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Planview Customer Success Center

Product Manager

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The Product Manager's Guide to Flow Methodology

This comprehensive guide is designed to help you harness the power of Flow Methodology to take your product to the next level. 

In the following sections and pages, you'll learn how to leverage Flow Methodology, in tandem with Planview Viz and Planview Hub, to maximize your impact and drive transformative change within your organization.

Here is what Product Managers are saying:

  • I use the Flow Metrics in every retro and in our quarterly review session.

  • Viz helps me be more realistic and not overcommit. It is fueling great conversations about tradeoffs and priorities.

  • I love being able to see the correlation between our flow and business results.

 

What is Flow Methodology?

Planview's Flow Methodology is a powerful set of practices designed to optimize value streams and achieve optimal flow. This comprehensive set of practices seamlessly integrates with your existing ways of working, eliminating the need to overhaul your entire framework. 

By adopting this methodology, you will not only optimize your value streams but also equip yourself with the skills to excel as a leader and accelerate your professional growth.

Elevate your Leadership

  • Increase focus on the effort essential to improving business outcomes

  • Make economic and data-based decisions on observed data rather than assumptions

  • Create a positive working environment with engaged team members that are aligned with stakeholders on a common goal

  • Remove impediments to productivity

  • Safely experiment in team structure and processes

  • Quickly build the business case for investment in people and technology

Accelerate your Professional Growth

  • Exhibit leadership and problem-solving skills

  • Develop a business and outcome-oriented mindset

  • Build credibility with leadership

 

Recommended Practices

Explore the table below to uncover recommended practices tailored to your role.

Cadence Practice
Daily

  • Review aged stories, reevaluate priorities, and remove any impediments or blockers.

  • Review work sitting in wait states and take necessary actions to push it forward.

  • Refrain from pushing work that surpasses the Flow Velocity from the previous period.

  • Collaborate with teams to prioritize the completion of aging work while accommodating new work and priority changes.
Weekly

  • Utilize the 85th Percentile metric to set realistic expectations with stakeholders about work completion timelines. 
Bi-Weekly

  • Conduct a comprehensive review of Flow Metrics, insights, bottlenecks, and business results. 

  • Discuss the effectiveness of tradeoffs as reflected in Flow Distribution®. 

  • Identify and prioritize improvements to target during the next increment.

  • Analyze canceled work.

  • Review the Flow Time for stories, highlighting those that exceeded 14 days to complete.
Monthly

  • Support a cadence of consistently setting and reviewing Business Results.

  • Consistently log and review the monthly business results for each value stream on a designated day, ensuring alignment with established targets.

  • Analyze trends in Flow Metrics, examine potential bottlenecks, and assess the impact of your experiments on flow.
Quarterly

  • Prepare the necessary data for a retro before a new planning period. This includes assessing the current team capacity and determining realistic commitments.

  • Engage in thoughtful reflection and open discussions regarding inputs to planning. This includes identifying bottlenecks, assessing load, and reviewing distribution targets. 

  • Review the previous quarter’s metrics and Business Results. 

  • Harvest success stories, share them with your team, leadership and peers. Apply learnings more broadly. 

  • Establish priorities for the upcoming quarter and set Flow Metrics targets accordingly. 
Ad-Hoc

  • Ensure canceled work is visible for all teams.

  • Ensure risk and debt work is visible during planning.

 

Best Viz Features for your Role

  • Flow Time

    Improve predictability with Flow Time

    Understand your actual time-to-market to inform your delivery date commitments.

    Learn more
  • Flow Load

    Balance work intake with Flow Load®

    Discover your team’s WIP thresholds and use that data to work with stakeholders to balance demand vs capacity.

    Learn more
  • Flow Efficiency

    Use Flow Efficiency® to unlock capacity

    Identify waste and help relieve bottlenecks to increase feature throughput (velocity).

    Learn more
  • Flow Velocity

    Use Flow Velocity® to enhance value delivery

    Track velocity to confirm that value is being delivered faster in every increment.

    Learn more
  • Flow Distribution

    Accelerate time-to-market with Flow Distribution®

    Determine whether distribution is aligned with business priorities and make adjustments as needed to accelerate time-to-market.

    Learn more
  • Business Results

    Track business outcomes and flow side-by-side

    Adjust priorities to ensure flow is sufficient to support desired outcomes and govern speed vs. risk.

    Learn more
  • Portfolio Insights

    Focus your attention with Portfolio Insights

    Use a group view to identify areas that need attention and use this data to proactively address them.

    Learn more
  • Timeline Events

    Optimize the work environment with Timeline Events

    Create a culture of continuous learning and rapid feedback loops by annotating timelines.

    Learn more

 

Next Steps

To assist you in this journey, we have curated the next steps you should take to highlight the most relevant sections of our Flow Methodology.

Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5

Visit the Understanding Value Stream Management page and gain a foundational knowledge on the principles and concepts behind value stream management.

 Learn how to assess the current state of your organization's Flow Maturity and identify areas for improvement.

Discover effective Flow Optimizations to resolve prevalent issues within your value stream.

As a Product Manager, you'll want to focus on these Flow Optimizations:

Explore Flow Techniques designed to enhance the efficient delivery of business value and optimize the achievement of desired outcomes.

As a Product Manager, you'll want to focus on these Flow Techniques:

Utilize pre-designed Flow Templates that provide guidance and support as you implement Planview's Flow Methodology within your organization.

As a Product Manager, you'll want to focus on these Flow Templates: