3 Value Engineering courses

This very practical and focused one-day workshop enables end-users, technical experts, proponents, internal customers and other key stakeholders to work with procurement and contracting to develop effective specifications and scopes of work, to ensure fit-for-purpose outcomes. The programme empowers participants to collaborate with all key stakeholders. This workshop will help participants: * Understand the importance and value of clear and effective specifications * Differentiate between the different methods of creating specifications and when to apply them * Develop robust specification templates to ensure consistency * Understand the use of appropriate language (critical to creating effective specifications) * Appreciate the need to develop specifications in cooperation with stakeholders * Make use of techniques such as value analysis and value engineering to define 'fit for purpose' in the context of creating effective specifications * Embed key KPIs into the specification to ensure delivery * Manage and mitigate legal and contractual risks in the specification 1 INTRODUCTION * Learning outcomes * Learning styles * Plan for the day 2 THE IMPORTANCE OF EFFECTIVE SPECIFICATIONS * Scopes of work * Impact of poor scopes of work * Examples of costly errors 3 THE CRITICAL ROLE OF LANGUAGE * Terminology in creating effective specifications and scopes of work * Problems of communication * Lack of detail or too prescriptive 4 ENCOURAGING COOPERATION * Technical and commercial experts with responsibility for developing robust effective specifications and scopes of work * Managing stakeholders' expectations * Working with contractors 5 TYPES OF SPECIFICATION * Exploring and using the various approaches to the development of appropriate specifications and scopes of work * Output * Performance * Technical * Functional * Solutions-based 6 THE ROLE OF VALUE ANALYSIS * Value engineering in the process of developing scopes of work and specifications 7 SPECIFICATIONS AND CONTRACTS * The legal and contractual impact of poor specifications and scopes of work * How to embed scopes of work and specification outputs into tender and quotation documents 8 SPECIFICATIONS AS A MANAGEMENT TOOL * Developing KPIs and SLAs framed around robust effective specifications and scopes of work * Negotiating with contractors * Negotiating with stakeholders

Businesses that don't control their costs don't stay in business. How well are you doing? Is everyone in your organisation sufficiently aware of costs, managing them effectively and maximising opportunities to reduce them? If there is scope for improvement, this course will help get you back on track. It will demonstrate that cost reduction is so much more than cost control and cost cutting. True cost management is about being aware of costs, seeking to reduce them through good design and efficient operating practices whilst taking continuing action on overspending. This course will develop the participants' skills in: * Being aware of costs at all times * Seeking cost reduction from the start (including life-cycle costing) * Appraising projects / production to identify and take out risk * Understanding real budgeting * Using techniques such as ZBB and ABC where appropriate * Ensuring cost reports lead to action * Managing a cost reduction process that delivers Benefits to the organisation will include: * Identification of cost reduction and business improvement opportunities * Better reporting and ownership of costs * Greater awareness and control of everyday costs 1 INTRODUCTION - THE COST MANAGEMENT PROCESS * The risks of poor cost control * Capital and revenue costs * The importance of cost awareness * The importance of cost reduction * Cost management - the key aspects * How to build a cost management and control process checklist for your areas of responsibility 2 COST REMOVAL - TAKING OUT COSTS * Cost awareness * Costs of poor design / poor processes * Value engineering * Removing redundant costs 3 THE NEED FOR COMMERCIAL, TECHNICAL AND FINANCIAL APPRAISALS * Understand the problems before cash is committed and costs incurred * Making the effort to identify commercial and technical risk * The time value of money - DCF techniques for long term projects * Cost models for production processes and projects * Costing models - project appraisals * The use of spreadsheets to identify sensitivity and risk * How to focus on risk management 4 BUDGETING - PROPER BUDGETING CHALLENGES COSTS * The philosophy of the business - are costs an issue? * The importance of having the right culture * The need for detailed business objectives * Budgetary control measures * Designing budget reports - for action 5 ZERO-BASED BUDGETING (ZBB) - THE PRINCIPLES * Much more than starting with a clean sheet of paper * What ZBB can achieve * The concept of decision packages - to challenge business methods and costs * Only necessary costs should be incurred * A review of an operating budget - demonstrating what ZBB challenges and the costs it may lead to being taken out 6 AWARENESS OF OVERHEADS AND OTHER COSTS * Definitions of cost - direct and indirect * Dealing with overheads - what is meant by allocation, absorption or apportionment? * The apparent and real problems with overheads * Different ways of dealing with overheads * Review of overhead allocation methods and accounting and reporting issues 7 OVERHEADS AND PRODUCT COSTING * Activity-based costing (ABC) - the principles * Where and how the ABC approach may be helpful * Know the 'true' cost of a product or a project * Should you be in business? Will you stay in business? * Identifying weaknesses in a traditional overhead allocation * How ABC will help improve product or service costing * Identifying which products and activities should be developed and which abandoned 8 COST REDUCTION CULTURE * The need for cost reports * What measures can be used to identify over-spends as early as possible * Cost control performance measures and ratios 9 DESIGN OF COST CONTROL REPORTS * Reports should lead to action and deliver * Selecting cost control measures which can be acted upon * Practice in designing action reports 10 COURSE SUMMARY - DEVELOPING YOUR OWN COST ACTION PLAN * Group and individual action plans will be prepared with a view to participants identifying their cost risks areas and the techniques which can be immediately applied to improve costing and reduce costs

