Value Stream Mapping Boot Camp

Transform your IT processes with our Value Stream Mapping training course, designed to help teams visualize workflows, identify wastes, and optimize for flow, speed, and value in a collaborative workshop setting.

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Overview

Value Stream Mapping (VSM) has been a fixture in Lean organizations for decades. It started with Toyota and the Lean Manufacturing movement and has been widely embraced by Lean organizations of all kinds. Using VSM within Information Technology is a natural part of our DevOps evolution. In this value stream mapping training course, we interpret and apply the full range of VSM practices and ideas (from lead time and cycle time all the way down to Gemba, Pitch and Takt) to analyzing and improving what we do in IT.

We begin class by understanding your IT work in terms of Value Streams, then take a workshop approach by choosing a Value Stream for your teams to collaborate on. At the end, your team will have a complete model of the value stream you address together. (This complete model includes a diagram of your As-Is Value Stream along with problems and improvement opportunities, a To-Be diagram that pictures the ultimate target state for that Value Stream with improvement priorities, performance objectives and measurable goals, and a plan for your first steps in iteratively improving that Value Stream toward that target state.) Guided by an expert, you will visualize workflows, find wastes, and establish improvement priorities. Get your teams connected and leave with a plan for optimizing processes for overall flow, speed and value.

This is not a typical professional classroom experience – it is a working session for your teams. The purpose is to get something done; To visually map your value flows and establish common heuristics on value, priority, and waste for everybody involved. Value stream mapping can be a dramatically transformational event – expanding empathy across teams, sharing points of view, and solving gaps in understanding which may be robbing everyone of productivity.

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Full course details

Course outline

Please Note: This is not a traditional training event: You will not experience periods of instruction followed by exercises. Rather, you will actively perform every step listed below, and the Facilitator will provide any explanations and guidance that you require.

Step 1: Understand what you do in terms of Value Streams

  1. Create a working definition of value that is relevant to your context
    1. Determine how to measure Value in a Value Stream
    2. Establish common heuristics on value
  2. Determine how you provide value to customers
    1. Identify your customers and the needs they have that you satisfy
      1. Articulate what value means to your Customer/user
    2. Identify your services and how each satisfies customers’ needs
  3. Identify your Value Streams
    1. Identify the processes (activities) required for each service:
      1. Identify Value-add activities
      2. Identify Directing activities
      3. Identify Supporting activities
    2. Arrange services into Service Families based on similarity in processes (activities)
    3. Identify each Value Stream
  4. Explain how Value Streams relate to:
    1. Conventional supply chains
    2. Agile practices
    3. DevOps and IT services
    4. PMOs and project management
    5. Product life cycles
    6. Enterprise costs and revenues
    7. Other use cases

Step 2: Choose a Value Stream to improve

  1. Prioritize Value Streams
    1. Based on value for your customers
    2. Based on value to your organization
  2. Identify problematic Value Streams
    1. Issues with what is delivered to customers
    2. Issues with timeliness of value delivery
    3. Issues with cost to the organization
  3. Choose a high value & problematic Value Stream to improve

Step 3: Prepare for Value Stream Mapping

  1. Identify (or appoint) the Value Stream Manager
    1. Understand the role of Leadership
  2. Collect required data
    1. Customer data
    2. Process Data
    3. Inventory Data
    4. Supplier Data
    5. Lead Time for the total Value Stream

Step 4: Map the current (as is) Value Stream

  • Visualize workflows
  • Visualize functional areas of work and how they interact
  • Flesh out how value-added workflows through the organization
  • Establish an accurate description of the environment’s current state
  • Map the flow of work through functional groups:
    • Business Teams
    • Development
    • Product Ownership
    • Security and Governance
    • Change Management
    • Testing and QA
    • Data Management
    • Release Process
    • Other IT Operations
  1. Map the Customer
  2. Map the Processes
  3. Map the Suppliers
  4. Map the Inventory
  5. Map the Service flow
    1. Trace handoffs for different phases of work
    2. Visualize Queues in your Value Stream Map
  6. Map the Information flow
  7. Map the Timeline
    1. Distinguish between Value-Add and non-Value-Add activities in a Value Stream
    2. Measure value-added vs. non-value-added time
    3. Trace waiting times for different phases of work
    4. Identify Wait times and total wait time in a Value Stream
    5. Measure waiting, frequency of deployments/releases/versions, lead times, MTTD & MTTR, change volume
    6. Establish common heuristics on waste

