Organizational politics. Skeptical leaders. Differing perspectives and assumptions on how the organization actually delivers value. There are lots of potential hurdles to clear when an organization embarks on a Lean-Agile journey. In this episode, Adam Mattis, SPCT at Scaled Agile, joins us to discuss how business architecture affects value stream mapping.
Click the “Subscribe” button to subscribe to the SAFe Business Agility podcast on Apple Podcasts
Organizational politics. Skeptical leaders. Differing perspectives and assumptions on how the organization actually delivers value. There are lots of potential hurdles to clear when an organization embarks on a Lean-Agile journey. In this episode, Adam Mattis, SPCT at Scaled Agile, joins us to discuss how business architecture affects value stream mapping.
In their discussion, Adam and Melissa cover topics including:
Where organizations get stuck when identifying value streams and how to get unstuck
The difference between value stream identification and value stream mapping
The differences between operational and development value streams
How business architecture supports value streams
How an organization can determine if it has a business architecture
Follow these links to access the resources that Adam mentions in the podcast:
Melissa Reeve is the Vice President of Marketing at Scaled Agile, Inc. In this role, Melissa guides the marketing team, helping people better understand Scaled Agile, the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and its mission. Connect with Melissa on LinkedIn.
About Adam Mattis
Adam is an SPCT at Scaled Agile with many years of experience overseeing SAFe implementations across a wide range of industries. He’s also an experienced transformation architect, engaging speaker, energetic trainer, and a regular contributor to the broader Lean-Agile and educational communities. Connect with Adam on LinkedIn.
We reorganized our company from three distinct business units to a functionally aligned organization, where everyone is responsible for delivering value to the customer.” In this episode, we talk to Janice Murray and Adrienne Dieball at ACT.org about revisiting the organization’s value streams and Agile Release Trains (ARTs) for successful business agility transformation
Click the “Subscribe” button to subscribe to the SAFe Business Agility podcast on Apple Podcasts
“We reorganized our company from three distinct business units to a functionally aligned organization, where everyone is responsible for delivering value to the customer.” In this episode, we talk to Janice Murray and Adrienne Dieball at ACT.org about revisiting the organization’s value streams and Agile Release Trains (ARTs). Find out the aha moment that helped them move toward organizing around value, the benefits of integrating business teams onto ARTs, lessons learned, and next steps.
Follow these links to find resources for organizing around value:
Melissa Reeve is the Vice President of Marketing at Scaled Agile, Inc. In this role, Melissa guides the marketing team, helping people better understand Scaled Agile, the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), and its mission.
As Senior Director, Transformation Management Office, Janice is a key leader in ACT’s transformation to an agile delivery model aligned around common services that deliver continuous value to its customers. Find Janice on LinkedIn.
Guest: Adrienne Dieball
Adrienne is vice president, content solutions and services at ACT. She has a demonstrated history of driving lean-agile projects, complex changes, and transformation initiatives. Connect with Adrienne on LinkedIn.
When enterprises extend SAFe into the business, complexities can arise as people within organizational value streams interact with those in development value streams. In this episode, members of our panel share their insights and stories from the field about the role of the operational and development value streams in an enterprise’s journey toward business agility.
Click the “Subscribe” button to subscribe to the SAFe Business Agility podcast on Apple Podcasts
When enterprises extend SAFe into the business, complexities can arise as people within organizational value streams interact with those in development value streams. In this episode, members of our panel share their insights and stories from the field about the role of the operational and development value streams in an enterprise’s journey toward business agility.
Topics the panel discusses include:
Confusion around the difference between an operational value stream and a development value stream
Customer-centricity and organizing around value
Bridging the gap between operational value streams and development value streams
Optimizing the customer experience
Hosted by: Melissa Reeve
Melissa Reeve is the Vice President of Marketing at Scaled Agile, Inc. In this role, Melissa guides the marketing team, helping people better understand Scaled Agile, the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and its mission.
Thorsten focuses on the development of Lean and Agile organizations, as well as the implementation of Lean-Agile strategy and portfolio processes. As the first German SAFe Fellow, he is an experienced counterpart for c-level management on their way in the digital future for their enterprises. Find Thorsten on LinkedIn.
Guest: Saahil Panikar
Saahil has worked with start-ups and small businesses, the Federal Government, and Fortune 100 companies across North and South America, Europe, and Asia—and is determined to help organizations extend their Agility beyond IT. Connect with Saahil on LinkedIn.
Guest: Yuval Yeret
Yuval is the head of AgileSparks (a Scaled Agile Partner) in the United States where he leads enterprise-level Agile implementations. He’s also the steward of The AgileSparks Way and the firm’s SAFe, Flow/Kanban, and Agile Marketing. Find Yuval on LinkedIn.
Organizations practicing SAFe® create value streams to accelerate time to value delivery. But what’s the difference between an operational and a development value stream? How do they coexist to optimize flow? And how are value streams critical to achieving scaled business agility? In this episode, Ian Spence, SAFe Fellow and Chief Scientist at Ivar Jacobson International, answers these questions and explains the key aspects of operational and development value streams.
Click the “Subscribe” button to subscribe to the SAFe Business Agility podcast on Apple Podcasts
Organizations practicing SAFe® create value streams to accelerate time to value. But what’s the difference between an operational and a development value stream? How do they coexist to optimize flow? And how are value streams critical to achieving business agility?
In this episode, Ian Spence, SAFe Fellow and Chief Scientist at Ivar Jacobson International, answers these questions, and explains why you should think of the value streams as a partnership. He also shares his guidance around the intricacies of creating value streams, and how to balance the network and hierarchy sides of the organization for long-term success.
Follow these links to learn more about the following topics discussed in the podcast:
Melissa Reeve is the Vice President of Marketing at Scaled Agile, Inc. In this role, Melissa guides the marketing team, helping people better understand Scaled Agile, the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and its mission.
Ian has helped literally hundreds of organizations in their Agile transformations by providing leadership, training, consultancy, facilitation and all levels of coaching. An experienced Agile coach, consultant, team leader, analyst, architect, and scrum master, Ian has practical experience of the full project lifecycle and a proven track record of delivery within the highly competitive and challenging IT solutions environment.
Without internal alignment on a clear definition of value, how can an organization quickly respond to changing customer demands? In this episode, Shawn Lowe, business agility advisor at Accenture│SolutionsIQ, joins us to discuss how to bring clarity to what value is, as well as its effect on customer satisfaction and achieving business agility. Shawn also shares his experiences and advice for leaders on spotting and addressing anti-patterns when there’s misalignment on value. Plus, he shares four questions organizations should ask to determine how useful their products are to customers.
Click the “Subscribe” button to subscribe to the SAFe Business Agility podcast on Apple Podcasts
Without internal alignment on a clear definition of value, how can an organization quickly respond to changing customer demands? In this episode, Shawn Lowe, business agility advisor at Accenture│SolutionsIQ, joins us to discuss how to bring clarity to what value is, as well as its effect on customer satisfaction and achieving business agility. Shawn also shares his experiences and advice for leaders on spotting and addressing anti-patterns when there’s misalignment on value. Plus, he shares four questions organizations should ask to determine how useful their products are to customers.
Hosted by: Melissa Reeve
Melissa Reeve is the Vice President of Marketing at Scaled Agile, Inc. In this role, Melissa guides the marketing team, helping people better understand Scaled Agile, the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and its mission.
With 15 years of experience as a Lean-Agile leader and coach, Shawn specializes in local and corporate value streams. He draws on his expertise as a former product manager and product owner in large enterprise development to connect with non-technical and technical teams and leaders to solve simple and complex issues in a broader business context.
Welcome to the second post in our blog series about value stream identification in practice. Read the first post here about preparing for a successful Value Stream and ART Identification workshop.
When deciding where to launch an Agile Release Train (ART), it can be tempting to look within existing organizational boundaries. But, considering Lean-Agile Principle #10, which reminds us to organize around value, we must challenge ourselves to look outside of our comfort zone, and consider a team more optimally focused on delivering value.
