Value Streams Deconstructed: Finding Nuggets of Gold for Agile Release Trains

Value Streams Deconstructed: Finding Nuggets of Gold for Agile Release Trains

Enterprise Agile Value Streams are the primary SAFe 4.0 construct for understanding, organizing, and delivering value. In enterprise agile initiatives using SAFe 4.0, the discovery, definition and development of both features and enablers to realize the vision and roadmap is essential.

Theoretically, SAFe 4.0 purports that enterprise agile value streams originate from portfolio initiatives, with the flow moving from the top (portfolio) to the bottom (value stream, program and project levels). This is the case for new initiatives, but the reality is that most Enterprise Agile implementations using SAFe 4.0 originate using a set of programs that are already in existence.

So how do you find nuggets of gold for Enterprise Agile Release Trains in a SAFe 4.0 environment?

Currently worksheets exist that have been created by the Scaled Agile Academy to rank and identify value streams, but when deconstructing value streams, new patterns need to be found.

ENTERPRISE AGILE VALUE STREAM PATTERNS

Some of the patterns for enterprise agile value streams can include:

1. Solution areas
2. Feature capabilities
3. Enabler capabilities
4. Subsystems (applications, components, platforms, etc.)
5. Customer or market segment
6. Subsets of value that enable flows or value stream segments

Other enterprise agile value stream patterns include:

1. Trains should be focused on a single solution objective
2. Teams with features and components that have a high degree of interdependencies should plan and work together
3. Locale can be a major consideration
4. Source of funding

ENTERPRISE AGILE PRODUCT MANAGER AND PRODUCT OWNER ROLES

For enterprise agile initiatives, product management works with product owners to actively steer the train together as a single person cannot handle both product and market strategy. Thus, when sifting through existing initiatives to create new release trains, or split existing release trains, a consensus must be reached based on both product and market strategy. Thus finding nuggets of gold within existing enterprise agile initiatives is a way to sift through existing backlogs to focus on the most critical items that you have already committed to deliver in the coming year.

The steps include

1. Understanding the holistic goal of the entire solution by analyzing all areas of the system.
2. Analyzing current WIP in the system by sifting, sorting, and disposing of low value items while sifting for nuggets of gold.Scrapped
3. Already finished
4. In flight
5. Near the top of the uncommitted backlog
6. New, practical and fits into vision
7. Placing nuggets of gold into agile release trains for delivery.
8. Finding the key constraint and designing the value stream system around that constraint (The Goal).

• Identify the system’s constraint(s).
• Decide how to exploit the system’s constraint(s).
• Subordinate everything else to the above decision(s).
• Elevate the system’s constraint(s)

1. Contextualizing and sharing this value stream for internal audience while staying focused on the goal.

In summary, the reality is that often enterprise agile program initiatives exist when launching Scaled Agile initiatives, and thus creative and out-of-the-box techniques need to be used to unlock nuggets of value for scaled agile release trains.

Note: This blog can also be found on https://www.enterpriseagileleader.com