Monday, December 7, 2015

You Already Have ‘NO', Go For ‘YES'


#SridharPeddisetty #PreSales #Negotiation #Project #BestPractices #Agile #ProjectManagement 
"You already have NO, go for YES!" is possibly the best advise shared by my colleague to sum up a hectic 10 days PreSales trip. In the last ten days, we travelled extensively across North America meeting with various clients, which worked out to be an enriching experience for both of us. Coming from a delivery background, this PreSales trip was a learning experience in many ways for me. More often than not, when you are selling your services, its the preconceived perception that is normally challenging to change. By definition, perception is the way in which something is regarded, understood, or interpreted. So when my wise colleague shared with me the wisdom he got from his mother, it truly reflected the challenge we mostly overcome during our PreSales meetings. The challenge of going for ‘Yes’ when we already have a ‘No’. 

In my earlier blog posts, 5 Tips Delivering Quality Services To Your Client and 7 Tips Having Good Times In A Client Relationship, I had shared tips on maintaining robust client relationships and how to ensure providing quality services to your client. This post is more applicable for PreSales phase, which precedes before starting work with a new client or on a new project. In the book "Getting to Yes, Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In", based on the work of the Harvard Negotiation Project, authors Roger Fisher and William Ury outline four parameters for principled negotiation:
  1. Separate the people from the problem
  2. Focus on interests, not positions
  3. Generate a variety of possibilities before making a decision and 
  4. Define objective standards as the criteria for making the decision

All of above four parameters are applicable when transforming the perception of people into a positive outlook. Below I am sharing five tips on how you can go for ‘Yes’ when you have already have a ‘No’.

Tip#1: Identify the people for whom you would want to change perception - Its an important first step to identify the people and their positioning of strength. Have a clear understanding on who are the influencers whose change of opinion would matter the most. Its more on focusing on their respective needs rather than their positions. 

Tip#2: Identify the reasoning of perception - Understand the background to get some context behind the perception. Its important to understand whether the perception is a direct result of personal experience or its an opinion formed by hearing other’s experience. This would help while devising the plan on transforming.  

Tip#3: Plan to transform the perception - Identify and establish some common grounds while planning the transformation. There is a reason why a perception is formed so plan to be assertive without being argumentative. Prepare yourself with ideas, logics and rational reasoning to counter the perception.  

Tip#4: Execute on the plan - Its important to keep emotions under check while executing the transformation. Keep in mind to respond and not to react. Always keep me in mind that you build relationships and connect with others by listening to understand and not listening to respond. 

Tip#5: Have Follow Ups - Its important to have regular follow ups with the individuals you are trying to change the perception. Closing the loop is very critical in ensuring a trustworthy relationship. 

Summary

To summarize, going after ‘Yes’ is more about knowing what you want, going after it and in the process respecting the person on other end of the deal. Go after ‘Yes’ to build long lasting relationships rather than burning bridges on your way out of the meeting room.

“Place a higher priority on discovering what a win looks like for the other person.” – Harvey Robbins

Previous posts you might be interested in 

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Every (Failed) Project Has ‘Success' Story To Tell


#SridharPeddisetty #LessonsLearned #Management #Project #BestPractices #Agile #ProjectManagement 

A 24 year old boy seeing out from the train’s window shouted…
“Dad, look the trees are going behind!”
Dad smiled and a young couple sitting nearby, looked at the 24 year old’s childish behavior with pity,
suddenly he again exclaimed…
“Dad, look the clouds are running with us!”
The couple couldn’t resist and said to the old man…
“Why don’t you take your son to a good doctor?”
The old man smiled and said…
“I did and we are just coming from the hospital, my son was blind from birth, he just got his eyes today.
We should not judge too soon before knowing all facts as at times the truth might surprise you. Every single person on the planet is unique and has a story to share. Similarly, every project is unique and has a ‘success’ story to tell even if it failed to meet its objectives in the eyes of stakeholders. By definition, project is a temporary unique endeavor having start-end timelines with a defined scope & resources with planned set of interrelated tasks executed to accomplish goal(s). 
There are many means to measure the success and failure of a project but there is no strict line dividing between the two. For instance, a ‘successful' project could have exceeded the planned budget or went over scheduled delivery date or could even not have provided all the planned functionalities upon completion. Whereas a ‘failed’ project could have a release with all planned features but missed the critical market launch or could not align with the direction of new leadership team. Brian K Willard in his Project Success and Failures article has shared examples, which strengthens the point that success or failure of a project are subjective. 
In my earlier post, Why Sharing Lessons Learned Is Key For Matured PMO, I discussed why sharing 'lessons learned' across teams is one of the key aspects of a matured PMO in an Organization. A well organized exercise to document 'Lessons learned’ would include identifying the ‘success’ factors of a project and understand how to repurpose it for future or existing projects. Success factors that could be salvaged from a ‘failed’ project could be
  • An improvement to internal process(s) 
  • An improvement in technical skill(s) of the resource(s) 
  • An improvement to service(s) for the end customer 
  • An improvement to save cost in utilizing key resource(s)
The exploitation of knowledge and experience gained from completed projects is very critical for a matured organization and application of the same for continuous improvements.  