Duration 2 Days 12 CPD hours This course is intended for People working in an organization aiming to improve performance, especially in response to digital transformation or disruption. Any roles involved in the creation and delivery of products or services: Leadership and CXO, especially CIO, CTO, CPO, and CVO Transformation and evolution leads and change agents Value stream architects, managers, engineers Scrum Masters, agile and DevOps coaches and facilitators Portfolio, product and project managers, and owners Business analysts Architects, developers, and engineers Release and environment managers IT Ops, service and support desk workers Customer experience and success professionals Overview After completing this course, students will be able to: Describe the origins of value stream management and key concepts such as flow, value, and delivery Describe what value stream management is, why it's needed and the business benefits of its practice Describe how lean, agile, DevOps, and ITSM principles contribute to value stream management Identify and describe value streams, where they start and end, and how they interconnect Identify value stream roles and responsibilities Express value streams visually using mapping techniques, define current and target states and hypothesis backlog Write value stream flow and realization optimization hypotheses and experiments Apply metrics such as touch/processing time, wait/idle time, and cycle time to value streams Understand flow metrics and how to access the data to support data-driven conversations and decisions Examine value realization metrics and aligning to business outcomes, and how to sense and respond to them (outcomes versus outputs) Architect a DevOps toolchain alongside a value stream and data connection points Design a continuous inspection and adaptation approach for organizational evolution The Value Stream Management Foundation course from Value Stream Management Consortium, and offered in partnership with DevOps Institute, is an introductory course taking learners through a value stream management implementation journey. It considers the human, process, and technology aspects of this way of working and explores how optimizing value streams for flow and realization positively impacts organizational performance. HISTORY AND EVOLUTION OF VALUE STREAM MANAGEMENT AND ITS APPLICATION * Value stream management?s origins * Definitions of value stream management * Flow * Lean and systems thinking and practices * Agile, DevOps and other frameworks * Research and analysis IDENTIFYING VALUE STREAMS * What is a value stream? * Identifying value streams * Choosing a value stream * Digital value streams * Value stream thinking MAPPING VALUE STREAMS * Types of maps * Value stream mapping * The fuzzy front end * Artifacts * 10 steps to value stream mapping * Mapping and management * VSM investment case * Limitations of value stream mapping CONNECTING DEVOPS TOOLCHAINS * CICD and the DevOps toolchain * Value stream management processes * Value stream management platforms * DevOps tool categories * Building an end-to-end DevOps toolchain * Common data model and tools integrations VALUE STREAM METRICS * The duality of VSM * Downtime in technology * Lean, DORA and Flow metrics * Definition of Done * Value metrics * Benefits hypotheses * Value streams as profit centers * KPIs and OKRs INSPECTING THE VALUE STREAM * 3 Pillars of Empiricism * Organizational performance * Visibility * When to inspect * Data and discovery * Insights and trends ORGANIZING AS VALUE STREAMS * Value stream alignment * Team types and topologies * Project to product * Hierarchy to autonomy * Target Operating Model * Value stream people * Value stream roles * Value stream funding EVOLVING VALUE STREAMS * Why now? * Transitions * VSM capability matrix * VSM culture iceberg * Learning * Making local discoveries global improvements * Managing value stream interdependencies