However, to make these improvements a reality, they need to develop an action plan. The team’s SM, Dorothy, suggests that they treat these improvements as enablers since implementing the improvements will enable the ability to accelerate value delivery.
Also, she recommends they treat them as experiments and that they should convert the two placeholder enabler Stories in the backlog to enablers Features for two reasons. The implementation of the improvement items will span multiple iterations, and each enabler Feature will need to be broken down into Stories. Secondly, Features contain a hypothesis statement which lends itself to conducting an experiment since we don’t know if the completed Features will realize the benefit or not. Team Toaster Strudel will use SAFe’s Feature template to capture their improvements.
Feature – A short phrase giving a name and context
Benefit hypothesis – The proposed measurable benefit to the end user or business
Acceptance Criteria – Determine whether the implementation is correct and delivers the business benefits
Automated Deployments to Production Feature & Stories
Dorothy and Gabrielle, the PO, work with the team to create an enabler Feature for their first bottleneck, Reducing the Wait Time Between the Test and Deploy States. Their draft Feature looks like this:
Feature – Automated deployments to production
Benefit hypothesis – Accelerate value delivery to customers by reducing the Wait Time between Test and Deploy states from 20 days to 2 days
Acceptance Criteria
- Automated deployment from Test to Staging
- Implemented all Operations “Express Lane” criteria
The next step is to break the Feature into multiple enabler Stories. Since these are enabler Stories, the team is not concerned with using the standard “As a (user role), I want to (activity) so that (business value)” syntax since is there no user focus in this context.
Just for fun, Dorothy runs the Feature through the MS Copilot AI tool to create some enabler starter Stories the team can refine later.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Setup
Description: Implement IaC scripts to automate the provisioning and configuration of infrastructure components (e.g., servers, databases, load balancers) for the production environment.
Value: Enables consistent and repeatable infrastructure setup, reducing manual effort and ensuring reproducibility.
Acceptance Criteria: Successful deployment of infrastructure using IaC scripts.
Continuous Integration (CI) Pipeline Enhancement:
Description: Enhance the CI pipeline to include automated tests for production readiness (e.g., security scans, performance tests, compliance checks).
Value: Ensures that code changes meet quality standards before deployment to production.
Acceptance Criteria: Successful execution of all production readiness tests in the CI pipeline.
Feature Toggles Implementation
Description: Integrate feature toggles (also known as feature flags) into the deployment process.
Value: Allows individual features to be enabled or disabled independently in production, facilitating gradual rollouts and A/B testing.
Acceptance Criteria: Feature toggles are implemented and tested for key features.
Monitoring and Alerting Setup
Description: Configure monitoring tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana) to collect metrics and set up alerts for production deployments.
Value: Provides visibility into system health and helps detect issues promptly.
Acceptance Criteria: Monitoring dashboards are set up, and alerts are triggered for critical events.
Backlog Management and Refinement Feature & Stories
The team then focuses their attention on the second bottleneck, Reducing the Wait Time Between the Define and Refine States. Their draft Feature looks like this:
Feature – Backlog Management and Refinement
Benefit hypothesis – Accelerate value delivery to customers by reducing the Wait Time between Define and Refine from 10 days to 5 days
Acceptance Criteria
- Attend training on backlog refinement
- Implement weekly backlog refinement sessions
Dorothy once again runs the Feature through MS Copilot to quickly get some starter stories for the Backlog.
Backlog Refinement Training:
Description: Organize a training session for the team on effective backlog refinement practices.
Value: Equips team members with the necessary skills to refine the backlog efficiently.
Acceptance Criteria: Completion of the training session, with team members understanding the purpose and techniques of backlog refinement.
Weekly Backlog Refinement Sessions
Description: Schedule regular weekly meetings dedicated to backlog refinement.
Value: Ensures ongoing alignment, prioritization, and clarity of backlog items.
Acceptance Criteria: Consistent participation in weekly refinement sessions, where the team reviews, ranks, and updates backlog items.
Dorothy takes the action item to schedule Backlog Refinement training and to get a weekly Backlog Refinement meeting on the team's calendar. Their first order of business in the first Refinement session is to review and edit the MS Copilot generated stories so that they more accurately reflect the work the team needs to execute.
At this point, let’s pause and reflect on Team Toaster Strudel’s journey of continuous improvement over the past 4 blog posts. During a Retrospective, the team realized that they need to accelerate the flow of value delivery to their customers.
Dorothy, their SM, guided the team through a Value Stream Mapping exercise to determine how to address this problem. They first mapped their current value stream to quantify the delay in their flow. They then identified the bottlenecks via root cause analysis to determine the primary causes of delay. In the next step, the team determined how they could reduce Wait Times, and this resulted in designing the future state value stream map. They concluded by developing an action plan to execute the implementation of their future state by creating Features and Stories in the backlog.
- Step 1 - Mapping the Current State
- Step 2 - Identifying Bottlenecks
- Step 3 - Designing the Future State
- Step 4 - Developing an Action Plan
Team Toaster Strudel understands that implementing their future state VSM is not a one and done exercise. Rather, their journey of continuous improvement is ongoing, and the team will continue to inspect and adapt to evolve how they delight their customers.
What’s Next
In our next blog series, we will explore Value Stream Management to understand what it is, why it is important and how Value Stream Mapping fits into the Value Stream Management implementation roadmap.
Stay Tuned!
Additional References
To learn more about Value Stream Mapping, I highly recommend Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation by Karen Martin and Mike Osterling. This book is the de facto standard VSM.
To learn more about effectively facilitating a VSM workshop in your organization, I encourage you to check out SAFe’s Advanced Facilitator: Value Stream Mapping workshop. This micro-credential is a half day, virtual workshop that covers the VSM process soup to nuts. Learn more at Advanced Facilitator: Value Stream Mapping and please join Frameworx for our scheduled class on August 6th by registering on Eventbrite!