Summary

To summarize, do not judge a ‘failed' project too soon without getting specific facts for learning lessons. It's important to identify and share the ‘success’ value of a project even if it failed to meet its main strategic goals.
Remember not to throw the baby out with the bathwater!
Previous posts you might be interested in:

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

DevOps Need Collaboration To Succeed As A Practice


#SridharPeddisetty #DevOps #Kanban #Culture #Collaboration #SchneiderCultureModel #DevOpsStrategy #Agile 
“A great team doesn’t mean that they had the smartest people. What made those teams great is that everyone trusted one another. It can be a powerful thing when that magic dynamic exists.” ― Gene Kim, The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win
DevOps formulates collaboration of Operations and Engineering teams to achieve continuous delivery by participating together in the entire service delivery lifecycle. DevOps is NOT a role but it is a shift in culture of an organization, which encourages greater communication and collaboration to foster building better quality software more quickly and with better reliability. There are good number of people who agree that DevOps is not a new phenomena and some organizations have been formulating collaboration of Operations and Engineering teams to achieve continuous delivery by participating together for releasing new product or service. However there are good number of organizations who are either warming up to the idea of DevOps and ready to adopt it or going through initial phase of DevOps adoption. It is important for the organizations to understand that "collaboration culture” is key for them to successfully adapt to DevOps. In my earlier post Kanban & DevOps - Forming A Perfect Alliance, I shared how Kanban and DevOps combine together to help bring down the silos between Engineering and Operations teams. 

Why DevOps need collaboration to succeed?

To understand why DevOps need collaboration to succeed, let's understand Schneider Culture Model, which defines four distinct cultures:
  1. Collaboration culture is about working together
  2. Control culture is about getting and keeping control
  3. Competence culture is about being the best
  4. Cultivation culture is about learning and growing with a sense of purpose

In the diagram below, Michael Sahota shared his thoughts on understanding the culture of an organization using Schneider Culture Model. Each of the four cultures are depicted – one in each quadrant with each having a name, descriptive quote, a picture, and some words that characterize that quadrant. 

As can be seen in the diagram, collaboration quadrant includes the words affiliation, synergy, partnership, interaction, trust, diversity and egalitarian to characterize itself while the descriptive quote is “we succeed by working together”. These are the exact characteristics that are needed for DevOps to succeed as a practice in an Organization in which Engineering and Operations teams come together to work with affiliation, synergy, trust as partners by closely interacting with egalitarian philosophy. 
Note that according to Schneider model, no one culture type is considered better than another and same is applicable to DevOps, in which possibly cultural elements from other quadrants (control, cultivation and competence) are applicable to DevOps. Depending on the organization but for DevOps to succeed, definitely the organization needs to have ‘Collaboration’ as the single dominant culture with elements from the other three culture quadrants.
By adapting to the culture of DevOps, an organization is not only focusing on agility but also on reliability by eliminating waste, identifying repeatable steps and automating those steps. Organizations will fail in adapting DevOps if the culture is not breaking down the organizational silos and in which everyone shares the accountability for delivery.

Summary

DevOps represents both a technology and a culture change in the organization and the objective of DevOps can be achieved only if the culture of the organization is more collaborative. In other words, DevOps need more of a "collaboration culture” in the organization to succeed as a practice. 
In the comments section, please share your thoughts on what do you think an Organization must do for DevOps to succeed and make a positive impact. 
Previous posts you might be interested in

Change Management Is Not Everyone's Cup Of Tea


#SridharPeddisetty #ChangeManagement #Management #Project #BestPractices #Agile #ProjectManagement 


