DEVOPSdigest

Tasktop announced the new Tasktop Viz™ VSM Portfolio Insights dashboard.

Built to deliver tangible and quantifiable value for the business, VSM Portfolio Insights arm IT and product leaders and C-level executives with end-to-end visibility into digital transformation successes and areas for optimization. The new VSM Portfolio Insights help software teams release products that have a greater impact on their business and enables executives to drive better business strategies.

"So many digital transformation initiatives struggle due to the sheer complexity of the teams, tools and metrics within IT organizations — we remove that complexity and replace it with the actionable visibility needed for rapid innovation," said Mik Kersten, CEO at Tasktop. "Executives and senior leaders need a more agile way to drive systemic improvements over local optimizations and must ensure lurking problems aren't hidden by averages that don't take each product value stream into account individually. No business or technology leader can respond quickly enough to the market without a unified and universal way of understanding and communicating the metrics within these value streams. That's what VSM Portfolio Insights deliver."

VSM Portfolio Insights Dashboard rolls up metrics and analytics generated at the individual product value stream level to the executive plane.

The interactive dashboard presents consolidated insights into the performance, quality, value and impact of delivery including:

- The progress of the shift from project to product-based IT

- The ability to respond rapidly to the market

- The business processes capable of acceleration, namely: feature to cash, defect to resolution, risk to mitigation or debt to pay-off

- The value creation and value protection areas currently lacking appropriate investment

This go-to view for executives and senior leaders helps quickly hone in on the areas requiring attention and support, while highlighting exemplary value streams that can be harnessed to mentor others.

"We repeatedly hear customers are looking to better cultivate and improve the IT and business management relationship. The new portfolio-level VSM insights highlight what's working and what still needs improvement, so leaders can drill down to the product level as needed and work with their direct reports on progressing toward business goals and continuous improvement," explained Nicole Bryan, CPO at Tasktop. "The emphasis on business impact and long-term value also shifts perceptions from IT being seen as a cost center to what it actually is — a profit center."

VSM Portfolio Insights include:

■ "Shift to Product" insights that enable CIOs and IT leaders to measure the shift from project to product-based IT and inform which products are:
- Measuring the flow of business value through their end-to end value streams
- Prioritizing the right set of features to achieve tangible business goals
- Actively taking action to improve flow and focus on high value business initiatives

■ Agile Improvement insights that identify where high workloads are straining resource capacity and diminishing the return from transformation efforts. These insights point out:
- Where products are biting off more work than they can complete, causing work-in-progress to grow stale and time-to-market to increase
- When products will realistically have capacity for new work, based on their current workloads
- Which business processes can anticipate longer Flow Times: feature to cash, defect to resolution, risk to mitigation or debt to pay-off

■ Product Management Improvement insights that help leaders cultivate new product management skills within existing staff and shift the focus from short-term gains to long-term value. These insights highlight products that are experiencing:
- Low feature delivery, indicating a slow-down in new capabilities necessary to drive business growth
- High defect distribution, where quality issues are endangering customer satisfaction
- Increased exposure to fines and breaches, by neglecting risk
- Diminished capability to accelerate innovation in the long-run, by neglecting debt

Tasktop Viz launched in March 2020 to enable traditional businesses to transform their software development to compete with high-performing digital natives by instantly providing an outside lens focused on business outcomes.

Tasktop also announced a strategic investment from Sumeru Equity Partners (SEP), a growth-focused technology investment firm based in the San Francisco Bay Area, to accelerate growth and expand market leadership. Management and existing investors participated in the $100 million investment. As a part of the transaction, existing Tasktop investors will continue as significant shareholders and Jason Babcoke and George Kadifa will join the board of directors.