A value stream contains all the skills, capabilities, experience and resources it needs to target a single product. Groups of value streams form business domains, which are customer-aligned ‘mini-organizations’.
Leaders are realizing that traditional structures are no longer fit for purpose. This often starts in IT, where they create small, cross-functional ‘feature teams’ that work on specific products. Then the cracks start to appear.
They realize that their systems are bigger than one team can manage, so now they need to coordinate teams of teams. Then they discover that the real delays and bottlenecks are upstream with the business and product stakeholders or downstream in release management or technical support.
This is where transitioning to value streams comes in.
This class provides the theoretical and practical foundations for moving from traditional functional hierarchies to an organization made up of value streams and their supporting structures.
With a specific focus on digital products, the class also introduces the principles of Domain-Driven Design and its data counterpart, Data Mesh, and shows how these combine to create a robust technical backdrop to value stream-aligned product teams.
We look at some of the challenges this introduces, and some strategies for managing them.
Outline
- Introducing Value Streams and Value Stream Mapping
- Introducing Flow Metrics and Theory of Constraints to improve effectiveness in both Run and Change contexts
- Introducing Business Domains, Bounded Contexts and Ubiquitous Language, including Supporting and Generic Subdomains
- Introducing Data Mesh and federated governance and ownership
- Transitioning to Value Streams and Business Domains from traditional business structures and functions
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