There's an old sea story about a ship's Captain who inspected his sailors, and afterward told the first mate that his men smelled bad. The Captain suggested perhaps it would help if the sailors would change underwear occasionally. The first mate responded, "Aye, aye sir, I'll see to it immediately!" and went straight to the sailors berth deck and announced, "The Captain thinks you guys smell bad and wants you to change your underwear." He continued, "Pittman, you change with Jones, McCarthy, you change with Witkowski, and Brown, you change with Schneider."
Moral of the story: 
Someone may come along and promise "Change", but don't count on things smelling any better.
Whether your Organization is using Agile or Iterative or Traditional methodology to deliver services to its customers, Change Management is a key component to ensure alignment of plan with strategic objectives. Change Management is a structured approach comprising of an approval process, which allows a change request to move through a series of approval stages to ensure that the lasting benefits of change are achieved. Organizations still struggle to implement a robust Change Management process vetting out the changes as they ought to be.
Common pitfalls seen in Change Management process include

  1. People are not very receptive to expect change. Either there is not a good process to identify and report change or enough stakeholders are not involved early enough to vet out the change. 
  2. More often than not, necessary ‘Change Impact Analysis’ is not performed to truly understand the impact of a ‘Change’ and how its aligned with the strategic objectives of an Organization. 
  3. Project plans are not always changed to reflect the impact of a change, which could effect overall schedule, cost and likely result in scope creep. 
  4. If the project plans are changed, they are not communicated to all project stakeholders to ensure everyone are aware of the change, its likely impact and seek approvals. 
  5. Weigh the priorities of the change with the tasks in pipeline, aligning with strategic objectives of the Organization 

Below is a pictorial depiction of a simple 'Change Management' process

Summary

Presently all Organizations are growing through a disruptive phase whether its technology transformation, changing customer demographics, challenging economic times, etc. In this phase, It is an organization's ability to learn and translate that learning into action rapidly, which gives it the ultimate competitive advantage. In other words, sustaining success depends on an organization’s ability to adapt to a changing environment. Implementing a robust Change Management reduces disruptive aspects and emphasizes positive opportunities in the change process. 
In my future blog posts, I will be sharing how specifically to plan Change Management in an Enterprise Agile setup. 
Previous posts you might be interested in

5 Tips Delivering Quality Services To Your Client


#SridharPeddisetty #Leadership #Management #ClientManagement #ClientRelationship #EngagementManagement #CustomerService 

A gentleman once visited a temple under construction where he saw a sculptor making an idol of God. Suddenly he noticed a similar idol lying nearby. Surprised, he asked the sculptor, “Do you need two statues of the same idol?” “No,” said the sculptor without looking up, “We need only one, but the first one got damaged at the last stage.” The gentleman examined the idol and found no apparent damage. “Where is the damage?” he asked. “There is a scratch on the nose of the idol.” said the sculptor, still busy with his work. “Where are you going to install the idol?” The sculptor replied that it would be installed on a pillar twenty feet high. “If the idol is that far, who is going to know that there is a scratch on the nose?” the gentleman asked. The sculptor stopped his work, looked up at the gentleman, smiled and said, “I know it and God knows it!”
It was probably the understatement of the year when President and CEO of Volkswagen's US group admitted that the company "totally screwed up" in using software to rig emissions tests. More than the tangible monetary losses, it's the intangible reputation & loss of customer trust that will impact Volkswagen the most.
According to Gartner, 65% of a company’s business comes from existing customers, and it costs five times as much to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one satisfied. So it is a no brainer to understand that retaining an existing customer is very important for the continuous growth of any company. In my earlier post 7 Tips Having Good Times In A Client Relationship, I shared tips for helping experience the good times in a client relationship while converting them into everlasting memories & forging long term relationships. According to report from Oracle:
  • 81% - customers are willing to pay more for a superior customer experience with nearly half (44%) willing to pay a premium of more than 5%.
  • 89% - customers switched brands after a poor customer experience.
  • 20% - annual percentage revenue losses due to poor customer experiences.
Below I am sharing 5 tips on how to deliver quality services to your client and ensuring trusting relationships
Tip#1: Understand the strategic objectives of your client - Long everlasting relationships begin with knowing your clients' wants and needs. Most times the focus is on scope, schedule, cost and the solution. It is important to understand the business problem or the strategic goal, which the client needs to achieve. We need to provide simple solutions to complex problems and not the other way around. 
Tip#2: Provide transparency in the delivery process to your client - Transparency is important in every business and client service is no different. Always strive for a high quality output by being transparent with your client on the delivery process and keep them engaged. Being transparent and with robust communication, you minimize the element of surprise and at the same time, earn client’s trust. One reason for wide adoption of Agile is mainly because it encourages customer involvement throughout the delivery process. 
Tip#3: Proactively plan for frequent client feedbacks - You need to measure client satisfaction and engagement by taking frequent feedbacks. Regular check points with the client can help easily identify areas of concern and perform course corrections before issues lead to an unhappy client. Without constant feedback from clients, it's more like working in a vacuum and waiting to be surprised. 
Tip#4: Be consistent in providing your services - Every client is important and you need to appreciate that by creating a unique client experience. Whether your client is a fortune 100 or not, be consistent in providing your services. It's a fact that a satisfied client would be willing to refer your services, leading to increased opportunities; while a non-satisfied client can spread the word faster and even more so via social media. 
Tip#5: Share your new services, processes, tools or competencies - A proactive customer service to help find solutions for continuous improvement not only helps keep the client happy but turns them into your strong brand advocate. You are cultivating shared values by engaging the client in your new services, processes, tools or competencies, which fosters relationships. 

