To compete in the Golden Age, enterprises whose software generates an ever-increasing share of value need to shift away from economies of scale to economies of flow. They must focus on the end-to-end flow of customer value derived from ‘products' rather than the activity of delivering ‘IT projects’. The practices, frameworks, metrics and tools are now in place to accelerate this shift. We can help you make it.

Transitioning from short-term, project-oriented IT to a product-focused organisation requires enterprises to organise around Value Streams and adopt the emerging practice of Value Stream Management (VSM). VSM helps identify bottlenecks, take action to remove them and dramatically accelerate the flow of value to your customers by:

• Shortening time-to-market
• Increasing throughput
• Improving product quality
• Optimising for business outcomes
• Creating more engaged, happier teams

Adopting VSM shifts an enterprise's thinking towards organising around Value Streams – the end-to-end set of activities performed to deliver value to a customer and which includes every contributor, process, activity and tool related to the delivery. We can help you identify your streams by mapping and modelling these elements. Each Value Stream is then considered as a ‘product’ in its own right – a product in which people from across technology and the wider business are connected, and who work to improve the flow of value that comes from it.

The concept of Value Streams is not new but, until recently, there wasn’t a common language that created a shared business-wide understanding of flow. In 2018, Dr. Mik Kersten solved this challenge by developing the Flow Framework® and Flow Metrics – described in his best-selling book Project to Product. He founded a business called Tasktop to develop the VSM tool platform to make the metrics visible to users across the enterprise.

The Flow Framework® is a structured, prescriptive approach to Value Stream Management in software delivery organisations. It identifies where work is flowing in your product Value Streams and where it’s slowing down so that you can decide how to address those bottlenecks.

The Framework is based on Flow Metrics and the Metrics are based on the end-to-end flow of artefacts through the Value Stream…

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Flow Velocity

‘How much value did we deliver?’ – Flow Velocity measures the throughput of artefacts. When considered in the context of other metrics, Flow Velocity becomes very powerful.

Flow Efficiency

‘Where are the bottlenecks?’ – Flow Efficiency measures the 'active' time spent on a Flow Item out of the total Flow Time. This metric reveals much about ‘end-to-end’ delivery of value and makes it easy to see things that can be improved.

Flow Time

‘How fast did we deliver value?’ – Flow Time measures the time from which a piece of work started to its completion. This metric provides data to understand lead times and cycle times.

Flow Load

‘Is demand overwhelming capacity?’ – Flow Load measures the amount of work in progress, how much more can be accommodated and the impacts on the Value Stream (and network of Value Streams).

Flow Distribution – Four 'types of work'

‘Are priorities in line with business objectives?' – Flow Distribution measures and compares type-specific bottlenecks according to four types of work:

The Tasktop VSM Platform (developed by Tasktop) delivers a unified and universal way of understanding and communicating Flow Metrics within Value Streams. The Platform consist of two elements – Tasktop Hub and Tasktop Viz.

Tasktop Hub

Plugs into and connects your existing toolchain, delivering near real-time, bi-directional synchronisation of data across your tools. Tasktop Hub maps tools to a central domain model, not each other, allowing new tools to be quickly integrated without any corruption to the model.

Tasktop Viz

Extracts the relevant data subset from each tool and abstracts it into clear, consistent and actionable data. Viz constructs dashboards from the combined work of all Value Stream contributors, including product managers, architects, UX designers, developers, testers, release managers, support teams and operations. There are five feature sets in Tasktop Viz:

• Portfolio Insights
  Visibility into Portfolio vital signs and oversee improvements (see below for more detail)
• Flow Metrics
  Measure business value of software delivery and product health
• Flow Insights
  Understand the problems hindering current performance
• Bottleneck Analysis
  Identify what’s really slowing down delivery and how to address it
• Business Results
  Measure business goals against IT investment and make data-driven adjustments

• Businesses can practise Value Stream Management at scale, cultivating and improving the IT and business relationship by bridging the gap between software delivery and business outcomes
• ‘Integrated understanding’ between technical leaders (who understand the software development process and toolchain) and business leaders (who understand business outcomes and investment strategies)
• Shift perceptions of IT being seen as a cost centre to a profit centre because of the emphasis on business impact and long-term value
• Executives focus on driving systemic improvements rather than local optimisations, with a high degree of confidence that lurking problems aren’t hidden by averages that fail to take into account each individual product Value Stream
• Executives can quickly identify the exemplary Value Streams that can be harnessed to mentor others
• Software teams become more highly engaged as they focus on releasing products that have the greatest impact on the business, while executives are able to focus on driving better business strategies

We believe that the Flow Framework® and Flow Metrics are game-changing developments which will transform Value Stream Management into a practice capable of shifting organisations to economies of flow.

We’ve invested time to understand the deep value that Tasktop’s world-leading VSM Platform can add to organisations* and we are now a fully-fledged Tasktop Value Stream Partner for New Zealand and Australia.

Our VSM consultants are already delivering expert VSM advisory, consulting, training, coaching and licensing of the Tasktop VSM Platform to leading New Zealand enterprises. We’d love to help you too and we have a unique offer scaled for the New Zealand and Australian markets…

We’ve worked with Tasktop to create the Tasktop HYPR ‘Catalyst’ Package. It’s for New Zealand and Australian enterprises with up to 100 authorised users and is unique to HYPR. (The standard Tasktop Catalyst I Package is for up to 300 users). The HYPR Catalyst Package puts Tasktop’s powerful VSM Platform in reach of many more businesses. Please contact us for details about this special package and/or the Standard Catalyst packages.

Tasktop is a product business that’s fast becoming a category-defining leader. The Tasktop VSM Platform is used worldwide by leading enterprises, including half of the Fortune 100. It has enabled some of the largest and most successful digital transformations for customers including BMW, CGI, E*Trade and T-Mobile.

In March 2021 the Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact™ Study, showed organisations using the Platform realised an average return on investment (ROI) of 640% over a three-year period. Forrester, along with other research companies (Gartner and GigaOm), identify Tasktop as a VSM Platform leader.