Inside Flowtopia — Helen Beal on the Value Stream Renaissance and the Future of Flow

Hey everyone, welcome back here to techstrong TV. I'm really happy to have this next person on. com, I guess that was 2014.

I remember going over to London because the DevOps scene in London was already happening. And, I met Helen and have been working with her ever since through the DevOps Institute, and then as that became part of PeopleCert and everything else, and happy to call her friend. Helen Beal, welcome back to techstrong TV.

It's great to have you. As always, it's my pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

So Helen, I know your whole story. I know you a long time, but a lot of people out here, probably, maybe not as much. So why don't we, before we jump into Flowtopa and all the great things we want to talk about, let's talk a little bit about Helen.

Give people a sense of your journey. Gosh, how to keep it short. I guess, ZX81, my first introduction to computers.

Fiddled about with programming and stuff like that for a while. Studied English literature and language at university, didn't know what to do with it. Went to work for IBM, got into software, got into the SDLC, got into release management, got into DevOps, met Alan, my life's purpose became obvious.

And then from DevOps really led me into value streams, which is kind of where we are today. So whistle stop tour, through the tech industry really. Excellent, Helen.

And you went through it quickly, but there were a lot of memorable parts of that. But today I want to focus in on the value stream and Flowtopa and flow and stuff like that. I guess around COVID time, that's how I look at the world these days.

Me too. But around COVID time, 2020, 2021, value stream, I think took its rightful place. It finally got the attention it deserved in terms of how do we not just develop software, but how do we...

the heart of DevOps, how do we manage software? How do we, from development through CICD, and all the way through to even observability, what we call today observability and stuff. It all was part of the flow, if you will.

And, take us from then, Helen, to now. What's been going on in the value stream? And a lot of people don't even use the word value stream.

They use the word flow these days. Some people don't like it, which is fine as well, actually. Mm-hmm.

But yeah, you're right. 2019, 2020 was a really pivotal time. In fact, in 2019, in one of my jobs then was, being a DevOps editor at InfoQ, and I was on a press pass to DevOps Enterprise Summit in London, and I had on my list of articles I wanted to write was about value stream management because one of my other jobs at that time was also as a DevOps consultant, working with a few very large enterprises in the UK and around Europe.

People like Lloyds Banking Group and Hiscox and Vanquis Bank and Deutsche Telekom, and out in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia with Elm. And I had on the bottom of my slides, whenever I was presenting training or workshops, wherever it was, was optimizing the flow from ideation to value realization. So I was thinking in this concept of value streams and in DevOps, we have the three ways that were introduced in the Phoenix project.

So accelerating the flow from left to right, shortening and amplifying feedback loops and creating an environment of continuous experimentation learning. So it was quite peripheral, but I was finding some things, like in my toolkit, I had value stream mapping, as an exercise that we would do to help people see what was happening in their environment. And actually, it was a great immersive learning opportunity for DevOps principles because you'd map a value stream, and then you'd look at improvement opportunities, and within it, you would see opportunities for DevOps practices that would make improvements.

So I was hitting a ceiling with value stream mapping, though, because it was quite hard to get people together, and people weren't very good at going back to looking at what they were doing. " So I went and met with a few of them. Plutora, who's subsequently been bought by Planview.

Tasktop, subsequently bought by Planview. And Connectall, subsequently bought by Broadcom. So there's been some consolidation in the market- Oh, wow ...

since then as well. But it opened up my mind to this, and I could talk, and we will talk, I'm sure, over the coming weeks for hours about this. But in summary, it was very much renaissance as you alluded to.

So value stream mappings, value streams, value stream management aren't new. They're part of what we learned about, at least in the 1950s, not earlier, in the lean canon. But what was new was DevOps, and DevOps brought along the DevOps tool chain and the CICD that you talked about, and the automation through the SDLC, which made it possible to see, a digital value stream and manage it in a way that hadn't previously been possible.