Summary

To summarize, clients do not owe you their loyalty, you have to earn it continuously. Any organization’s strategy for their services should be built around delivering quality customer service. When performed properly, you have earned a happy client for life. 
"Quality means doing it right when no one is looking." - Henry Ford
Previous posts you might be interested in:

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Everyone's Perspective Is Key In Retrospectives


#SridharPeddisetty #Agile #Scrum #Retrospection #Project #Retrospective #Management #BestPractices #ProcessImprovement  
In the early 20th century, an Architect and an Engineer entered a fancy hotel with a roll of blueprints to investigate how to add an elevator to the building. As they were measuring and planning where to knock holes in walls, the Janitor walked up and asked what they were doing. They told him that they would be installing a new elevator in the building. The Janitor quipped, "That's gonna make quite a mess."  Both the Architect and the Engineer assured the Janitor that he would get help cleaning up after they were finished. The Janitor scoffed: "I don't know why you want to go through all that trouble. If it were me I'd put the elevator on the outside of the building and save the fuss." The Engineer looked at the Architect and they were dumbstruck--and the elevator on the outside of a building was born.

Introduction

People with a different perspective can come up with some incredible ideas. Above is an example of an incredible idea, which goes to show that everyone’s inputs are equally important. Even though most of us understand this well, sometimes during retrospective meetings, the Scrum Master or Facilitator fails to have all participants share their thoughts. Not everyone in the team is an extrovert or feels secure enough to share individual opinions in front of others. So the onus lies on the Facilitator of the retrospective meeting to ensure everyone’s perspective is taken. 

Tips on taking everyone’s perspective in retrospectives

Below are 5 tips on how to take everyone’s perspective in a retrospective meeting

Tip#1: Ensure a comfortable setup

Whether doing retrospective with co-located team or a remote team, it’s important to have a meeting setup, which instills comfort for the participants. Personally, I have seen retrospectives done over video conference where some participants are not visible on the screen, which makes it uncomfortable for some to speak while not being visible. Ideally, retrospectives should not include anyone who is not going to contribute. Some members could possibly feel uncomfortable speaking in front of an audience who are not part of the team or does not have anything to contribute in the meeting. 

Tip#2: Share all relevant data ahead of time

Provide an opportunity for participants to be prepared for the retrospective meeting. Normally the tool provides visibility of the goals for a sprint or a release and the actual deliveries. It helps to summarize what was planned, what was achieved and other relevant details in the agenda so that the participants can come prepared with their thoughts to share. It also helps to share the status on action items ahead of time and what has been accomplishment in terms of continuous improvement from the lessons learned from the past retrospective meetings. 

Tip#3: Encourage participants to share thoughts without interruption 

We understand that not all technically skilled resources have good soft skills and some struggle to take time to explain their view point. It’s important to time box but at the same time a good Facilitator understands how to encourage participants to share their perspective. A Facilitator can ensure that someone is actively taking notes for future reference as needed. The Facilitator can also help in ensuring that technical details are understood by the non-technical participants. 

Tip#4: Facilitator should be unbiased  

The Facilitator should direct the conversations to encourage participants remain focused on the objective of the retrospective and ensuring that thoughts are challenged as needed and not the people. No side conversations or comments should be encouraged while a participant is sharing thoughts. The Facilitator should ensure that participants’ thoughts are respected and people can disagree without being disagreeable. 

Tip#5: Encourage consensus on action items

The Facilitator should ensure that there is a consensus on actionable items and identify the owner of the respective action item before wrapping up the meeting. Having a consensus encourages participants to think for themselves as a team. The Facilitator should also summarize main points discussed in the meeting and later follow up with an email or publish in a tool including meeting minutes. 

