If traditional enterprises want to tap into the immense business possibilities created by the Age of Software, they need to accelerate the value delivery of their digital products and services – and fast. This isn’t ground-breaking news – most organizations are acutely aware that they need to scale their software delivery capacity and capabilities to extract greater business value from IT. That’s why many CIOs and other IT leaders have invested in Scale Agile Framework (SAFe). But the universal struggles of traditional enterprises trying to execute a successful digital transformation indicate that SAFe is not enough. Something else is needed.
Aligning the enterprise with the software delivery process, SAFe unifies individual Agile development teams who working concurrently on different/multiple features for one product/large project through the Agile Release Train (ART). Urgent/priority/core features to meet core business strategic needs are triaged and progressed by individual teams with the aim of delivering an integrated product as quickly as possible to shorten time to value (TtV).
Yet for many organizations, they’re still struggling accelerate TtV despite ramping up large-scale development. And that’s in addition to investment in the best specialist people and tooling, and other methodologies such as Agile and DevOps. Even more troubling, they don’t know why it’s not working.
One of main reasons for an ineffective and/or unmeasurable SAFe transformation is the inability to see how software is being planned, built and delivered, and how it’s tied to business outcomes. How do you find and fix the problem (such as waste and bottlenecks) to improve TtV if you can’t see the business value that software delivery creates? How do you see how your SAFe transformation and initiatives are performing? The key is to make that work visible and traceable from end-to-end through value stream management (VSM). By connecting the tools and teams within the “ideate”, “create”, “release” and “operate” stages, enterprises can see the flow of work from the business to IT to the customer and back.
In her latest byline for Hacker Noon, Tasktop’s Naomi Lurie explains that while SAFe is a significant guide to success, it’s not a magical methodology. She goes on to explain how Value Stream Management connects all the key elements that underpin SAFe. Through VSM, CIOs can “scan” their software delivery value streams to expose the flow of activities that create business value, helping enterprises to measure, optimize and build on the foundations provided by SAFe to effectively scale their software delivery.
Read on: How to Ensure Your SAFe Transformation Makes a Difference
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