In light of organizational politics, doing so can be challenging, if not scary. To help people focus on the task at hand, we’ve developed a Value Stream Identification workshop. It can be especially helpful for organizations that aren’t actively managing value streams. It also teaches all those who attend the Implementing SAFe® course the method to facilitate a value stream identification event.
All SPCs are trained to facilitate a value stream mapping activity. But executing these workshops is an art mastered only after you’ve done in-depth studies on the topic (check out Value Stream Mapping by Karen Martin and the SAFe Value Streams article to start), and have participated in several events under the guidance of a skilled practitioner.
If you’re a new SPC who doesn’t have the opportunity to co-facilitate an event, here are 10 tips to help make your first few value stream identification sessions more productive.
Your operational value stream is probably bigger than you think.
When considering your operational value stream, remember the baseline definition of a value stream:
“… set of actions that take place to add value to a customer from the initial request through the realization of value by the customer. The value stream begins with the initial concept, moves through various stages of development and on through delivery and support. A value stream always begins and ends with a customer.”
Or, simply stated, from concept to cash.
In my years of helping organizations better understand their value streams, I’m often presented with initial maps that begin with input from an upstream process and end with an output to a downstream process. These aren’t value streams. To understand the value stream that your ART serves, it’s likely you need to zoom out from the perspective you’re most familiar with and consider the products and services that you support. I often direct people seeking to understand their value streams to start with the products or services section of their organization’s website. Another point of reference is the organization’s earnings report. A profit and loss statement will often represent the organization’s operational value streams.
Your development value stream probably doesn’t follow organizational structures.
The development value stream, which is where your ART(s) will align, represents the design-build-test activities that support change within the operational value stream. Though it may be tempting to align development value streams and ARTs to the organization’s reporting structures, this is suboptimal. To determine the best development value stream alignment, you must first understand the complexity of the social network required to serve the operational value stream. How? By gaining clarity around architectural complexity, or understanding who must collaborate and how often to develop valuable changes to the operational value stream. Over time, our goal is to simplify and optimize both technical and business architectures. To start doing that, we must do our best to optimize for flow by reducing bottlenecks associated with handoffs and dependencies.
After identifying the operational value stream, we continue the conversation of value stream identification. This is where we seek to understand the systems that support the operational value stream, and which steps of it they interact with. The resulting picture will help us make a more informed decision of where to align our development value stream, and determine which type(s) of development value stream supports our operational value stream.
Agreeing with operational and development value stream alignment is harder than you think.
Aligning around value, though critical to delivering better products and services to customers faster, is often challenging. In large enterprises that historically reward those who operate well within the hierarchy, the goal to operate well cross-functionally may feel difficult. The leaders of each functional area are asked to relinquish control of their organizations to better serve the customer. Though few will argue the merit of such a decision, we must be empathetic to the fact that this sort of change is difficult and often scary.
As a value stream identification workshop facilitator, you’ll find it valuable to proactively partner with the organization’s change management professionals to better understand the audience impacted by the workshop. These change professionals can help you better understand potential roadblocks and relationships. And they can recommend conversations you should have before the workshop to begin establishing trust, rapport, and purpose.
You may have more guidance than you think.
Understand the nuance between value stream identification and value stream mapping. Value stream mapping is the art and science of defining, measuring, and optimizing value streams and capabilities over a long period of time. SAFe discusses value stream identification in the context of launching an ART. It’s where we need to have an informed discussion of the most logical place to launch an ART based on our best understanding of how value flows within our area of influence. Value stream identification doesn’t replace value stream mapping but certainly proves the need to invest in the latter.
Words matter. When referencing the one- to two-day workshop to determine the best place to launch an ART, be careful to reference this as value stream identification. A business architect’s job is to maintain and optimize value streams and their underlying capabilities. If they overhear a well-intended SPC state that they intend to map a value stream in a day or two, the SPC may inadvertently make an adversary out of a would-be supporter.
If the organization you’re working with happens to have business architects on staff, then there may be many more inputs available for the value stream identification conversation than you’d initially suspect. If so, seek to partner with the business architect and leverage the assets they’ve created. At the very least, the fact that these people exist indicates an undeniable organizational willingness to organize around value.