Summary

The best teamwork comes from the team members who are working independently but toward one goal in unison and working in an environment where everyone’s perspective is encouraged, heard and respected. 

Previous posts you might be interested in

Friday, October 23, 2015

Minimum Marketable Features: An Agile Essential


#SridharPeddisetty #Agile #MMF #Strategy #Project #MinimumMarketableFeatures #Management #BestPractices #ProcessImprovement  

"Agile is all about adapting to change; it was built on the foundational principle that business drivers will change and the development teams must be ready to adapt"

Introduction

Organizations no longer compete on product or service but they compete on experience of faster to market with quality results. It is an organization's ability to learn and translate that learning into action rapidly, which gives it the ultimate competitive advantage. More often than not, it’s seen that most organizations focus on delivering the software and not paying enough attention to the value the software brings to the business. 

What is a Minimum Marketable Feature (MMF)?

A Minimum Marketable Feature (MMF) is the smallest set of functionality that can be delivered, which has value to both the organization delivering it and the end customer using it. MMF is characterized by its three attributes: Minimum, Marketable and Feature.
  • Minimum attribute represents the smallest set whether a feature or feature set, which is key for faster time to market 
  • Marketable attribute represents the selling of the significant value to the end customer and to the delivering organization 
  • Feature attribute represents the perceived value by the end customer and delivering organization. Value may include brand recognition, competitive advantage, revenue generation, cost savings or enhanced customer loyalty.  


How MMF is essential for being Agile?

Agile is an iteratively incremental SDLC methodology in which requirements and solutions evolve through communication and collaboration between self-organizing and cross-functional teams. Agile promotes ‘building the right thing’ through 
  • Customer involvement, 
  • Adaptive planning, 
  • Evolutionary development, 
  • Early delivery, 
  • Continuous improvement and 
  • Encourages rapid & flexible response to change 

in delivering high quality product or service. MMF provides an essential tool to effectively decompose customer needs into finer grain features, which can be delivered more rapidly than waiting for large scale features to be complete. Using the concepts of MMF, decompose the epics into smaller sets of user stories that provide value to end users in shorter development cycles. In Agile SDLC, it’s during the product backlog grooming when the value of requirements or features can be quantified based on how these requirements contribute to the business objectives. During the grooming, using INVEST model to define a user story or MoSCoW for prioritization, various models or methods could be applied that helps to identify the most important features to implement or identifies the MMFs. A release could then be the collection of MMFs, which can be delivered together within the time frame.

Summary

Product innovation is tied to change and often the need for change appears midstream in a project so decomposing the requirements into Minimum Marketable Features (MMF) helps have the edge while improving the time to market. One essential advantage of MMF is the ability to make changes during development without being too disruptive. In other words, MMF helps in adjusting product requirements during development in response to customer feedback. Jim Shore in his Phase Releases article had shared how to use phased delivery to increase project value:
  • Group functionality into MMFs that can be released individually.
  • Create a release plan that deploys high-value features first.
  • Have the entire team focus on one releasable feature at a time.
  • Use continuous design to spread out investment in technical infrastructure.
  • Deploy releases as soon as possible.

Minimum Marketable Features: An Agile Essential was originally published under Prokarma blog on Oct 23rd 2015

5 Tips on Strategizing Your Key Project Resources


#SridharPeddisetty #Agile #PMO #Strategy #Project #Resources #Management #Tips #PMP #BestPractices #ProcessImprovement  

Once there was a company with a vast scrap yard that needed someone to guard it. So they created a night watchman position and hired a person for the job. Then someone thought, how would the watchman do the job without instructions? So the company decided to create a planning department and hired two people. One person was hired to write the instructions while the other person performed time studies. Later someone from the company thought, how would we know whether the night watchman is doing the tasks correctly…? So they created a quality control department and hired two people. One employee to do the studies and the other to write reports. After that, someone from the company thought, how are these people going to get paid…? So they created another set of positions, hiring two more people, a time keeper and a payroll officer. Again someone from the company said, who would be accountable for all of these people…? So they created an administrative section, hiring three more people, an administrative officer, an assistant administrative officer and a legal secretary. Finally, after one year, an executive in the company realized they were $18,000 over budget and must cut-back on overall costs. So the company laid off the night watchman.

Tip#1: Identify your key project resources

Firstly, it’s very important to identify who are the key resources for your project. Normally the key resources for a project are those with niche or advanced skills and knowledge or combination of skills and knowledge, which makes them indispensable. Once the key resources are identified, then it’s easier to follow the next tips in strategizing for them. 

