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Flow Engineering

By Steve Pereira, Andrew Davis

From Value Stream Mapping to Effective Action

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Foreword by Karen Martin, coauthor of Value Stream Mapping

Tired of misalignment, friction, and stalled workflow? Flow Engineering is a practical guide to using value stream mapping techniques to align teams, unlock innovation, and optimize performance. 

Based on foundations from Value Stream Mapping, cybernetics, and the Toyota Production System, Flow Engineering’s lightweight and iterative practices build the value, clarity, and flow required for effective collaboration and collective action. Written by Value Stream Mapping experts Steve Pereira and Andrew Davis, Flow Engineering provides a step-by-step guide for running fast-paced mapping workshops that rapidly build shared understanding. 

Using five key maps to facilitate collaborative “flow conversations,” Pereira and Davis show how teams can surface tangled process dependencies, conflicting priorities, and unspoken assumptions that grind progress to a halt. The result? A clear roadmap owned by the people doing the work to accelerate innovation cycles, optimize workflows, and achieve more effective coordination. 

Applicable across any industry, Flow Engineering’s techniques have helped leading organizations improve critical workflows like customer onboarding, product development, and hiring.

It’s time to stop trying one-size-fits-all frameworks to find value, clarity, and flow to improve culture and performance. Flow Engineering meets your organization where it’s at and shows you how to move it where it needs to go.

  • Publication Date May 14, 2024
  • Pages 304
  • Full Color Illustrations 141
  • Dimensions 6 x 9 inches
  • Paperback ISBN 9781950508457
  • eBook ISBN 9781950508464
  • Audiobook ISBN 9781950508471

Features

  • Alignment

    Provides visual mapping techniques to surface misalignments and build shared roadmaps.

  • Simplicity

    Step-by-step guide to facilitate fast and effective workshops.

  • Reveals Constraints

    Uncovers hidden dependencies and assumptions blocking transformation.

  • Results

    Case studies prove these techniques accelerate workflows and drive enterprise agility.

About the Book

Tired of misalignment, friction, and stalled workflow? Flow Engineering is a practical guide to using value stream mapping techniques to align teams, unlock innovation, and optimize performance. 

Based on foundations from Value Stream Mapping, cybernetics, and the Toyota Production System, Flow Engineering’s lightweight and iterative practices build the value, clarity, and flow required for effective collaboration and collective action. Written by Value Stream Mapping experts Steve Pereira and Andrew Davis, Flow Engineering provides a step-by-step guide for running fast-paced mapping workshops that rapidly build shared understanding. 

Using five key maps to facilitate collaborative “flow conversations,” Pereira and Davis show how teams can surface tangled process dependencies, conflicting priorities, and unspoken assumptions that grind progress to a halt. The result? A clear roadmap owned by the people doing the work to accelerate innovation cycles, optimize workflows, and achieve more effective coordination. 

Applicable across any industry, Flow Engineering’s techniques have helped leading organizations improve critical workflows like customer onboarding, product development, and hiring.

It’s time to stop trying one-size-fits-all frameworks to find value, clarity, and flow to improve culture and performance. Flow Engineering meets your organization where it’s at and shows you how to move it where it needs to go.

Steve Pereira
Andrew Davis
1 2
Steve Pereira

Steve Pereira

Steve Pereira has spent over two decades improving the flow of work across organizations. He’s worked through tech support, IT management, build and release engineering, and as a founding CTO for enterprise SaaS. He serves as lead consultant for Visible Value Stream Consulting, as a board advisor to the Value Stream Management Consortium, Chair of the OASIS Value Stream Management Interoperability technical committee, and co-founder of the Flow Collective to bring flow-focused professionals together. Since 2017, he has been developing and facilitating Flow Engineering to make flow improvement in large organizations accessible, collaborative, and actionable.

To Author Archive
Andrew Davis

Andrew Davis

Andrew is Chief Product Officer at AutoRABIT, focused on the next generation of DevSecOps on the Salesforce platform. He is also the author of the leading book on the Salesforce development lifecycle, Mastering Salesforce DevOps. He was formerly Senior Director of Methodology and Training at Copado.

To Author Archive

"Scaling Agile + DevOps within the enterprise remains a persistent and thorny problem. Flow Engineering does an excellent job outlining the issues of scale and provides an effective framework for focusing on delivering more value."

Chris Condo

Principal Analyst (Value Stream Management and DevOps), Forrester Research

"Scaling agile remains an unsolved problem. There are numerous theoretical discussions and even more frameworks that claim to provide convenient recipes. This book is unique in bringing together practical approaches with the understanding necessary to make them actually work in the real world."

Jeff Sussna

author of Designing Delivery

"I view Flow Engineering as an ‘actionable textbook’ for product teams seeking to define value, build clarity, and enable flow.…[Flow Engineering] serves as the glue to interconnect target outcomes, current and future value streams, and a set of actions to go from a sub-optimal current state to a desirable future state. With this book, you not only get a map but also a compass!"

