How Value Stream Management is fueling success at Boeing, Tyson, and Verizon

In today’s digitally transforming world, time is of the essence. Whether you’re looking to deliver a new product release, fix an issue, or enhance a service, the longer you make customers wait, the worse for your business.

As you seek to boost agility and speed your organization’s digital transformation, there are some proven principles you can apply. By employing Value Stream Management (VSM), executives gain the visibility to align teams, workflows, and investments around one key aspect: customer value. In the process, they can break down the silos that stifle digital transformation. Around the world, leading enterprises have begun to harness the power of VSM—and have seen dramatic results. The following are a few real-world examples of the gains leading companies are realizing.

The Boeing Company has been employing VSM for several years now. Through VSM, they optimized resource utilization and reduced waste.

“Before we adopted value stream management and our sophisticated processes, we actually had no idea what work was being done in each of our organizations,” Lynda Van Vleet, Boeing’s portfolio management systems product manager.

The organization changed legacy approaches to product management and project investment. This enabled them to speed up their ability to innovate and pursue digital transformation. They created cross-functional teams that empowered employees to spend more time and effort on delivering customer value. By establishing cross-team visibility, leaders were able to spot redundancies.

“In our first two years, we saved hundreds of millions of dollars. But that wasn’t our goal. I think a lot of organizations look at this as a way of saving money because you usually do, but if you start out looking at it as a way of creating value, that just comes along with it.”

The IT team at Tyson adopted a portfolio-style management approach with VSM that deepened management’s insight and visibility into spending, available resources, and how various investments create customer value.

Through VSM, teams are able to get the deeper insight required to improve project governance and use resources more efficiently.  “We have more visibility into metrics that matter in terms of how we work and use our people,” revealed Chelsey Marr, senior director of the Tyson Technology Program Management Office. “It’s easy to see constraints from competing priorities.” In addition, managers have gained a sharper “line of sight into what will be delivered, who will deliver, and how the results will be delivered.”

A multinational telecommunications company, Verizon offers another example of the power of VSM. Verizon’s telecommunications products and services were growing so fast that management felt it needed new methods to manage the increased volume of work. “We’re in a data-intensive tech field that moves faster than a project plan or traditional roadmaps,” said Jason Newman, senior manager, systems engineering, Connected Solutions Group strategy and operations at Verizon. “Value stream management lets people do the work they’re supposed to do instead of getting caught up in work about work.”

Verizon saw the immediate value of heightening process visibility and improving real business intelligence. Newman’s team leverages the VSM platform’s intelligence to “consume data and help contribute to decision-making.”

“Just the efficiencies gained from governing and staffing provided cost savings,” claimed Newman. “What you see is maximizing the ROI.”

By employing VSM principles and solutions, businesses around the world are realizing significant dividends. To learn more about VSM and how it is fueling these benefits, be sure to review these two reports from Harvard Business Review Analytic Services:

These reports feature the insights of industry analysts and expert VSM practitioners, who share some of the key strategies they’ve employed.  You can also visit ValueOps by Broadcom to learn more about VSM’s benefits and how to get started.

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Whether you’re just about to embark on your VSM journey or you’re looking for ways to get the most out of your current initiatives, this event will provide a lot of insights and value.

To learn more, be sure to visit our VSM Summit On-Demand page.