Tip#2: Identify tasks for key project resources 

Identify tasks for key project resources and do resource leveling until no key resource is overloaded. In my earlier post Empower Your Team To Own Responsibilities, I had shared that the key to start empowering your team to own responsibilities is by making the list of tasks, which play to their strengths better and letting them own those tasks. Also in my earlier post Trust Your Team But Make Sure To Verify, I shared that it’s an important trait for the Scrum Master or Agile Project Manager to trust the self performing team to execute and deliver on business value but verifying the same with stage gates is essential.

Tip#3: Understand what motivates them

Robust communication, leadership and emotional intelligence are necessary to effectively communicate with key project resources in order to inspire and motivate them. It is important for the Project Manager to have the ability to strike a balance between knowing what motivates the key project resources and what they are working on. Work with the key resources to identify their goals and fitting them into the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic & Time bound) acronym.   

Tip#4: Encourage them to challenge status quo

Create a transparent, collaborative and productive environment in which project resources are encouraged to take calculative risks while challenging the status quo. If you want your key resources to take the risk of innovation then you have to give them freedom to fail. We understand that often your best people are the ones who make the worst mistakes, because your best people do the most complex work. In my earlier post 5 Reasons To Let Your Team Struggle Today, I had shared that in the face of adversity would emerge your next leaders, who emerge stronger and smarter.  

Tip#5: Plan a roadmap for their growth 

It’s important to invest in your key resources and train them in emerging skills or knowledge. Most organizations do not plan roadmaps for their key resources to grow, fearing the risk that they may leave. Experience teaches us that it’s better to train key resources and risk they leave, than not planning a growth roadmap and risk that they stay. 
If a drop of water falls in a lake, there is no identity. But if it falls on a leaf, it shines. So make sure to create an environment for your key project resources where their abilities and identity always shine.
Previous posts you might be interested in:

5 Tips on Strategizing Your Key Project Resources was originally published under Prokarma blog on Oct 23rd 2015

Friday, October 16, 2015

Sunday, October 11, 2015

Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes - Buenos Aires, Argentina

#SridharPeddisetty, #Argentina, #BuenosAires, #MuseoNacionaldeBellasArtes, #Travel, #EuropeanArt, #PlacesToVisit, #PointsofInterest
Below are the pictures of taken in Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina


















Monday, October 5, 2015

Value Stream Mapping As A Process Improvement Tool


#SridharPeddisetty #Agile #PMO #ValueStreamMapping #Lean #Kanban #Value #Stream #Mapping #BestPractices #ProcessImprovement  

“If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you are doing” 
― W. Edwards Deming

What is Value Stream Mapping?

Value Stream Mapping is a lean tool, which employs a flow diagram documenting in detail every step of a process. It is the fundamental tool to identify waste, reduce process cycle times, and implement process improvement.

Why use Value Stream Mapping?

Organizations no longer compete on product or service but they compete on experience of faster to market with quality results. In order to enable Organizations to achieve their strategic objectives, continuous improvement of the quality of products, services or processes must be ongoing. Value Stream Mappings help identify and eliminate source of waste in an Organization's development ecosystem. It is an invaluable technique to define the current state of a process and analyze it for opportunities to reduce time spent on non-value steps. 

How to use Value Stream Mapping?

Below is an example of how Value Stream Mapping was employed for identifying the wastes in current ‘As Is Process’ and then eliminating the wastes for improving the overall process in ’To Be Process’. 
In the Figure: ‘As Is’ Process, wastes in the process are marked by a triangle identifying where tasks are taking too long either by redundancy or following unecessary steps. Value Stream Mapping provides an opportunity to identify steps in the process, which provides value to the development process and those that do not. 

                                                        Figure: 'As Is’ Process
In the Figure: ‘To Be’ Process, wastes are eliminated and Value Stream Mapping is applied to create a future state process that reduces total cycle time


                                                      Figure: ‘To Be’ Process

Summary

Apply the method of Value Stream Mapping to an inefficient process within your organization and learn how to calculate the efficiency of a process from end-to-end. Learn to diagram the 'As Is' process to identify areas of waste and then develop the 'To Be' process that reduces total cycle time. An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage and Value Stream Mapping is the tool for providing that efficiency in process improvement. 
"Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning"- Benjamin Franklin
Value Stream Mapping As A Process Improvement Tool was originally posted under Prokarma Blog on Oct 5th 2015