Delivery Underperformance

When looking at Lead Time for diagnosis it is important to look at the lead time distribution. Every work item completed gives you one sampling of lead time. As you continue to complete more and more work, you start getting more and more samplings of lead time, usually with different durations. If you sort your sample from the shortest to the longest duration, you have your “lead time distribution”. This is an important metric as it represents your time to market or your time to value. 

Anecdotally the feeling in the delivery organisation may be that delivery teams are overloaded, people are working long hours trying to keep up, but the demand is unrelenting. Leaders and stakeholders are frustrated, and this is manifesting in bad behaviours and a low trust environment. Key people are leaving, which only ratchets up the pressure on those that are left behind. 

This month the inaugural edition of the State of Value Stream Management Report was released, a significant piece of research produced by the VSM Consortium. The report identifies four practices and key findings. They are: Organising around Value StreamsDiscovery through Value Stream MappingInspection and Adaptation Through Value Flow AnalysisMeasuring and Acting on Value Realisation.

This last week was the release of the first State of Value Stream Management Report, which, among other things, provides a how-to guide on implementing digital value streams. One point the report makes is that organisations often believe they are not mature enough for value stream management. In my experience over the past several years working with organisations to optimise their value streams, I find this to be true, but it need not be a blocker.