Manjunath Bhat

VP Analyst for Software Engineering, Gartner

"Pereira and Davis lovingly remind us of the human costs of scale-turned-sprawl that plagues all but the best of today’s organizations. They also make clear the business costs. Most importantly, they have synthesized the best thinking from DevOps, Lean, and workplace psychology to provide a clear, specific set of instructions to help organizations flow. To read Flow Engineering is to experience flow itself."

Meredith Bell

CEO, AutoRABIT

"As a CTO grappling with the challenges of managing diverse teams in a fast-paced tech environment, Flow Engineering provides a refreshing perspective on leadership in the modern workplace. It’s not just about theoretical ideas; the book offers practical tools and frameworks to unlock hidden value within teams and drive innovation. I highly recommend this book to any leader seeking to inspire their teams and deliver greater value to their customers and organization."

France Roy

CTO, Balsam Brands, former CTO, Anheuser-Busch InBev DTC

"I have been passionate about the flow of value ever since I was exposed to value stream mapping over a decade ago, and I’ve been attempting to make it accessible to the large organizations I’ve worked at ever since. This book has now made the concept of flow accessible and practical for everyone. I wish I had this guidance for the past decade and can’t wait for this to be shared with the industry."

Courtney Kissler

SVP, Customer and Retail Technology Starbucks

"I love the collaborative mapping techniques in Flow Engineering because they really help to make change happen and results real. Embedding awareness inside humans in the organization using collaborative workshops is a highly effective, enduring way to shift towards business agility at speed and scale. Essential reading."

Matthew Skelton

CEO of Conflux and co-author of Team Topologies

"Finally, someone has taken the complexity out of value stream mapping and left us with a method that anyone can use to move our workflow closer to our ideal vision."

Adam Hawkins

Director Site Reliability Engineering, Skillshare

"Flow Engineering stands as an exemplary, insightful, and hands-on guide for those seeking an in-depth grasp of flow principles and their application to engineering challenges in the real world. Having utilized value stream maps to scrutinize value streams across system engineering, business, and consulting endeavors for numerous years, I can attest to the book’s effectiveness."

Marc Hornbeek

CEO, Engineering DevOps Consulting and author of Engineering DevOps

"The authors…skillfully step you through the change process for your organization meeting you where you are. Take your organization on the journey with them—you will come out delivering value continuously and collaboratively."

Sejal Amin

CTO, Shutterstock

"In a world of SAFe, Six Sigma, RACI charts, and more, why can’t there be a scalable way of approaching these problems where there are clear rules to use in a simple way? Enter Flow Engineering. Pereira and Davis take you through the steps necessary, and the things to know, to quickly bring your entire organization into a nearly harmonious state of flow."

Dave Mangot

author of DevOps Patterns for Private Equity

"Pereira and Davis bring a pragmatic and effective approach to think about value streams at scale. Rather than a step-by-step fixed path, they offer a set of tools that can be used and recombined to achieve a state of flow, while respecting our human nature."

João Rosa

CEO, Impactfulness and co-author of Visual Collaboration Tools

"Pereira and Davis have identified a real sweet spot for creating actionable change with minimum friction…Going from seeing the data to acting on the data is always the hard step, and I love the way this book has articulated a very simple, repeatable process for doing this."

Krishna Kumar

Founder and CTO, Exathink Research

"The shift towards Agile, Lean, DevOps, and Value Stream Management has revolutionized software delivery practices, but a focus on flow is crucial to success. Flow Engineering is a critical resource in this effort, offering a practical framework with visual mapping techniques and step-by-step guidance."

Phil Clark

Vice President of Parchment Technology at Instructure Inc., formerly VP Head of Engineering at Parchment LLC

"Flow Engineering…meets leaders where they are, and quickly guides them to flow improvement along with their organization, not against it."

Tony Saldanha

President Transformant, author of Revolutionizing Business Operations

"The authors’ conviction in the inherent greatness of teams resonates, compelling readers to embark on their own journey of unlocking the untapped potential within their organizations."

Laura Garrison

CTO, LocatorX

"Flow Engineering will guide you through complexity and help you create value in situations where processes and people are more challenging than any specific tool. This is wisdom."

Bruno Pereira

CEO, Elvenworks and CTO, AutoRABIT

"Flow Engineering…offers a clear path to transforming not just workflows but organizational culture itself."

Shannon Howe Tran

Principal Architect Director, Salesforce

"Steve and Andrew have crafted a brilliant combination of theory and principles, allied with clean language, clear visuals, and practical examples. Flow Engineering leverages mapping in ways that are immediately useful, collaborative, and visceral—bringing collective clarity and engagement through simple-to-learn process steps. For all of us on missions to improve colleague engagement and organisational performance, this excellent content provides the meaning and impetus to pursue greater flow."

Richard James

Managing Director, Tech Transformation Unit Lead, Accenture

"Flow Engineering is an indispensable guide for building value, clarity, and flow in your organisation.…[with]valuable tools, tips, and hints to help you visualise and optimise the flow of value in your organisation."

Jon Smart

author of Sooner Safer Happier

"Organizations are messy; they’re endlessly complex; and worst of all, they’re always changing. So thank the heavens for books like this. Flow Engineering is a landmark work!...Read this book. Practice these techniques. Let the value flow."

Matt K. Parker

author of A Radical Enterprise

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