Create Visibility
This is a chapter from my upcoming online book Simplifying SAFe? With FLEX: An Enhanced Approach to Achieving Business Agility. FLEX is Net Objectives' Lean-Agile approach to helping organizations improve at all levels. While FLEX stands on its own, this book explains how to use it to enhance while simplifying SAFe. Feedback is requested either here on a user group I've set up for the purpose. I am also leading an online workshop starting in mid-January on FLEX that will include how to use it with SAFe. You can see more on linkedin by going to the Table of Contents.
One of the first things we both can and should do is create visibility of our work. At this stage we are not trying to change anything, just be clear about what's happening. Value stream mapping is a very useful method of doing this.
When we talk about 'visibility' we mean:
- The work being done. This includes:
- Whether the items are waiting or being worked on
- The size of the items
- Any dependencies between one item and others
- The agreements people have made as to how they do their work (this is not to be set in stone but rather represents the best known way at the time that people are doing)
- The queues holding items waiting to be worked on
- Any blockages to the work
The intent of visibility is:
- People can see their work
- They can see work coming their way
- They can ensure people downstream from them can see what they will be generating
- Dependencies between items being worked on
- The amount of work in process
- Where work is waiting
- The rate at which work flows and or waits
Creating line of sight to Business Value
Creating 'line of sight' means to ensure that everyone working on something understands the business value of it. To accomplish this requires the decomposition of MBIs into features which are then decomposed into stories while maintaining an audit rail of this decomposition.