The truth is in the Dots: Clearing bottlenecks with HCL Accelerate

The theory of constraints is based on the premise that in every system there is at least one constraint – something that is negatively impacting throughput. Eliminating that constraint starts with identifying the constraint and closes with remediating or eliminating that constraint.

The challenge when working in a system spanning multiple stages where steps are automated and/or managed by multiple independent tools is identifying where the most impactful constraint lies. The next step in fixing the problem is understanding how the constraint manifested and determining the correct course of action to eliminate or minimize the constraint’s impact.

Taking that notion further, even the most generic DevOps pipeline (or whatever system we want to optimize) has some activity around planning, development, deployment, testing, release orchestration, and management. Within each phase or stage there is probably some “tool” implemented to help with executing that task. The result is that the data for that activity or task is stored in that tool’s repository.

Which brings me to the question: How does one begin to optimize the system as a whole when the data required to tell the end-to-end story is contained within isolated tool repositories? And how does a team that does not have a holistic view or “single pane of glass” showing how work actually flows from ideation to implementation identify the biggest problem area? Sure, individuals may have ideas for improvement specific to their day-to-day activities, but that usually results in siloed optimization. We want to optimize the entire system. And for many, identifying which bottleneck is impeding flow the most and understanding how the bottleneck came to be can be a bottleneck unto itself!

What teams need is a solution that consolidates the data from multiple tools and presents a holistic view of the system from end-to-end in a meaningful and useful way. Thankfully there is a solution.

Watch this video to see how HCL Accelerate:

presents the flow of work across the entire pipeline

• leverages data from multiple sources to prescriptively identify bottlenecks
• provides the functionality to triage the bottleneck
• displays the data enabling teams to make informed decisions on how best to resolve

Once you begin your journey of successfully eliminating bottlenecks to improve the system as a whole with HCL Accelerate, know that it also helps organizations with the other two DevOps guiding principles by:

• presenting real time value stream data in meaningful reports accelerating feedback
• displaying key metrics showing whether continuous improvement experiments are delivering positive results

To learn more about HCL Accelerate, click here.