And there we are now. Absolutely. My first exposure to value stream and value stream mapping was actually through IBM, right?

Our friend Sanjiv Sharma- Yeah ... who I speak to still all the time. And I forgot the other gentleman.

I get his newsletter. Oh, he was great. Anyways, Sanjiv and this fellow used to do the IBM,Value Stream Workshop.

And they actually did it at a few DevOps Institute events that we hosted. I remember one being part of Sean Lowery's Innotech, and I think it was either Dallas or Austin or both. And we did some value stream workshops there, and the response from the audience was just phenomenal.

This is what people wanted to see. Let's fast-forward a little bit, though. You were the driving force behind, I guess it was the value-- Correct me, help me here.

The- The Consortium ... Value Stream Consortium. Yeah.

And the companies that you mentioned, of course, there's been a lot of consolidation. And that was kind of the first Flowtopia conference, right? Yeah.

And I remember you coming up with the name, and I loved the flower from the F-L-O-W. Yeah. I feel the dad in my "Big Fat Greek Wedding," Flow from flower and flower from flow, but it's all Greek.

And the whole kind of vibe of it was pretty cool. And then, as the Consortium, Helen, has morphed and pulled and stretched with the world out there, you've again taken a commanding seat and guiding seat and really putting this on your back a little bit. And tell us, since the Consortium to today- Yeah ...

the evolution. Yeah, I mean, there's quite a few things going on. As you said, we've covered already, there's been quite a lot of market consolidation.

We've also seen, obviously, the age of AI as well, which has changed the market quite significantly from how you approach value stream management from a technology perspective. So, many of the underlying principles and practices from a how you do value stream management haven't really changed, but how you get the data and analyze the data has changed, because of the jumps ahead that have been made in the last couple of years. There's also, on my part, a recognition, and we've just touched on this as well, not everyone likes to use the word value streams, but everyone does want to do things faster and do the right things.

Mm-hmm. And when I talk about the duality of value stream management, I'm really talking about accelerating flow and ensuring that we get true value realization. So making sure we get the number of highest volume of outputs that we want, but also the most associated outcomes at the same time that we want.

So really connecting those dots. And then the other big realization that we have is that we still have this terrible situation and separation with many organizations between the product and the delivery people, so the business and the technology, and we still haven't resolved that. And a lot of people have been quite distracted by AI in the last year or so, but the more the people realize that we need to get to meaningful outcomes, the more people are making those connections between product or business and the technology and delivery teams.

Absolutely. So where do things stand now with the, it's no longer the Consortium per se, but this community that you've developed. Yeah.

Is it the Flow community? Yeah, the Consortium doesn't exist anymore. So, what we have is an online community called Flowtopia.

Mm-hmm. And then Flowtopia used to be the name of our events, but now it's the name of the community. So we've moved away from the value stream terminology, allowing us to open the doors for more conversations around product, greater conversations around flow, not just value streams.

But we do have Flowtopia Live, which is the event which we'll circle back around to. But we have also re-platformed. So we have another thing that's changed, actually, in the years since we first started playing into this space, is that some very strong, fully integrated community platforms have been launched.

So we're actually using Circle. So what we had in the past was some other platforms, which I won't necessarily name. I'll say there was some Slack in there, but I don't want to call other names out.

But moving to a platform like Circle, and I'm first-handing in some of my other jobs using other platforms like Gradual. These type of platforms have a very, very strong integrated experience allowing you to drive conversation and connection between communities. And when I say strong integrated experience, what I mean is you log into a space, and you can chat to people, you can connect to people through a directory, you can join events, you can even host your own events.

You can write a blog, you can read other people's blogs, you can browse the library, you can do a training course. All of these things happen in one centralized space, which makes it really easy to be involved with and really easy for me to deliver a really powerful, rich experience and ask other people that are experts in this area, people like Jack Mayer and Miguel Diaz, to offer their own services and create effectively a community of communities within it. So just jumping ahead a little bit to Flowtopia Live, for example, we have a number of community sponsors, people like IT Revolution and Team Topologies.

