Why Every Tech Team Needs a Value Stream Management Strategy?

Every (good) firm provides value to its clients, whether through software, sandwiches, or salsa classes. The 'value stream' refers to the set of actions that take a product from an idea to a delighted client.

Each business has one. However, these streams can become clogged or slowed at times, resulting in all-too-common delays, lost effort, and dissatisfied consumers.

That's why the most astute teams are turning to Value Stream Management. It's more than just a means to ensure operations run smoothly; it's also a tool to identify where workflows are being stopped. After you've mapped that flow, you can begin making improvements that increase the gas, from faster releases to more earnings. Let's get a closer look!

What is Value Stream Management?

QKS Group defines a process aimed at streamlining the procedures required to envision, accomplish, and deliver software to users, focusing on improving quality, accelerating delivery, and increasing revenue. It encompasses the complete software delivery lifecycle (SDLC) while ensuring a streamlined and efficient workflow. This is achieved by identifying and eliminating inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and unnecessary activities throughout the software delivery process, resulting in improved productivity, reduced lead times, and enhanced customer satisfaction a process aimed at streamlining the procedures required to envision, accomplish, and deliver software to users, focusing on improving quality, accelerating delivery, and increasing revenue. It encompasses the complete software delivery lifecycle (SDLC) while ensuring a streamlined and efficient workflow. This is achieved by identifying and eliminating inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and unnecessary activities throughout the software delivery process, resulting in improved productivity, reduced lead times, and enhanced customer satisfaction.

Why do you Need a Value Stream Management (VSM) Tool?

End-to-end visibility across your value streams: Value Stream Management identifies bottlenecks, mistakes, and extra procedures that create delays in your operations. Without VSM, it's complex to perceive the larger picture. This is particularly relevant for modern IT teams, as each team has its own set of tools and analytics, making it hard to collect end-to-end value flow data from diverse toolchains. VSM identifies opportunities to reduce product delivery time while maintaining high-quality standards.

Break down operational silos: Good products are created by cross-functional teams that include product owners, software developers, DevOps engineers, and technical support. However, cross-functional organizations can negatively impact product quality and velocity, resulting in undetected issues and longer lead times. Cross-functional teams can produce excellent results, but they frequently fail to have a significant influence on profitability. VSM enables you to identify inefficiencies and break down operational silos among teams.

Improve the customer experience: By concentrating on business results rather than internal procedures, your IT team's work becomes more aligned with customer pleasure. Your aim is not to improve technical KPIs but rather to create customer value. You will still look at engineering KPIs, but you will also consider how the activities accomplished by your software team relate to business goals.

Top 5 Value Stream Management (VSM) Tools

Digital.ai

Digital.ai is a DevOps platform technology business that helps Global 5000 companies automate software delivery operations in complicated technological environments. The company's AI-powered DevOps platform automates software releases, enhances mobile application testing and security, and offers insights throughout the development lifecycle. Digital.ai empowers large enterprises to responsibly embrace AI, reduce software-related risks, and amplify developer productivity to deliver innovations that drive business outcomes.

GitLab

GitLab is a Value Stream Management tool. According to Forrester New Wave, GitLab is a "Strong Performer" in the Value Stream Management category. GitLab, being an open-source solution, combines end-to-end functionality while also providing greater power. GitLab provides unique DevOps tools for each stage of the software development process. Excellent perspectives across these systems give us Value Stream Management capabilities. Gitlab is the first of its type tool that covers the complete DevOps lifecycle.

HCLSoftware

HCLSoftware is a crucial component of HCLTech, specializing in software development, marketing, sales, and support. The company focuses primarily on areas such as AI and automation, data, analytics and insights, digital transformation, and enterprise security. HCLSoftware, a provider of cloud-native enterprise software solutions, supports a wide array of applications across various businesses globally.

Plandek

Plandek is an advanced analytics platform that enables IT teams to develop high-quality software in a faster and more predictable manner. Plandek provides real time insights throughout the software delivery process by pulling data from delivery teams' tools. It's a platform that helps IT teams assess and improve their performance while also providing stakeholders with clear Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

Plutora

The most complete value stream management platform used for scaling Agile and DevOps to the enterprise with measured outcomes. Plutora is also recognized as a Strong Performer in the Forrester New Wave in Value Stream Management Tools. The Plutora platform co-relates and interconnects existing tools, which results in eliminating silos and increasing visibility, governance, and collaboration.

How to Pick the Best Value Stream Management Platform for your Organization?

Picking the best value stream software can be challenging and depends greatly on your organization’s needs.

Match your chosen tool against these criteria to make the selection process faster:

DevOps tool coverage: Ensure the VSM tool integrates with all software development tools and procedures.

Metric coverage: Does the VSM management tool provide all necessary metrics? Does it provide drilldowns and roll-ups for analysing value stream metrics by individual, team, project, or any other aggregation?

·       Security: Is the VSM solution you choose secure? 

·       Scalability: Will the tool adapt to new technologies, team members, and dashboards?

·       Extensibility: Can the VSM solution be used for additional purposes, such as pipeline automation?

By considering these aspects and conducting thorough research or Market intelligence reports act as a crucial compass in the journey of selecting the ideal Value Stream Management platform. These reports distil vast amounts of industry data, providing a comprehensive overview of available tools, their functionalities, and how they align with market trends. By analyzing QKS Group’ Market Share: Value Stream Management, 2023, Worldwide reports, organizations gain a nuanced understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of various software in relation to their specific networking needs. These insights facilitate informed decision-making, guiding recommendations based on the report's evaluations of vendor reliability, feature comparisons, future projections, and real-world use cases. Essentially, market intelligence’ Market Forecast: Value Stream Management, 2024-2028, Worldwide reports serve as a strategic roadmap, steering organizations towards the most fitting networking automation tool that aligns with their unique requirements and overarching goals.

Conclusion

After exploring Value Stream Management and examining some of the best technologies, it ultimately comes down to visibility and optimization. With sophisticated pipelines, isolated teams, and complex designs, it's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture, leading to bottlenecks and waste that can halt development.

However, the right value stream management platform provides the much sought-after end-to-end insight. It visualizes your workflow, calculates cycle times, and identifies inefficiencies.

QKS Group skillfully facilitates this streamlined oversight and ongoing development. QKS Group's straightforward visualization and seamless interfaces offer real-time insights and data-driven information to help you eliminate barriers, enhance alignment, and boost release velocity.