{"id":1741,"date":"2022-09-30T11:51:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-30T11:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digiterrebestg.wpengine.com\/?p=1741"},"modified":"2024-05-29T14:58:02","modified_gmt":"2024-05-29T14:58:02","slug":"what-is-bvssh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.digiterre.com\/us\/2022\/09\/30\/what-is-bvssh\/","title":{"rendered":"What is BVSSH?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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What is BVSSH?<\/h1>\n\n

The Better Value Sooner Safer Happier (or SSH) movement is the brainchild of Jon Smart, (author of the bestselling book Sooner, Safer, Happier) and is the culmination of knowledge acquired over 30 years of leading an agile approach to change as a business technologist.
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\r\nBVSSH have successfully\u202fcodified for the benefit\u202fof all in the industry, lessons that Digiterre and others have learned over our 22 years of operation. We are delighted to be joining the SSH network and sharing Jon\u2019s article (reproduced with kind permission) to explain more about the founding principles of the movement here, as a guest blog. <\/p>\n \n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n

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September 2015 was the last time that seven of the top ten firms by market value were\u202fnot <\/em>\u202finformation technology firms. Fast forward less than two years, to June 2017 and seven of the top ten firms\u202fare <\/em>\u202fIT firms. By June 2018, General Electric, the last remaining original constituent of the Dow Jones index, created in 1896, was removed from the index, a sign of the moving tectonic plates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u202fOnly two years later, by mid 2020, accelerated by a global pandemic, it\u2019s not seven firms in\u202fany <\/em>position in the top ten which are IT firms, it\u2019s\u202fthe top seven \u202f<\/em>most valuable firms in the world. At the time of writing, only one firm remains in the Dow which joined prior to the invention of the microprocessor and half of the Dow constituents have been in the index for 15 years or less.\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u202fClearly, with the latest technology-led revolution, we have tipped from one Age to another. We have gone from the Age of Oil and Mass Production where work was mostly repetitive and knowable to the Age of Digital where work is mostly unique, emergent and unknowable. Like going from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age, there is a new means of production, which creates new expectations. In order to survive and thrive, there is a need to adopt ways of working suited to the new means of production. In the Age of Digital every company is a software company directly or indirectly, and there are few cases where value delivery does not in some way involve Information Technology. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u202fBetter Value Sooner Safer Happier (BVSSH)<\/strong>\u202fis an outcome oriented approach to continuously improve ways of working. It is a pattern for improving business outcomes, as firms pivot from ways of working dating back two technology revolutions ago, to ways of working suited to the nature of work in the Age of Digital.\u202f The antipattern is inflicting a capital \u2018A\u2019, capital \u2018T\u2019, Agile Transformation. Agile is one of many possible \u2018means to an end\u2019, along with Lean, DevOps, Cloud and more, however it is not the \u2018end\u2019 itself. Organizations can be \u2018doing Agile\u2019 and not seeing an improvement in business outcomes. The eye is on the wrong ball. Instead, focus on a positive trend on the outcomes, and use agile, lean, DevOps, systems thinking, design thinking, theory of constraints and so on as figurative tools in the toolbox, suited to your context. Every organization is unique and is a complex adaptive system, there is no one size fits all approach.\u202f\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u202fBetter<\/strong>\u202fis quality. Quality is built in rather than inspected in later. With\u202fsmaller slices of value and multidisciplinary teams, changes are within a team\u2019s\u202fcognitive load (that is, complexity that fits in your head) and there is a limited\u202f\u201cimpact radius.\u201d There are fewer incidents and outages. There is less rework,\u202fless failure demand. More time is spent proactively rather than reactively. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u202fValue<\/strong>\u202fis unique; it\u2019s why you are doing what you are doing. It is of value to\u202fsomeone. It could be financial; it could be maintaining public safety; it could\u202fbe charitable. As the future is not knowable, value is articulated via outcome hypotheses with leading and lagging measures. The leading measures acting as an early indicator, an early feedback loop. This enables pivoting and agility in order to maximise the outcome or have the cheapest cost of failure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u202fSooner<\/strong>\u202fis time to market, time to learning, to pivoting, to de-risking, to\u202favoiding a \u201csunk cost fallacy,\u201d to locking in progress and value early and often. There are three key measures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lead Time<\/strong>\u202fis the time from starting work on an item of value to getting it into the hands of a customer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughput<\/strong>\u202fis the count of items of value delivered into the hands of a customer in a given time period. As lead time comes down, throughput should go up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flow Efficiency<\/strong>\u202fis the percentage of time that work is actively being worked on during its elapsed end-to-end lead time, as opposed to waiting to be worked on. For most large service-based organizations, flow efficiency is typically 10% or lower. This means that work is waiting at least 90% of the time. This is where significant gains can be made. Focus on where the work isn\u2019t, not where the work is. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Safer<\/strong>\u202fis Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC), information security, data privacy, regulatory compliance and resilience in chaos, be that a cyber-attack or a global pandemic. It is customers trusting your organization. It is agile rather than fragile. It is speed and control, not one or the other. It is cultural, keeping the conversation on risk alive. The better the brakes, the faster you can go. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u202fHappier<\/strong>\u202fcovers customers, colleagues, citizens, and climate, as it is not about \u201cmore for less\u201d at any human or climatic cost. It is high levels of customer advocacy and colleague engagement with a positive impact on society and the one planet we live on. It is a more humane way of working, with empowered multidisciplinary teams and high levels of psychological safety, enabling experimentation and improvement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u202fTogether,\u202fBetter Value Sooner Safer Happier<\/strong>\u202fbalance each other. If\u202fSooner is achieved by working people harder or cutting corners, the result will\u202fbe a reduction in Better, Safer and Happier.\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u202fWith\u202fBVSSH<\/strong>\u202fmeasures, it is important to look at the trends over time, the vector metrics, rather than absolute values. What matters is not the absolute difference between teams, rather that teams are continually improving. Improvement trends can be compared across contexts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u202fBVSSH\u202f<\/strong>contains two sets of outcomes. Better Sooner Safer Happier\u202fare the\u202fhow\u202f<\/strong>outcomes. They measure the improvement in the system of\u202fwork. Value is the\u202fwhat<\/strong>, the business outcome hypotheses that the system\u202fof work produces. The two sets of outcomes form a virtuous circle.\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u202fImprovements in the how leads to improvement in the what due to faster feedback, the ability to pivot, higher quality, and more engaged colleagues and customers. Rather than inflicting one set of practices, focus on BVSSH and empower teams to improve using their own brains, with support, in their unique context. With incentivization and psychological safety, this will build a new muscle memory, a continuously learning and improving organization.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you would like to find out more about the BVSSH<\/a> movement, please get in touch info@digiterre.com <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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About the Author<\/h3>\n
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Digiterre<\/h4>\n\n \n \n <\/div> \n <\/div>\n
\n Date: 30\/09\/22<\/strong><\/span>\n Category: Industry Insights\/ Tech Insights<\/strong><\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n
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