Your business architecture will make it hard.
The architecture of a business, the flow of processes and interactions from concept to cash, will introduce complexity to the value stream identification exercise. Those complexities will typically represent years of acquisitions (without integration), good and bad relationships, canceled projects, partially finished projects, and other forms of organizational debt.
One of the most exciting—and troubling—things about an Agile transformation is how the new ways of working effectively shine a spotlight on issues that have been plaguing the organization for years. This is your opportunity to do something about it. Remember, the goal of value stream identification is to make an informed decision about the best, most logical place to launch your release trains. And those ARTs will evolve as the organization and architecture change. The goal isn’t to solve all of the organization’s challenges. But be aware of what you learn so that you can address the challenges and complexities moving forward.
Your technical architecture will make it harder.
As messy as an organization’s business architecture may be, it’s likely that its technical architecture is worse. I’m talking about outdated systems, mainframe databases, hard-coded variables, and systems that we’re not too sure of what they do, but certain that it’s something important. The conceptual diagrams of most architectures tend to look like a hurricane.
Though challenging, this is also a huge opportunity. If the intent is to move faster and with greater stability, you must invest in reducing technical debt, refactoring, and modularizing their architecture. The value stream workshop can help identify some of the largest risks in the technical architecture and begin aligning people in a way that will support a better future state.
A good way to think of investments in business and technical architecture is to reflect on this video.
The goal of a race is to cross the finish line first. Pitstops are an obvious bottleneck in that process. To alleviate delays in the pit, engineers and team owners had to invest in developing specialized skills among the pit crew and specialized tools optimized for efficiency. And redesign the car with the intent of making every component on it as fast as possible. This includes the architecture for changing tires, fueling, and more. These days, nobody is polishing the windshield. Instead, the visor on the driver’s helmet has been optimized to minimize glare, shed water, resist fog, and with roll-offs for when things get messy.
What’s your organization’s race car? What investments do you need to make in the car so that your organization can achieve its goals? Investments in architecture aren’t optional. But you should make it clear how each investment will help the organization perform at a higher level.
There are several types of operational value streams.
When considering operational value streams in an organization, it’s important to be aware that there are more than one type.
Fulfillment value streams represent the steps necessary to process a customer request, deliver a digitally enabled product or service, and receive remuneration. Examples include providing a consumer with an insurance product or fulfilling an e-commerce sales order.
Manufacturing value streams convert raw materials into the products customers purchase. Examples include consumer products, medical devices, and complex cyber-physical systems.
Software product value streams offer and support software products. Examples include ERP systems, SaaS, and desktop and mobile applications.
Supporting value streams include end-to-end workflows for various supporting activities. Examples include the life cycle for employee hiring and retention, supplier contracting, executing the annual budget process, and completing a full enterprise sales cycle.
Development value streams support operational value streams.
While operational value streams may vary significantly depending on their purpose, the development value stream steps are fairly standard: design, build, validate, and release the systems that support the operational value stream as it delivers value to the end-user. The titles of the people who work within the development value stream will vary based on the specific type of work being done, but the responsibilities of the people involved with the development value stream will be aligned with the steps mentioned above.
This is only a starting point.
Remember, the value stream identification workshop is designed to help people determine the best, most logical place to launch a release train. The decisions made in the workshop are a starting point. Following the workshop, reflect on opportunities to improve business operations, technical architecture, and the benefit of actively managing value streams for flow. Launching your first ART, development value stream, and portfolio is only the beginning of a lifelong pursuit to improve.
Once you start, evolve and seek excellence.
As you continue to optimize your operations and architecture, expect that the ART configuration and team topology will evolve. As the Agile Manifesto reminds us, we hope to build resiliency through a commitment to responding to change by following a plan. And the SAFe House of Lean reminds us how important it is to commit to relentless improvement in pursuing value delivery.
Look for the next post in our blog series about how our voice of the customer sessions influenced Scaled Agile’s recent value stream work.