So they are other very closely related communities in our space. Many of our members, including me, for example, are authors of IT Revolution publications. We've got a number of members, as part of the Flow family, who are our kind of close cabal of consultants who are Team Topologies consultants as well.

There's a lot of crossover is what I'm trying to say. It's quite a big ecosystem of people all with the same goal in mind, which is to do more better. Excellent.

Before we focus in on the Flowtopia Live, for people who want to go to Circle, maybe check out the community, join it, get involved, where do they go? io, which is our own website, and they could sign up there, which will take them through our branded version into Circle. If they went to Circle, we are actually listed on the Discovery page as well, so they can find our community there if they're already Circle users.

And Circle is a bit like Slack in that there is a desktop app and a mobile app, and you can belong to multiple Circles. I'm a member of quite a few. Mm-hmm.

Some business-related, some more kind of art or writing-related. And you can see all of your Circle communities that you're a member of, which makes it quite easy, again, to navigate between them. Excellent.

Yeah. So Helen, let's Flowtopia Live. It's a virtual event.

Yes. Give us- All online ... give us the lowdown.

All on-- Well, hence virtual. Yes. So give us the lowdown.

Yeah, we made that distinction because the first couple of years that we did Flowtopia, it was in Las Vegas. But one of the bits of feedback we had from a lot of our members was that they were very disappointed they couldn't participate. So we have gone fully virtual for the main event, although we'll come back to what we can do in person later.

And we do it for 12 hours, which is kind of crazy. m. m.

Most people are dropping in and out as event organizers. Mm-hmm. And that's the plan for the audience as well, is we don't really expect anybody to be there for 12 hours, but they can be.

But it's just a massive opportunity to get a lot of flow practitioners together to learn from each other. We have three tracks running in parallel. So we have a product track, an engineering track, and a leadership track.

So if you have a live ticket, you actually can't attend all of the talks, but you can dip in and dip out of the ones that you want to. We do, of course, have tickets for on-demand as well, so we have a velocity pass, which gets somebody 90 days access to all of the talks, which will be- That's great ... recorded.

There's about 50 of them in total. They're all being delivered live. So they're a mixture of, most of them are sort of 25-minute practitioner talks.

And we also have a number of workshops going on, and we also have some live panels happening as well. All right. Well, no, if it's all in there, it's all good.

Yeah. io, right? Yeah.

And you can register and get your tickets and pick your level of participation. com because we've got a few articles coming out that are summarizing some of the- Yes ... talk topics and themes as well, and there'll be links in there to the event itself as well.

io. I don't think we mentioned the date. June the 24th.

All right. Yes. June 24.

m. , that is like- UK time ... UK time.

Yeah. So I think I should get- For 12 hours. Eastern- Yep ...

, yeah. m. Excellent.

Yeah. Excellent. Yeah, I think we're five hours now.

m. Eastern for 12 hours. Yeah.

Excellent. Helen, first of all, it's great to have you on Techstrong TV. But second of all, kudos for...

You really have been, not breathing life, but really been the lifeblood of this community, keeping it organized together and growing and exploring, as you say, the age of AI and everything else. And it's great to see such participation. 50 sessions is a lot of sessions, right?

I- Turns out there's a lot of people like me that see a huge amount of value in thinking and working in this way. So, we've got some great practitioners from many organizations as well, and case stories as well. We've got MetLife and the NHS and all sorts of big enterprises that are speaking as well.

Very cool. Helen, between now and the 24th, we're going to have a few of the speakers on here, as well as- Yeah ... com and some of the other sites where it makes sense.

But congratulations on Flowtopia Live. I'm glad to see it's still thriving. And we'll talk to you soon.

Perfect. Thank you so much. See you at Flowtopia Live.

All right. Helen Beal, Flowtopia Live, June 24th. io and you can get all the information you need to participate.

We're gonna take a break here on Techstrong TV. We'll be back in a minute.