Month: September 2021

Right now, most development teams provide visibility into their overall process and lifecycle through standup meetings and spreadsheets. It can be a painfully manual process that uses up valuable engineering time. 

Value stream management aims to solve that by mapping out the entire software development life cycle and providing visibility into areas where things are breaking down or getting stuck. It borrows ideas from Agile and the automate-all-the-things attitude from DevOps to ensure engineering teams are moving fast with direction, avoiding bottlenecks, and reaching the the key objectives management planned weeks ago.

In this episode, we chat with Nick Mathison and Sylvan Carbonell from HCL Software DevOps about value stream management and how their product, HCL Accelerate, brings visibility into the entire gamut of the SDLC, from the request coming in from a customer to deploying code to the production servers. 

At the foundation of this process is a good map of the company’s value stream. Think of it as bringing all your teams together to map out the entire workflow of your development cycle on a whiteboard, from receiving feature requests and bug reports, assigning out tickets, merging code, requesting code reviews, passing build tests, QA processes, and finally deploying to production. 

The value stream map brings that whiteboard to life. Once the process is mapped out and the data flows revealed, it is very easy to track where the work is at any given time and how fast it is flowing through the value stream. Every company has little idiosyncrasies that make their process unique: their specific slowdowns, time sinks, and manual approvals that grind development to a halt. Value stream management spots those and helps you eliminate them. 

In a value stream, you’re no longer watching individual devs; your best metrics cover the “two-pizza team,” a team small enough to be fed by two pizzas. This team’s interactions—working through epic tickets, code reviews, internal support, etc.—provides the best metrics to identify ways to increase the value that a team provides. 

With many technology companies working fully remotely during the pandemic, understanding each team’s process is critical. HCL offers a way to accomplish this without bringing lengthy standups back in the picture.

Start benefiting from value stream management today with the forever-free Community Edition of HCL Accelerate. Try HCL Accelerate now.

Hey guys, today I want to tell you about a new podcast I'm digging. It's called Compiler, an original podcast from Red Hat, who also brought you the popular show Command Line Heroes.

Anyway, the show Compiler is hosted by two tech veterans, Angela and Brent from Red Hat, and on the show, they discuss tech topics - big, strange and small. I checked out the first episode, titled “Should Managers Code?”, and I was intrigued by the discussion and the topic. There were differing opinions, but one common thread was this... managers, VP's, leaders, etc. - that came from a coding background - STILL love to code!

But... what I appreciated was the approach that these managers took to the coding they still love. My takeaway was that managers don't want to get in the way of their team from coding, solving problems, and delivering their contributions.

Though difficult, a manager should keep to an 80/20 rule - 80% management, 20% coding - and in my experience, this allows you to keep your eye on the proverbial ball... of leading your team to their success, which is ultimately, your success as well.

Have a listen to Episode 1 "Should Managers Code?" from the Compiler podcast. Be sure and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast catcher. I'll make sure and add a link to the show notes as well.

Enjoy.