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A Value Stream is a sequence of steps that happen to give the service or product that their clients need. Removing the service that the clients don’t need, every organization has a series of required steps.

VSM or Value Stream Mapping gives you an organized visualization of the critical steps and equivalent information required to understand and smartly make improvements that optimize the whole procedure, not only one division at the cost of another. 

VSM can be an excellent tool for deciding how to improve delivery chains that need complex procedures. For a highly complex procedure, Value Stream mapping can be utilized for creating a detailed understanding and view of the whole procedure. 

Types of Value Streams 

A Value Stream is a flowchart technique to demonstrate, assess and improve the steps needed to deliver a service or a product. VSM analyzes the flow of process information right from manufacturing to delivery to the end-user. 

Just like with other varieties of flowcharts, this particular method uses a method of symbols to illustrate different information flows and work activities.

VSM is extremely helpful for discovering and reducing waste. There are two types of Value Streams -

• Operational Value Streams: include all the essential people and the steps that provide end-user value to customers using solutions that development Value Streams suggest.
• Development Value Streams: include all the essential people and the steps used to develop solutions that operational Value Streams suggest.

Top advantages of Value Stream Mapping

If you use a Value Stream, you can easily track actual performance, envision the way of end-to-end operation’s work, and discover methods for making your procedures even more competent. Here are the top 4 advantages of Value Stream mapping.

1. Recognize waste

VSM is a robust and visual planning methodology that lets you visualize both the future state and the current state that takes a product or service from the beginning to the end.

The most important thing to consider is that a Value Stream mapping aids in recognizing wastes that occur in a whole process chain from dealer to end-user or from a planning stage to completion.

You can define waste as any step or action in a VSM that doesn’t bring value to the end-user. In simpler words, waste is any item or procedure inside the Value Stream that the end-user doesn’t want to pay for.

By creating diagrams of your Value Stream or mentioning the required activities throughout the creation of a task or the product, you can quickly identify which activities are not adding value. 

2. It makes processes more resourceful

Despite a colorful flowchart, SAFe Value Stream map links and labels information and materials flows. That’s how it decides cycle times, lead time, and time between every point along with the procedure. 

This activity enables the organization to check where the real value is getting included or not included. It finally let them improve the exclusive competence related to the product delivery to create maximum results and get the required results.

This system strives for a quality-focused and efficient system that utilizes the right resources and creates services and products that can achieve desired targets.

3. Aligns Cross-Functional Teams 

VSM adds every interdepartmental stakeholder who is engaged in the different process steps. The biggest advantage that people don’t know about VSM is that the procedure of mapping out future and current states aligns the division section or the whole company on shared targets.

You can also achieve the most excellent output by collecting a cross-functional team or buy-in from top management, via middle management to the sales and logistics, administration, and operations teams to participate. 

Consequently, the engaged people can see the process at the organizational level versus a tunnel-vision viewpoint from their job responsibilities or department.

Hence, creating a shared knowledge of the existing state prioritizes enhancing the core procedure that profits from moving to the best workflow in the prospect state.

4. Center Point for discussion on future development 

After completing a Value Stream map and aligning the stakeholders, it can inform a better conversation associated with the prospect vision of the organization and build shared targets for growth.

The cost savings and better efficiency from reducing waste or just understanding the procedure help those discussions and eventually build plans for taking a big step to the perfect future state.

Why is Value Stream management critical?

Today every business or company becomes digital, whether it is a travel app, order fulfillment, or offering online banking services. Businesses feel pressure from competitors and customers alike, which comes with an uptick in the velocity and volume of product requests. As a result, problems happen that weaken time to value.

That gives plenty of headaches for a company, but particularly the product teams plus their team leaders who hurry to deliver services/products more frequently and faster. Using Value Stream mapping will ease some of the pressure, make sure the reduction of mistakes, and allow product teams to provide value more quickly.

How will VSM help?

Businesses are developing more aggressively daily. Development teams will have to work quickly and be more competent than ever to stay beside customer expectations and demand. But, it’s not only the Development teams that are affected by these augmented demands.

A Value Stream mapping can aid in recognizing and better organizing other affected operational teams plus process segments that are essential to the entire development procedure.

Since the VSM activity involves the team members, one of the significant advantages that you will realize is that it gives a sense of knowledge to the customer’s voice. 

It aids in recognizing what a user is demanding, what they are worth, their requirement and how to get precisely the same most successfully. Knowing quality from the user’s point of view can be priceless to the presentation of the process as well as the product quality.

Also, this VSM activity can be beneficial to give team members, stakeholders, and leaders a combined view. This new vision allows them to walk off their data silos and achieve a more holistic perceptive of the entire procedure and their respective roles and inputs to the final product.

This further understanding aids them in checking their individual inputs as more essential, valued, and significant to the process of product delivery. 

Without this, team members tend to lose their perception, discount and distort the value of their position. 

Taking part in a Scaled Agile Framework Value Stream is a superb way for team members to understand and clarify the value of their relevant roles. That goes a very long way for improving team and individual morale.

VSM allows constant improvement 

VSM empowers team members to constantly improve their software delivery companies to supply more worth to their clients.

That comprises incrementally boosting process improvement and product quality with every single point.

VSM offers the comprehensive knowledge required to fuel information-driven decision-making to enhance business outputs through actionable real-time visibility and executive-level insights.

It’s with VSM that big companies are ultimately capable of understanding the assured performance they have been looking for.

Streamline test environment management

Value Stream mapping can better provide worth to all the clients. That implies reducing waste during the SDLC or software delivery lifecycle, comprising test environment supervision.

Test environment managers continuously get booking requests for particularly configured environments.

In place of utilizing time to deal with these requests and find conflicts, VSM platforms automatically centralize test environment scheduling and booking requests.

That enables test environment managers to concentrate on creating value in the software delivery lifecycle by configuring and creating test environments rather than arranging thousands of requests.

Summing up

Value Stream mapping can be utilized in any sector at any level of the organization. It is more than just a diagram. However, it recognizes wastes and informs where processes and areas can be enhanced to get desired targets.

To make Value Stream mapping successful, engage all the vital stakeholders from upper administration to line workers.

Frequently solutions caused by a VSM activity cause no-cost or low-cost improvements such as rethinking current activities.

VSM can be a powerful and simple tool for developing a perfect state for deliberate planning. It aids in working with professionals to assist fill the gap between your future state and current state maps and aid in creating an efficient action plan using a combination of Lean tools. It will not happen suddenly; however, getting started and going on the right path is critical. Despite your sector, whether you are creating software, developing physical products, organizing special events, or handling marketing campaigns, VSM can assist you and your team members to perform resourcefully.

References:

1. https://www.scaledagileframework.com/value-streams/
2. https://www.plutora.com/blog/value-stream-mapping