Measuring What Matters Most To Business & Tech

Your teams must deliver value faster, more predictably, and with greater alignment between business and technology. You may struggle to answer a fundamental question: Are we measuring what really matters? This talk explores the evolution and practical application of essential metrics—from the DX Core 4, DORA, Gartner, Pro Kanban, and the Flow Framework—to reveal how modern teams can bridge the gap between business outcomes and technical execution.

Key takeaways
- Cut through the noise of what to measure to understand specifically what matters most
- Leverage a usable framework to get to the right measure, every time
- Clearly connect what you want to what you measure
- See my favourite tools for flow measurement, starting from open source options

Code Was Never the Bottleneck: A Flow Engineering Approach to AI Adoption

The software industry is currently obsessed with "AI-assisted coding." We are equipping developers with powerful generative tools to write code faster than ever before. But if writing code was ever the constraint, it hasn't been for decades.

If your developers write 50% more code, but your QA process, deployment pipeline, or requirements gathering remains static, you haven’t accelerated delivery—you’ve just created a traffic jam.

In this data-driven session, Steve Pereira will apply the principles of Flow Engineering to AI adoption. We will move beyond the hype to rigorous systemic analysis, using modeling and visualization based on Amdahl’s Law and Little’s Law to prove why optimizing non-bottlenecks (like coding speed) yields diminishing returns and often degrades system performance by flooding the system with WIP.

Whether it’s using LLMs upstream to clarify ambiguity in requirements, or downstream to automate compliance, the highest leverage points for AI are rarely in the IDE.
Stop guessing where to put AI. Measure your flow, find your constraint, and apply intelligence where it matters.

Key Takeaways
1. System over Silo: Understand why optimizing local developer efficiency with AI often harms global system throughput.
2. Constraint-Driven Adoption: Learn to prioritize AI investments based on your actual bottlenecks (e.g., Testing, Requirements) rather than market hype.
3. Evidence-Based Tactics: Leave with a method to justify AI initiatives using hard data and collaborative modeling rather than vague promises of productivity.

Flow Engineering: Map Where You Are to Get To What's Next

Transform Performance, Alignment, Confidence, Happiness, and Quality with 5 maps.

Flow Engineering is a collaborative program for teams aiming for better flow. It's a series of mapping workshops to visualize and assess value creation and flow, and reveal opportunities for performance improvement. By creating its 5 Key Maps, you can build and share your vision, save hours of toil every week, and confidently invest in what's next.

Takeaways:
- How to begin with the end in mind
- How to diagnose and improve workflow, starting in 90 minutes
- How collaborative mapping boosts alignment, clarity, and confidence
- How to build actionable, data-driven maps that make the path clear to everyone
- How to use maps to confidently decide what to tackle and how

Can be tailored to leaders or individual contributors

Attendees will get a link to all my materials and free examples to get started right away: https://vzbl.io/flowengineering

You can see some of my talks at https://vzbl.io/stevetalks

Workshop: Kill Your Workflow Bottlenecks with Value Stream Mapping

This workshop will introduce a simple method you can use to discover, define and communicate your largest risks and opportunities. It works regardless of what team, department or silo you find yourself in, or working with.

We'll examine visual representations of valuable data you can use to have productive conversations, make confident decisions, and align towards making real progress.
- How to use Value Stream Maps to find and diagnose workflow bottlenecks
- How to build actionable, data-driven maps that make the path clear to everyone
- How to use maps to target your automation efforts where you need them most
Tackle complexity, friction and waste in a few hours with a versatile and actionable mapping technique

Can be tailored to leaders or individual contributors

Attendees will get a link to all my materials and free examples to get started right away.

You can see some of my talks at https://vzbl.io/stevetalks