chapter six

6 Flow in your development cycle

 

This chapter covers

  • Mapping the development value stream from idea to production
  • Distinguishing value-adding work from necessary friction and pure delay
  • Reducing batch sizes and limiting work in progress
  • Strengthening CI/CD pipelines as quality enablers
  • Identifying and elevating bottlenecks

Shipping software feels active. Merging code. Waiting for review. Watching CI run. Refreshing a deployment dashboard. Explaining to a stakeholder why something “ready” still isn’t live in their system. Most of the time, it is not. In manufacturing, a value stream describes the complete set of steps required to transform raw material into something a customer will pay for. From steel entering a factory to a finished car leaving the line, every action, queue, inspection, and handoff is mapped. The goal is to understand how value moves and where it stops moving.

6.1 Understanding flow, from idea to production

6.1.1 Multiple value streams

6.1.2 The metrics value stream

6.1.3 The tip of the iceberg

6.2 Reducing batch sizes for faster feedback

6.3 Limiting work in progress

6.4 Identifying and avoiding bottlenecks

6.4.1 Elevating the constraint

6.4.2 Designing the future value stream

6.5 CI/CD: Flow enabler or disruptor?

6.5.1 CI/CD as flow enabler

6.5.2 CI/CD as flow disruptor

6.5.3 A balanced scorecard for flow-centric CI/CD

6.5.4 Lean release strategies: Designing flow beyond deployment

6.6 Exercise: Trace one feature and remove one delay

6.7 Summary