, you are trained and would consider yourself an expert in the LEAN space, and have surely developed “EYES for Waste“.  You are always looking for that efficiency gain and how you can squeeze the most juice from your endeavours.  For some Lean practitioners, if you are not focused on reducing waste, then you at not Lean-ing at all (another discussion some other time 🙂 ).

But do you stop and pause?  or are we fascinated by the efficiency cult  that we forget to look beyond ?... read more

3 Simple steps to build your Continuous Delivery Dashboard

Continuous Delivery is gaining traction now, but it is never easy to get funding :-|| But using Lean Value Stream Maps you can now showcase tangible efficiency gains by following these 3 simple steps to build your Continuous Delivery dashboard.

In uncertain times, people always struggle with executive funding for resources (infrastructure asset purchases and/or dedicated people). This is where I have borrowed the Lean Value Stream maps (VSM) to showcase visible dashboards focused on process efficiency gains, resulting in hard $$$ savings, and help win executives approval, for funding the various activities under the Continuous Delivery initiatives.

Here is a basic definition for Continuous Delivery, which is a set of practices and  principles aimed at, building, testing and releasing software faster and more frequently. The practices would typically include configuration management, continuous integration, automated testing, deployment automation, build pipelines and an agile team delivering frequent releases.

.... read more

Is your Agile dashboard == Business dashboard?

Agile dashboards include Burn down charts (product\release\iteration), team velocity charts, backlog items (product\iteration) = Agile denominators

Business dashboards have managers measuring the schedule, resources, quality.. ; CXO's measuring the ROI\ ROCE\... ; and the business analysts have the Quick Ratios \ quarterly stock price\ EPS expectations to ponder = Business (Economic) denominators

But do we measure and communicate the relationship between the agile denominators and the economic denominators? Can you say that if my project agile denominators are high (low), my organization economic denominators are high (low)?

Or is the agile denominator dashboard only for the masses (teams executing projects) and the 'sacred' economic denominator dashboard for the management?

..read more