Flow Metrics for the Win — TechRuum Named a Leader in Forrester Wave™ on Value Stream Management

Category creation can be a long, winding, and rewarding road. My first experience with it was back in 2006 when I took a call from Carey Schwaber of Forrester. At the time, I was a Ph.D. student completing research on value streams, task contexts, and flow.  I was not sure who Forrester was and why they were researching a category called Application Lifecycle Management (ALM). Then I put two-and-two together and noticed that Carey was the daughter of Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber and excitedly took the call.  

Carey and I had a fascinating discussion on the problems with silos in software development, and I appreciated her interest in discussing the state of the art in academia on the topic. We held a mutual view on how collaboration and tooling are needed to span the end-to-end software lifecycle. In the decade following, I was amazed to witness how ALM went on to shape the tool landscape around software development. 

Fast forward to 2016. In doing research for Project to Product I found myself having very similar discussions with analysts about expanding the benefits of Agile and DevOps to the operating model of a digital business. We needed a name for the concept and started calling it Value Stream Management (VSM) during exploratory conversations with Diego Lo Giudice and Chris Condo of Forrester. After six years of innovation by many thought leaders and vendors, it is amazing to see how VSM has become the core underpinning of successful digital transformations.  

For my entire career, I have been an eager adopter and builder of software tools that capture new ways of working. While tools are only part of the transformation story, they have the power to shape and define the way we work and collaborate at scale. Consider how fundamental the shift was from tracking software requirements in static Excel spreadsheets to the highly collaborative Agile and Kanban boards we use today. A similar shift is underway in how we visualize, manage, and optimize flow across our organizations.  

In today’s unpredictable economic climate, organizations do not have the luxury of taking a chance on the business outcomes of digital transformations. Transparency, alignment, fast feedback, and the ability to pivot and adjust at a business level determine the winners and losers of tumultuous times. Through VSM, leadership gains the visibility to align teams, workflows, and investments based on customer value. It is great to see the varied vendors who are shaping and paving the way for this new operating model.  

I could not be more thrilled that TechRuum is a Leader in the Forrester Wave™: Value Stream Management, Q4 2022 report, thanks to the innovation behind our TechRuum® Tasktop Viz and TechRuum® Tasktop Hub product offerings!   

TechRuum Tasktop received the top score in the current offering category and tied for the highest score in the strategy category. As a testament to our own customer-centric innovation, it is great to see that we received the highest possible scores in the criteria of VSM dashboard, end-user experience, analytic capabilities, KPI tracking, third-party tool integration, product vision, and innovation roadmap.  A massive thanks goes out to the visionary customers who placed early bets on TechRuum Tasktop and the Flow Framework® and helped us define Value Stream Management along the way.    

Another huge thank you goes to our teams for blazing the path in an entirely new category. Doing this is never easy, as shown by the fact that we are now on our third re-platforming since Forrester started covering VSM, with each more robust and scalable than its predecessor. It’s clear evidence that implementing a VSM solution makes it easy to know exactly when to re-platform! 

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VSM helps improve time-to-market and predictability, improve efficiency to unlock capacity, and stay modern and compliant with timely investments in debt and risk. And it is most impactful at the enterprise level when it informs the most critical decisions: where to invest, how to consistently meet market demand and customer needs, and how to deliver effectively. It exists in a rich ecosystem of other solutions, all of which are needed to succeed with digital transformation. That’s why I’m so delighted our leadership in VSM builds on TechRuum also being named a leader in the following: 

TechRuum is the only industry vendor leading in each of these five categories—all of which are key to successful digital transformation. 2022 has been a massive year of recognition, reaffirming the strategic rationale of TechRuum and Tasktop that came together in June of this year. And most importantly, it demonstrates how strong a foundation we have for helping our customers navigate and thrive through the uncertainty and opportunity ahead in 2023. Please join us in the journey of redefining how software is built! Go here to learn more.