The Lean-Agile Way: Unleash business results in the digital era with value stream management

by Cecil 'Gary' Rupp, Richard Knaster, Steve Pereira

Discover how mastering Lean, Agile, and VSM principles and practices can enhance your product delivery performance, mitigate risk, and foster business agility, giving you a competitive edge

Key FeaturesLearn how to apply Lean practices to eliminate waste and delays, ensuring value for your customersMaster Agile practices to address problems and create value-centric products and servicesExplore VSM methods and tools to identify and prioritize improvement opportunities that maximize value additionPurchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBookBook DescriptionIn today’s fast-paced business landscape, efficiency is essential. Authored by industry experts Cecil ‘Gary’ Rupp, a Lean-Agile consultant with over three decades of executive experience; Richard Knaster, a SAFe® Fellow and transformation leader; Steve Pereira, a value stream consultant and board advisor; and Al Shalloway, creator of FLEX and PMI’s Disciplined Agile Value Stream Consultant workshop, the book offers proven strategies to streamline processes, enhance products, and improve service delivery.

You’ll start with an introduction to foundational Lean and Agile practices, recognizing the significance of digital enhancements in modernizing business processes. As you progress, you'll learn VSM techniques to identify and prioritize work and investments to provide maximum value to customers. Moreover, you'll grasp Lean-Agile practices aimed at promoting collaboration among teams and ensuring the continuous flow of product-oriented deliveries tailored to address customer needs. Finally, you'll gain executive-level insights on how organizations must access timely information for decision-making and foster a culture of continuous business transformation.

Armed with this knowledge and a robust toolkit, you'll be empowered to drive meaningful change, optimize resources, and stay ahead in the rapidly evolving marketplace.

What you will learnUnderstand how to integrate the seemingly disparate practices of Lean and AgileIntegrate Lean, Agile, and VSM to accelerate value flow, enhance efficiency, and drive improvementsDrive product-oriented transformations with business increments, Lean-Agile teams, product lifecycles, VSM, and IT alignmentLeverage the VSM implementation roadmap to drive digital value stream enhancementsInvestigate advanced VSM tools/platforms, AI insights, and VSMP selection criteriaExplore Lean-Agile/VSM success stories to gain implementation insightsWho this book is forThis Lean-Agile book is for business and technology professionals striving to optimize value delivery while minimizing costs. Whether you're a VSM manager, a member of a product delivery team, DevOps engineer, or an IT specialist, this book offers proven methods for effectively identifying and implementing improvement opportunities. Product owners looking to prioritize backlog items and corporate executives aiming to demonstrate positive returns on information technology investments will also find this book helpful.

Table of ContentsNavigating Lean-Agile TransformationsSolving Complex Business Problems with AgilityEstablishing Lean Flows to Improve ProductivityDriving Improvements with Value Stream ManagementIntroducing the VSM Implementation RoadmapNavigating Value Stream OptimizationConnecting the V

725 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 30, 2024

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book serves as a playbook, presenting the author's perspective on key elements that are essential across the topics mentioned in the title, with a strong emphasis on value stream mapping/management. The book introduces self-constructed concepts like BLAST and BASE, which are essentially modified versions of other agile frameworks.

In general, the content isn’t particularly groundbreaking—though that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If, like me, you’ve already read many of the foundational works referenced here (e.g., Principles of Product Flow by D. Reinertsen, Flow Engineering by S. Pereira and A. Davis), the material may feel a bit repetitive.

The book includes several references to the Scrum framework and builds on it with leaner, more pragmatic scaling approaches. These riffs have similarities to other scaling frameworks, such as Nexus, LeSS, and Scrum@Scale. There’s even a nod to SAFe.

The intention here doesn't seem to be reinventing any concepts; instead, think of it as a compendium or playbook, as I mentioned earlier. The author offers strong opinions on what to do, with some coverage of how to do it. While the writing is clear and accessible, it sometimes feels a bit prescriptive—more like a manual than a guide or coaching resource. Personally, I would have preferred more context around why certain decisions and recommendations were made, rather than a straightforward "this is what you should do."

One of my main critiques is that the book focuses heavily on technology and IT roles, with less attention given to product management and user experience design than I would have liked. It feels targeted at enterprise-scale organizations where technology plays more of a supporting role, rather than being front and center. That's just my take, though—it may not have been the author's intent. However, I’m particularly sensitive to value stream mapping that feels overly tech-centric, rather than sufficiently cross-functional.

While the book is relatively long, it didn't take much time to read.

[Dr. Tathagat Varma · Rating 3 out of 5]

I recently had the opportunity to check out the book "The Lean-Agile Way", authored by long-time experts from the field - Cecil Rupp, Richard Knaster, Steve Pereira, and Al Shalloway. While there are many books on the vast body of knowledge on #Lean thinking and #Agile methodology, and some that combine both, they mostly struggle to integrate the ideas holistically or become too prescriptive. In contrast, I found the book an easy read. It not only introduced the ideas from both Lean and Agile in a simple manner but also integrated them seamlessly, making it a useful reading for any practitioner and especially useful for those getting introduced to the field's big ideas and how to apply them.

I especially liked the deep focus on #ValueStreamManagement, which is the holy grail of many product development endeavors, especially how they realize the business value, and the authors have also considered how these ideas apply in the context of the #digital world. The focus on how to apply ideas for product-oriented business transformations using a Basic Lean-Agile Solution Team ("BLAST") to build a Business Agility System for the Enterprise ("BASE") and enhance decision-making and implementing strategies for organizational transformation could be very useful for those looking to scale lean and agile practices from isolated agile teams to across the entire organization.

Follow the link to learn more about the book: https://lnkd.in/gk3SGi-A

[Kathi · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Incredible Resource!

Lean, Agile, and Value Stream Management. We are given the basic building blocks and then those concepts are integrated to provide comprehensive technical, yet quite readable integrations to result in optimization of productivity, efficiency, and quality.

Setting priorities, delivering customer-centric value, following strategy and prioritization. It’s a lot. But the book is well laid out. It describes what you should be learning every step of the way. Each chapter ends with a summary, questions and answers, and further reading suggestions.

If you buy the print version, you are welcome to a free download of the ebook for ease of use. You will learn many new acronyms, but again, it is well written, logically organized and easy to digest. Helpful visuals add to its readability. I see this being a resource you will revisit over and over.

**I am voluntarily leaving my honest review of this book**