During a two day workshop, Verifa helped create a Value Stream Map of Visma Software Oy's current delivery process that highlights opportunities for improvement on their Continuous Delivery journey.
The challenge: identify improvements for Continuous Delivery#
Visma is a leading expert of business software and a significant employer in Finland. Visma consists of several small and medium sized companies that operate close to their own customers.
Visma Software Oy were researching new approaches to help them continuously release new features and stable updates that provide value to their Visma Fivaldi customers. Visma Fivaldi is a cloud based financial management software used for the bookkeeping of 80,000 companies in Finland.
Part of their research involved a call with Verifa, who proposed a Continuous Delivery workshop to help visualise the current release process. The goal was to identify current inefficiencies and opportunities for improvement, with an emphasis on self-discovery and learning in order for Visma Software Oy to make actionable use of the findings.
Verifa proposed a workshop to discuss and assess our Continuous Delivery practices. The team liked the idea, so we decided to proceed.
Strategy & Solution: Value Stream Mapping workshop#
A Value Stream is a visual tool showing the series of events that take a product or service from the beginning of a process until it reaches an end customer. It displays all the critical steps and quantifies the time and volume taken at each event. The main purpose is to be able to identify and remove waste.
Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is a method for analysing the current flow in order to remove waste and to derive a more lean and continuous flow. When applied to Continuous Delivery, it helps to document the current software delivery process and highlight waste as well as present opportunities for improvement.
Verifa held a two day Continuous Delivery workshop with the relevant stakeholders at Visma Software Oy to create a Value Stream of the current delivery process (from a workable item to deployed in production). The Value Stream was then annotated with “waste” cards, to highlight inefficiencies and these waste cards were weighted by their perceived impact on the actors. These waste cards were discussed during the workshop to help build a common understanding and discover if they are a symptom or a problem.
The Value Stream clearly visualises our delivery process (and its pains). Verifa helped lead discussions around many topics which was useful in gaining a common understanding of what we can do to improve.
Results: a clear path forward#
After the workshop, Verifa compiled a report highlighting the findings and including some of Verifa's own assessments. Several of the findings were symptoms of a common problem, and this helps prioritise and focus work on addressing the things that matter. Together with the Value Stream, the report provides a lot of useful material for Visma Software Oy to continue their Continuous Delivery journey and Verifa will continue to assist as needed.
We are very happy with the report Verifa prepared for us. It provides not only findings to address, but an understanding of why to address them and even ideas for how to address them.
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