Step 5: Identify problems with the current (as is) Value Stream

  • Find Wastes
  • Find root causes for waiting and waste in workflows
  • Find dependencies among teams
  • Resolve misunderstandings and misperceptions across different departments
  1. Identify Overproduction (Excess Inventory)
  2. Note where work is not paced to “takt time”
  3. Identify impediments to flow among processes
    1. Opportunities to use continuous flow
    2. Push vs Pull relationships
  4. Note instances of ineffective flow management
    1. Scheduling processes independently
    2. Lack of a “Pacemaker” process
  5. Identify unevenness of flow
    1. Different services not distributed evenly over time
    2. Pitch (increments of work) too large and not related to takt
    3. Inability to do every activity every day (or every pitch)
  6. Make note of wasteful Processes
    1. Movement (including unnecessary searching)
    2. Over-processing
    3. Transportation
    4. Latent talent
    5. Defects

Step 6: Analyze the future (to be) Value Stream

  • Principle: “At first, assume existing designs, facilities, and remote activities cannot be changed and make other improvements.”
  • Plan and budget for future fixes to those bigger issues.
  1. Determine: What is the takt time?
  2. Decide: Will you build to a finished-service supermarket from which the customer pulls, or respond directly to customer demand?
  3. Identify: Where can you use continuous flow processing?
  4. Identify: Where will you need to use pull systems to control upstream processes?
  5. Determine: At what single point in the Value Stream (the “pacemaker process”) will you schedule the work?
  6. Decide: How will you level the mix of work at the pacemaker process?
  7. Define: What increment of work (Pitch) will regularly release at the pacemaker process?
  8. Identify: What process improvements will be necessary for the value stream to flow as your future-state design specifies?

Step 7: Map the future (to be) Value Stream with needed process improvements noted

  1. Draw the To-Be Value Stream
    1. Build a description of your desired future state
  2. Identify the value-stream loops
    1. Pacemaker loop
    2. Upstream loops
  3. Define Objectives and Goals for each loop
    1. Establish improvement priorities
    2. Plan for optimizing processes, overall flow, speed and value
    3. Establish common heuristics on priority
    4. Define the goals and objectives for a Value Stream
    5. Discover opportunities for automation and modernization
    6. Choose the relevant metrics to improve
    7. Define Improvement Targets (e.g. delivery frequency, product flows, projects & programs, mapping portfolios, end-to-end value)
    8. Prioritize improvement targets against each other
    9. Choose the Prioritization Heuristic to use

Step 8: Iteratively improve the Value Stream

  1. Map a path to get to your desired future state
  2. Plan one step toward attaining the future (to be) Value Stream
    1. Pick the starting point (which value-stream loop to improve first)
    2. Loop improvement pattern:
      1. (First!) Develop a continuous flow that operates based on takt time
      2. Establish a pull system to control work
      3. Introduce leveling
      4. (Last!) Practice kaizen to continually eliminate waste, reduce batch sizes, shrink inventory, and extend the range of continuous flow
  3. Determine how you will manage that one improvement step
  4. Define how to collect data on the improved Value Stream
  5. Determine how you will identify problems with the improved Value Stream
  6. Plan to update the future (to be) Value Stream Map
  7. Expect to Refine Value Stream Loops and their Objectives and Goals
  8. Plan to repeat until the Value Stream Loop Goals have been achieved
Audience / prerequisites

There are no technical prerequisites to attend. For a successful outcome at the end of this value stream mapping boot camp, it is important for representatives from every functional group to attend and collaborate. A pre-workshop planning call with your facilitator will be provided in advance of a private session.

In this class you will learn how to
  • Establish a common understanding of mission and objectives
  • Visualize functional areas of work and how they interact
  • Give teams a chance to identify and share their biggest pain points
  • Find root causes for waiting and waste in workflows
  • Discover opportunities for automation and modernization
  • Get coached through a group value stream session by a senior consultant
  • Collaborate with teams in other departments to find hidden dependencies
  • Trace handoffs and waiting times for different phases of work
  • Resolve misunderstandings and misperceptions across different departments
  • Build a description of your desired future state and map a path to get there

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