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Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is a lean technique whose primary purpose is to illustrate, analyze, and improve the steps required to deliver a product or service. A key part of lean methodology, VSM reviews the flow of process steps and information from origin to delivery to the customer and represents this as a structured visualization.
As with other types of flowcharts and process mapping, it uses symbols and statuses to depict various work activities and cadences. VSM is especially useful to find and eliminate waste. Items are mapped as adding value or not adding value from the customer’s standpoint, with the purpose of rooting out items that don’t add value or act as bottlenecks.
We typically define a value stream as a series of steps an organization undertakes to create and deliver value to customers. A value stream represents the activities, workflows, controls, and procedures needed to achieve the agreed objective.
For example: From Ideation = step 1 → step 2 → step N → Shipped to customer
A value stream map (VSM) makes it easy to visualize a particular process from start to finish.
In a VSM workshop, functional teams identify their group’s work and associated information flow on a white board so that this is visible. This allows for everyone to see, understand, and analyze their process. The aim is to identify improvements, optimizations, and reduce waste and non value adding activities.
The purpose of Value Stream Mapping and creating a visual map is to identify ways to eliminate waste and non value adding activities, outline technology improvements, surface policy changes, or charter new breakthrough process redesigns and opportunities for automation.
By creating a process map and stepping back, everyone can see the workflow and often grasp its full scope for the first time. You can maybe discover workflow bottlenecks or disconnects, and transfers between groups that hinder progress. Maybe you can identify lost time, defects and the “churn” of rework. There are also opportunities to help people downstream of them or inform those upstream of their needs or timing.
Kaizen is a Japanese term meaning "change for the better" or "continuous improvement." It is a Japanese business philosophy focused on the daily practice of creating small changes using low-cost common-sense solutions. Kaizen sees improvement in productivity as a gradual and methodical process.
The Theory of Constraints is a process improvement methodology that emphasizes the importance of identifying the "system constraint" or bottleneck. By leveraging this constraint, organizations can achieve their goals while delivering on-time-in-full (OTIF) to customers, avoiding stock-outs in the supply chain, reducing lead time and variation whilst also improving quality.
Kata is a structured way to create a culture of continuous learning and improvement at all levels. It is an organization's daily habits or routines forming its "muscle memory" for continuous learning and improvements and was organically developed by Toyota between 1948 and 1975.
From a technical value stream perspective the 3 key areas of focus are:
Looks at identifying our current state.
Looks at identifying our biggest bottlenecks, pain points, or causes of delay.
Looks at identifying how we want to operate, what can we do given our current capabilities, and what improvements will bring the biggest value.
The key elements of focus and relevance for the workshop are:
- Customer Focus: At the end of the day the customer is the most important entity for each organization. Start with the customer and see what can and should be improved for their benefit.
- Holistic View: Organizations can organically grow into a coalition of silos. A VSM workshop breaks down barriers between functional silos to uncover improvement opportunities across the entire value stream of the organization, not just within a discrete area.
- Waste Identification: In almost all business processes there is waste. A VSM workshop exposes waste in a process, and provides the visibility and the opportunity to eliminate it.
- Measurement: Often there isn’t an awareness of the current performance of a process. The VSM workshop quantifies the current state and sets targets for improvements.
This play covers how to lead a VSM Workshop with your team where you will:
- Create a value stream map, so everyone can see the value and waste in the process.
- Ensure everyone can see the whole process and how their work helps or hinders other functions' business performance.
- Identify the main causes of wait time (these could be bottlenecks in the process, hand-off's approvals, and so on) that we have identified as "waste" in the process and which improvement items will bring the most value.
- List on a "parking lot" the larger policy, system, process, collaborative, or leadership issues for escalations and/or discussions.
- Inject the improvement tasks identified into the team backlog and assign ownership.
- Identify the followup checkpoints and cadences for future VSM events.
VSM Workshops should involve all the people who take part, participate, are involved or who have an interest in the functional work, the subject matter experts who support it, and may also include upstream or downstream teams if warranted.
- Manages the workshop preparation, process, and dialogue, initial communications and invitations to workshop participants
- Assists with workshop documentation and scheduled
- Identifies external participants for attendance.
- Responsible for initiating, ensuring, approving, and establishing the vision, governance, and value/benefits realization.
- Supports Facilitator as needed for any resolutions/escalations in order to get the specific follow-up improvement actions prioritized and injection into the backlog of work.
- Take responsibility for completion of assigned follow-up activities
- Will take responsibility for mapping their steps in one "swim lane" of the overall process for highlighting their own problems and waste and surfacing them for discussion and will commit to implementing any process changes agreed to in the workshop.
- People with a vested interest or external teams that contribute to or depend on the value stream such as Product, UX/UI, Infrastructure, Release Management, DBAs, Security etc. Essentially anyone who contributes to "value stream" or creates a constraint/dependency.
Facilitator in collaboration with the Sponsor discuss and plan the VSM workshop to identify:
- Why do a VSM?
- Goals and deliverable
- What’s “in scope” and “out of scope”
- Identified stakeholders of value stream flow
- The participant list, both for in-person and remote participants
- The anticipated time needed for each section of the work session
- Digital Collaboration tools, meeting space and so on
- VSM Template familiarization
There are three (3) big preparation tasks before the workshop.
- VSM Education: If your group is new to Value Stream Mapping, run a short introductory meeting with all workshop attendees covering:
- Short Presentation on what Value Stream Mapping is and how it will be used.
- Prepare visual examples to help people "see" what the end product will look like (this could be from mapping sessions already completed by other business groups).
- Pre-work assignments such as preparing an overview of recent history, problems, customer feedback, metrics, etc.
If needed, seek assistance from the Agile Practice team to help support and run the initial session.
Note: Presentation, Visual examples, and other materials can be found in the appendix
- Environment and Tooling
- If in the office and face to face, reserve a large collaborative space for the workshop with a large whiteboard, markers, and post-it notes available
- Tools you need to run the Value Stream Mapping workshop remotely:
- Online Whiteboard (make sure you are familiar with the tool and prepare/ready the value stream map template for usage)
- First pass
- When you have the wall or online tool ready, invite a small group and perform a first pass of the overall process if this is the first VSM session for the group. This is optional, but will help.