Due to lockdown, one of my friends left his bike six months back and went to his native place. He came back last week and tried to start his vehicle by pressing the self-start button, but it did not work. Then, he kickstarted his bike, and the engine started after many attempts. We both went to the bike mechanic shop to give it for service.
The mechanic told that if a motorcycle battery is not used and sits idle for a longer duration, it will lose its capacity to power the motorcycle. He further explained that the average motorcycle battery will die after two-four months without running and the newer batteries can last longer with an average of three-five months until dying whereas older batteries will not last as long even one-three months. He advised that it is important to use the motorcycle periodically to keep the battery in check.
I thought that it is the same way the enterprise value delivery pipeline also works. If Sprint is the heartbeat of Scrum, Daily Scrum is Sprint's heartbeat. Every day, the team replans and works towards the Sprint Goal and iteratively releases a small chunk of value every day or Sprint. But, to do that, flexing the technical muscles is essential! The developer must do regular check-ins on their code from their branches, merging to the Trunk and releasing to the production often, and validating their assumptions! If the code sits idle in the branches or is not released to the market, then the value delivery pipeline drains like the bike battery. We can't do self-start. We can kickstart again and again, but the market won't wait!
The battery is designed in such a way it gets charged when the vehicle is in motion! And the enterprise can deliver value seamlessly to its customers only if its active DevOps gets integrated with the Value Stream Management and by inspecting and adapting the flow metrics in each stage of the continuous pipeline starting from exploration to delivery.
Kaizen is about continuous improvement. It is something that we practice each and every day. Empiricism is learning by doing and it needs healthy atomic habits for sustainable Self-managed action! Like continuous learning and unlearning are vital for our battery called the mind to play in its creative zone, for the self-start of any organization, continuous release and validation are crucial to work better and deliver value!
