handbook/handbook-main/communities-of-practice/cloud-and-engineering/book-club/edge-value-driven-digital-transformation.txt

# EDGE: value-driven digital transformation

## About
Authors: Jim Highsmith, Linda Luu and David Robinson  
Recommended by: Chasey  
_[EDGE](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/43567723-edge) embraces an adaptive mindset in the face of market uncertainty, a visible, value-centered portfolio approach that encourages continual value linkages from vision to detailed initiatives, incremental funding that shifts as strategies evolve, collaborative decision-making, and better risk mitigation. This guide shows leaders how to use the breakthrough EDGE approach to go beyond incremental improvement in a world of exponential opportunities._

## 20th May
_Authored by Reuben_. We had our first ever session!! We went over the rough format and covered just managed to cover the introduction and "Chapter 1: The Big Picture". We wondered at whether fast meant good (it doesn't) but expected to talk about that more in later chapters. We also spoke about our [mainly negative] experiences of Agile at scale and the challenges it presents and what it means to us to be agile. Lastly, this chapter talks about the new / digital-age fitness function and we started to ask how we might measure customer value, without externalising what should be internal team metrics. Great stuff! We decided we'd read "Chapter 2: Tech@Core" and "Chapter 3: EDGE Principles" for next time, but might not expect to cover it all as Tech@Core seems an interesting subject!

## 10th June
_Authored by Reuben_. I forgot to take notes... but we spoke about Tech@Core :D 

## 24th June
_Authored by Reuben_. I missed this session and I am indebted to Tom for running it. The team chatted about the "EDGE principles", what kinds of governance can reduce waste and increase autonomy, and asked the question of how often principles should change.

## 8th July
_Authored by Reuben_. We had a whopper and covered two chapters - "Chapter 4: Building a Value-Driven Portfolio" and "Chapter 5: Measuring and Prioritizing Value" before deciding it was time to enjoy the Friday afternoon sun (location dependent). We were pleased to welcome Catherine (a DP) into the conversation this week and was great to have her insight! We talked about the value we get from having User Researchers in our delivery teams and working closely with us, the issues we have with teams not having the ideal relationships between the goals, bets and initiatives, and how the EDGE operating model is value-centre rather than being implementation-specific although it tends to have enterprise in mind. The measures of success example on page 81 were very good for seeing how to put customer outcomes first!

## Resources
👉 [An interview with Linda Luu](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HPnr4yuUqc) going over the high-level stuff  
👉 [An introduction to value-stream mapping](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGDrt8SV5H4) (spin off from 20th May)  
👉 [A lean-value tree example](https://miro.medium.com/max/1094/1*9KIk8YmivQxv53lEgestAA.png) (image for those without the book)  
👉 [Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF)](https://www.scaledagileframework.com/wsjf/) from SAFe is an implementation based on Cost of Delay