In the meantime, you can download the updated Value Stream and ART Identification Workshop toolkit by navigating to the “Implement” tab on the SAFe Community Platform, selecting “SAFe Toolkits & Templates,” then selecting “SAFe Value Stream and ART Identification Workshop Toolkit 5.1.”
About Adam Mattis
Adam Mattis is a SAFe Program Consultant Trainer (SPCT) at Scaled Agile with many years of experience overseeing SAFe implementations across a wide range of industries. He’s also an experienced transformation architect, engaging speaker, energetic trainer, and a regular contributor to the broader Lean-Agile and educational communities. Learn more about Adam at adammattis.com.
The Value Stream and Agile Release Train (ART) identification workshop are some of the most critical steps to generate meaningful results from your SAFe transformation. That’s because it enables you to respond faster to customer needs by organizing around value. This workshop can also be the hardest step. It’s complex and politically charged, so organizations often skip or mismanage it.
A savvy change agent would invest in the organizational and cultural readiness to improve the chances of its success. Attempting to shortcut or breeze through change readiness would be the same as putting your foot on the brake at the same time you’re trying to accelerate. Get this workshop right, and you’ll be well on your way to a successful SAFe implementation.
Why Is It So Difficult?
Aside from the complex mechanics of identifying your value streams, there is also a people component that adds to the challenge. Leaders are often misaligned about the implications of the workshop, and it can be tough to get the right participants to attend. For example, a people leader could soon realize that ARTs may be organized in a way that crosses multiple reporting relationships, raising the concern of their direct reports joining ARTs that don’t report to them.
In reflecting on my battle scars from the field, I’ve distilled my advice to three steps to prepare the organization for a successful workshop.
Step 1: Engage the right participants
The Value Stream and ART identification workshop can only be effective and valuable if the right audience is present and engaged. This is the first step to ensure the outcome of the workshop solves for the whole system and breaks through organizational silos.
“… and If you can’t come, send no one.” —W. Edwards Deming
The required attendees will fall into four broad categories:
Executives and leaders with the authority required to form ARTs that cut across silos.
Business owners and stakeholders who can speak to the operational activities of the business, including ones with security and compliance concerns.
Technical design authorities and development managers who can identify impacted systems and are responsible for the people who are working on them.
Lean-Agile Center of Excellence and change agents supporting the SAFe implementation and facilitating the workshop.
Use some guiding questions to identify the right audience for the workshop within your organization. Are the participants empowered to make organizational decisions? Do the participants represent the whole value stream? Is the number of attendees within a reasonable range to make effective decisions?
Step 2: Build leadership support and pre-align expectations
To support engagement and address potential resistance, I recommend performing a series of interactions with leaders in advance of the workshop. In such interactions, the change agent would socialize a crisp and compelling case for change in the organization, supporting the “why” behind running the workshop.
The change agent needs to be prepared to address leader trepidation about the possibility of having their reporting-line personnel on ARTs that they don’t fully own. Most compelling is a data-based case made by performing value-stream mapping with real project data to expose the delays in value delivery due to organizational handoffs.
Interaction opportunities can include one-on-one empathy interviews, attending staff meetings, internal focus groups, and overview sessions open to all workshop participants.
I highly advise setting expectations with leaders in advance of the workshop. This will help them understand the workshop implications, help identify potential misalignment or resistance, and coach them in how to signal support for the workshop purpose.
The following are useful expectations to set with the participants in advance to help shape how they view the upcoming workshop:
Allow the designs to emerge during the session. This is meant as a collaborative workshop.
Expect to be active and on your feet during the session, actively contributing to the designs.
Be present and free up your schedule for the duration of the workshop as key organizational decisions are being made.
Alleviate the anxiety of broad, big-bang change by clarifying that they get to influence the implementation plan and timing to launch the ARTs.
Address the misconception about organizational change by explaining that ARTs are “virtual” organizations, and that reporting lines need not be disrupted.
Step 3: Prepare the workshop facilitators
A successful Value Stream and ART identification workshop will have the main facilitator, ideally someone with experience running this workshop. Additionally, you’ll need a facilitator, typically an SPC, per every group of six to eight attendees. Prior to the workshop date, schedule several facilitator meetings to prepare and align them on the game plan. This will go a long way in helping your facilitators project competence and confidence during the workshop. Discuss the inherent challenges and potential resistance, and how the facilitators can best facilitate such moments. Share insights on change readiness based on the leadership interactions and empathy interviews. Finally, prepare a shared communication backchannel for facilitators, and build in sync points during the event to ensure alignment across the groups.
While these simple steps and readiness recommendations don’t necessarily guarantee a successful workshop, they’re a great starting point. You’ll still need to understand the mechanics of identifying value streams. This is what Adam will cover in the next post in our value stream series. Look for it next week.
Deema Dajani is a Certified SAFe® Program Consultant Trainer (SPCT). Drawing on her successful startup background and an MBA from Kellogg Northwestern University, Deema helps large enterprises thrive through successful Agile transformations. Deema is passionate about organizing Agile communities for good, and helped co-found the Women in Agile nonprofit. She’s also a frequent speaker at Agile conferences and most recently contributed to a book on business agility.
Customer Interview: SAFe at American Express — What it Means to Keep the Trains on Track While Still Debating Value Streams
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Director of Enterprise Agility Success, Oden Hughes sits down with Dean Leffingwell to talk about what it takes to manage and nurture a large-scale application of SAFe at a company like American Express focused on providing the world’s best customer experience. She’ll discuss the challenges of establishing alignment between organizations with conflicting views, and why they run their Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (LACE) as a cost center. She’ll share patterns of success, how they’ve created a tailored approach to agility for improved results, and why success depends on much more than courses, workbooks, and SAFe principles.
Presented at the Global SAFe Summit, October, 2020.
Customer Story – Allianz: AGCS’ SAFe Journey To Become a Data Driven Enterprise
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After multiple mergers, our data systems were disjointed. To add to this, the newest International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS17) is set to go into effect in January 2023, making data management crucial from a regulatory perspective. We implemented the latest version of SAPHANA, a database management system in partnership with Accenture. This brought our data together under a centralized solution while offering near real-time data processing and better reporting and analytics.
SAFe provided the structure we needed to scale Agile in a complex SAP and non-SAP landscape. SAFe allowed us to organize around value and grow seamless integrated cross-functional teams aligned with the company’s long-term strategy. At Allianz Global Corporate our SAP DevSecOps automation pipeline helped to reach SAP Delivery Agility which paved the way to build the capabilities needed to reach SAP Business Agility. SAFe addressed the complexities and gave us the framework for building portfolios, roles, and jobs to achieve our goals for customer centricity, speed, and quality. DevSecOps is a mindset, an enterprise-wide culture and practice. We will showcase how Allianz Global Corporate applied the five core concepts of DevSecOps and Release on Demand across the five core concepts and become a Data-Driven Enterprise.
Presented at the Global SAFe Summit, October, 2020.
Melissa Reeve, the Vice President of Marketing at Scaled Agile describes how Airbus used SAFe to improve its operations, how value streams behave in a large solution environment how to conduct I & A for large solution trains and more.
Click the “Subscribe” button to subscribe to the SAFe Business Agility podcast on Apple Podcasts
Our SAFe in the News articles is titled, “Airbus CIO Luc Hennekens’ plan to disrupt aviation with data” and is written by Thomas Macaulay for November issue CIO Magazine in the UK.
Hear Harry Koehnemann describe how to conduct value stream identification in large solutions environments and some common anti-patterns. To learn more about the large solutions, visit scaledagileframework.com.
Audio CoP
The Audio Community of Practice section of the show is where we answer YOUR most frequently asked and submitted questions. If you have a question for us to answer on air, please send it to podcast@staging.scaledagile.com
The two questions we answer in this episode are:
What are some recommendations and lessons learned, for preparing and facilitating a Large Solution Level Inspect and Adapt session?
When do I need solution intent? What is the difference between NFRs in the backlog and in solution intent, why?
Hosted by: Melissa Reeve
Melissa Reeve is the Vice President of Marketing at Scaled Agile, Inc. In this role, Melissa guides the marketing team, helping people better understand Scaled Agile, the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and its mission.
