Value Stream Analytics
Value Stream Analytics
The Value Stream Analytics capability’s enablers include Bottleneck Finder, Portfolio Insights, Flow Metrics Dashboards, Business Results, and Timeline Events. Each capability within the Planview Capability Framework has a distinct set of features and functionality, business processes, best practices, and analytics and reports that deliver value to customers in the form of specific business outcomes.
Enablers and Business Value
Bottleneck Finder
Pinpoint and proactively address bottlenecks, waste, and unnecessary costs to keep initiatives and outcomes on track. Receive end-to-end bottleneck detection and capacity insights to improve delivery predictability and accelerate issue resolution.
Resulting business value includes:
- We can use data to identify specific types of bottlenecks such as resource scarcity, lack of automation, process timing, or dependency, and make data-driven decisions on how to reduce or eliminate the bottlenecks.
Portfolio Insights
Gain consolidated insights into the progress and health of your product portfolios and identify overloaded value streams.
Resulting business value includes:
- We can model value stream features, defects, debt, risks, aging, and neglect to view committed and in-progress work (Flow Load), actual items delivered (Flow Velocity), time to delivery (Flow Time), active time vs. wait time (Flow Efficiency), distribution of items delivered (Flow Distribution), risk, and technical debt.
Flow Metrics Dashboards
Consistently measure speed, velocity, and efficiency across your entire product portfolio using the field-proven Flow Framework® and value stream maps.
You can define specific flow performance objectives, then use Flow Metrics to experiment and adjust flow to achieve those objectives.
Resulting business value includes:
- With Flow Velocity, we can gauge whether value delivery is accelerating.
- With Flow Time, we can identify when time to value is increasing.
- With Flow Efficiency, we can identify processes that increase or decrease waste.
- With Flow Load, we can monitor the over- and underutilization of value streams.
- With Flow Distribution, we can prioritize various types of work during specific time frames to meet a desired business outcome.
Business Results
Track four types of business results: value, cost, quality, and happiness.
Because Flow Metrics are evaluated against business results, you can adjust your value stream to achieve the desired correlation between Flow Metrics and business results for optimal value delivery.
Resulting business value includes:
- We can add targeted business results for value, cost, quality, and happiness.
- We can track investment improvements and their business impact.
- We can experiment by allocating more resources, setting priorities, changing workflows, or modifying tooling to measure the business impact on the value stream.
Timeline Events
Add events to your value stream that can impact Flow Metrics and business results.
Events like new tool adoption, new process implementation, increased headcount, or company re-organization can impact value delivery.
Resulting business value includes:
- We can create timeline events and overlay them onto Flow Metrics to track and understand specific trends and their causes.
Best Practices
Establish a performance baseline
Track the progress of your value stream to establish a baseline for your performance. Identify areas for improvement such as bottlenecks, wasted time, and areas where work is slowing down. Then, continuously improve by implementing practices that streamline your flow and help you reach your business goals.
Make data-driven decisions
After establishing a performance baseline, use your data as a jumping-off point to test hypotheses, inform operational reviews, drive decision-making, and set business goals. Incorporate Flow Metrics data in internal reporting by quickly and easily exporting snapshots of your data.
Avoid looking at metrics in isolation
Your Flow Metrics should not be viewed individually, but rather in relation to one another for the most accurate representation of your value stream’s performance. For example, by looking at a combination of Flow Load, Flow Time, and Flow Velocity, you can calculate neglected work in progress.
Accurately define flow states
Understand and be able to map work statuses in your workflow to four core states: New, Active, Waiting, and Done. Defining which work statuses map to which flow states informs how your Flow Metrics are calculated. Therefore, be accurate when defining your flow states to avoid misrepresenting your metrics.
Value Stream Analytics Process Steps
The Planview Viz value stream analytics capability allows you to measure and manage the overall performance of your product value streams. This enables CIOs, transformation and agility executives, and engineering and product leaders to measure value streams, uncover bottlenecks, and address dependencies in software delivery to become more efficient, predictable, and profitable.
Value Stream Analytics Process Steps
Value Stream Analytics process flow
| Process Step | Description |
|---|---|
|
Create a product value stream |
Add a new product in Planview Viz to create a new product value stream. Name your product and fill out relevant fields to help your organization understand what your product does and how your value stream works. |
|
Model your product value stream |
Model your product value stream to generate flow metrics. This consists of two steps: Product Modeling and Artifact Modeling. Product Modeling points Viz to specific tools and datasets that are relevant to your product. In this step, add all pertinent artifact sets to the Ideate, Create, Release, or Operate work phases in your product modeling tab. Your tool connections should already be configured by your business admin. Once data is retrieved from your product model, it’s time to move on to Artifact Modeling. The Artifact Modeling tab shows all the different artifact types found. Determine which artifacts carry business value and then map them to one of the four flow items: Defect, Feature, Risk, and Debt. Then, conduct flow state modeling for each artifact’s workflow. Model each artifact’s workflow to one of five flow states: New, Waiting, Active, Done, and Canceled. You can also choose to apply the Smart Model instead. The Smart Model will pull in the artifact states across all tools in the product and map them to one of the five flow states. Once modeling is complete, Viz can start calculating metrics about your speed, velocity, and efficiency. |
|
Track progress on your Flow Metrics dashboard |
The Flow Metrics dashboard provides a clear view of whether your value streams and your flow can support targeted business outcomes. Track your product value stream’s Flow Metrics on your Flow Metrics dashboard, including Flow Velocity, Flow Time, Flow Efficiency, Flow Load, and Flow Distribution. See Flow Metrics Dashboard for more information. |
|
Analyze and find bottlenecks |
Bottlenecks show where your work is slowing down and piling up. Types of bottlenecks include resource scarcity, lack of automation, process timing, and dependencies. Use Planview Viz’s built-in expertise to analyze your data and pinpoint the bottlenecks in your process so you can identify and fix these areas of improvement. See Bottleneck Analysis and related videos for more information. |
|
Set and achieve business results |
Each value stream exists to achieve targeted business results for value, cost, quality, and happiness. By evaluating Flow Metrics against business results, you can calibrate your value stream accordingly to obtain the desired outcome. |
|
Track Timeline Events |
Events such as adopting a new tool, implementing a new process, increasing headcount, or a company-wide re-org can all impact your Flow Metrics and business results. Adding Timeline Events to your value stream and overlaying them onto Flow Metrics help you better understand trends in your value stream and their underlying causes. |
|
Measure your shift from project to product with Portfolio Insights |
With multiple product value streams, Portfolio Insights present consolidated insights rolled up from all individual products to provide a high-level view into Flow Metrics and business results for executives and senior leaders. |
Related Capabilities
Supported Solutions