Enterprises Can Play Big, Be Nimble with Value Stream Management Development

From your bank and automobile to your refrigerator and sprinkler system, everything you rely on requires software in one way or another. Code in almost everything attests to the fact that software has become the driving force for businesses in every major industry. And it’s no longer just software companies that write the voluminous code required to power our lives and our livelihoods. Today, every major business designs and builds software for internal use and/or for customers.

Today’s Leveled Playing Field

Software is not only the great differentiator for the large players it’s also the great playing field leveler for businesses a fraction of their size. Today, businesses of every kind have access to software technology that enables them to provide products and services to their customers that might have been impossible just ten years ago. Consider Elon Musk. He was able to go head-to-head with long- established auto manufacturers because banging tin is no longer what building cars is all about. Automobile manufacturing is much more technology than metal these days. Now he has his sights set on space — also about software. How about your home mortgage? Before 2011, most people couldn’t imagine borrowing money from anywhere other than an established bank with a well-known brand. Enter the online mortgage business. Today, some of the biggest mortgage lenders have only been around for a short time…and they are not even banks.

With software making the world go around and technology breakthroughs like cloud computing, AI, CRM, marketing automation platforms and business intelligence, sophisticated technological capabilities are at the fingertips of even the smallest business. And small businesses are nimble. They tend to be closer to consumers and can pivot to meet customer needs — which have been known to change faster than the weather. And speaking of changing consumer norms, they no longer choose products based on the size and longevity of the companies that create them. Size does not equate to value the way it once did. For today’s consumer, it is much more about getting what you want, when you want it. This is good news for upstart companies but it creates a whole new set of challenges for enterprise market leaders in a wide variety of industries.

Many of these very large companies design and build proprietary software products, because the satisfaction of their customers, and ultimately their competitive edge, depends on it. This means that even though the company is technically a bank, an insurance company, manufacturer or retailer, it is also a software company — because business success hinges on the ability to quickly and cost-effectively deliver software along with or as part of core products. Some of these organizations employ thousands, even tens of thousands, of software delivery practitioners from developers and testing professionals to project managers, business analysts, help desk personnel and security experts. The problem is that in certain ways traditional software development has the pregnancy problem: No matter how many people you add to your software delivery team it still can take the same amount time to deliver (and may take longer the more people you add). To address this, larger and larger organizations are jumping on the Agile methodology bandwagon and undertaking expensive and complicated DevOps transformations. The idea being that an organization that embraces these methods can deliver better software faster and much more efficiently — software that meets the needs of the business and the customers better than the competition.

Overcoming the Challenge

Behemoth businesses are adopting methodologies like Agile, that were traditionally used by much smaller players, in hopes of turning the big ship on a dime to get customers what they want faster. And that’s actually working for the companies able to overcome several not-so-small challenges. The first: How do large software delivery teams, where every discipline (and sometimes individual practitioner) uses a different tool, collaborate, communicate and stay on track while still being nimble enough to respond to changing market forces? The second: How do organizations in highly regulated industries achieve the visibility and traceability compliance requires across a huge number of projects and teams (located around the world). And, third: Legacy systems (enough said).

This may not sound like a transformation killer at first glance, but when you take a close look at the tools, teams and projects that large enterprises need to manage you will see a constantly changing, three-dimensional puzzle of epic proportions. What you may not see is that Agile and DevOps alone are not quite delivering on the promise of faster delivery and bringing the business and IT closer together. This is where the small competitors that large companies once took for granted start eating their lunch.

Taking a Value Stream Approach

This doesn’t mean that large enterprises should try to squeeze themselves into small company shoes, including trying to narrow the tools teams use to do their jobs (because it seems like the only way to get the visibility and control you need), but it does require companies with big development organizations to take a “value stream” approach to software delivery.

This means having an end-to-end view of the process (similar to what Toyota did for manufacturing many years ago, but that works in a non-linear process like software development), to reduce waste, identify bottlenecks and make sure the business and the development sides of the house are on the same page. In fact, connecting and automating the entire software development toolchain is a key enabler in the shift from managing software projects to delivering products and business value.

In our view, this approach was recently boosted when, in May 2018, analyst firm Forrester published research on this issue of Value Stream Management (VSM). In Elevate Agile-Plus-DevOps With Value Stream Management by Christopher Condo and Diego Lo Giudice, we believe the authors suggest that large organizations can realize the promise of Agile and DevOps while balancing the benefits of being an industry leader with the ability to deliver fast-mover competitive advantage through better software delivery. They advised organizations to take the initial steps toward VSM immediately and noted that many available software offerings can provide immediate help with driving greater value delivery in the software delivery process.

Clearly, for enterprises seeking to improve upon Agile and DevOps approaches that haven’t addressed all of their development issues, VSM is a must investigate approach. Without it, today’s unknown startup might soon disrupt your enterprise’s market position and become the new leader.