Value Stream Mapping the Process

Value stream mapping (sometimes called VSM) is a lean manufacturing technique to

analyze, design, and manage the flow of materials and information required to bring
a product to a customer. Also known as "material and information-flow mapping", it
uses a system of standard symbols to depict various work streams and information
flows. 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.

Value stream mapping can be used to improve any process where there are
repeatable steps – and especially when there are multiple handoffs. In manufacturing,
handoffs are easier to visualize because they usually involve the handoff of a tangible
deliverable through stations. If, for example, a problem arises when assembling a
vehicle, line workers can see the physical parts accumulating and jamming up a
certain part of the assembly line. They can then stop the line to solve that problem
and get the process flowing again.

The application of value stream mapping – also referred to as “visualizing” or

“mapping” a process – isn’t limited to the assembly line. Lean value stream mapping
has gained momentum in knowledge work because it results in better team
communication and more effective collaboration.

The history of value stream mapping

The origins of value stream mapping are often attributed to Toyota Motor
Corporation. However, this is a murky topic. Toyota may have adopted it from other
origin sources or it may have grown organically from shared ideas in the lean
manufacturing community. Early versions of diagrams revealing the flow of materials
and information can be found as early as 1918 in a book called Installing Efficiency
Methods, by Charles E. Knoeppel.

The benefits of value stream mapping

Value stream mapping is critical for business sustainability. Here’s why:

 Reducing or eliminating waste can improve your company’s bottom line. As a

bonus, you discover the root cause and the source of the waste.
 Once wasteful handoffs are identified as part of value stream visualizers, your
teams can consciously improve behavior, culture, communication, and collaboration.
 Teams discard individual opinions and prioritize based on the customer’s
perspective.
The challenges of value stream mapping

Value stream mapping can be wasteful in itself, if you are not careful. Here’s how you
can avoid common pitfalls:

 The LOE (level of effort) to conduct value stream mapping should be balanced
with the potential value and savings. From the beginning, keep an eye on the return
on investment (ROI).
 Involve experienced people from the business side and product side in
conducting value stream mapping since the mapping process could be vastly cross-
functional and complex.
 Fear and uncertainty are common symptoms when value stream mapping is
conducted, and so the process of identifying waste can be intense.
 Improving a step here and a step there will rake in savings for sure. However,
it may not directly translate to a bottom line improvement until a full walkthrough is
completed. Having said that, baby steps are often a great way to start.
 Don’t rush to use professional charts, tools, and symbols right away. First,
sketch with a pencil or use a whiteboard to outline the idea. Once the dust settles,
formalize the map appropriately. Remember, you are trying to cut waste and not
create any more than you already have.
Value stream mapping use cases

In a supply chain, value stream mapping can root out costly delays leading to a
finished product. In manufacturing, value stream mapping helps identify waste by
analyzing each step of material handling and information flow. The process items
that flow through the value stream are materials.

In service industries, value stream mapping facilitates effective and timely services
for external customers, whereas inside administration and offices, it facilitates
services for internal customers. In healthcare, value stream mapping ensures that
patients are effectively treated with high-quality care. The process items that flow
through the value stream are customer needs.

How value stream mapping identifies and reduces waste

Value stream mapping originated in the enterprise manufacturing industry. As an

example, let’s imagine an automobile factory receives orders for new cars and needs
raw materials to produce them. The company uses value stream mapping to outline
the steps required to produce a new car.

After reviewing car production steps, the company identifies a handoff stage in the
development that appears wasteful. This handoff stage requires a forklift to move raw
materials from one side of a warehouse to the production line. However, this move
has safety risks and is time consuming. From this insight the company decides to
permanently move the raw material storage directly adjacent to the production line.
This increases efficiency and potentially removes the requirement of the forklift
altogether!

Lean manufacturing has a set of seven types of waste generation.

Overproduction
Overproduction is a catalyst to many other forms of waste. When a manufactured
product is overproduced it leads to further waste through unnecessary costs like extra
storage, wasted raw materials, and capital frozen in useless inventory.

Inventory
Inventory waste is the liability cost that comes with storing and preserving a surplus
inventory. This waste includes waste of space for housing inventory, waste of rent for
storage space, waste of transportation costs, and waste caused from deterioration of
housed products.

Motion
Motion waste is the cost of all the motion by person or machine that could be
minimized. The previous example we demonstrated with the forklift and supply
location is a great example of motion waste and optimization. Motion waste has many
wasteful byproducts, including pollution, fuel waste from operating vehicles,
maintenance repairs, and costs from equipment breaking down.

Defects
Accidents do happen, and they can be expensive. Defect waste management is the
effort to identify and mitigate accidents and imperfections that lead to defective final
products. Defects are costly as they need to be replaced, may have additional
recycling costs, or may be a total loss of raw materials.

Over-processing
Over-processing waste refers to any step of the manufacturing component that can be
deemed unnecessary. Examples include adding features users did not ask for or
polishing areas of a product that may not be visible to a user.

Waiting
Waiting waste is the cost of any step in the manufacturing processing that is slow and
causes a delayed reaction to the final output. Waiting causes expenses in lighting,
heating, cooling, and the risk of materials, or contracts expiring.

Transport
Transport waste is very similar to motion waste. Transport waste deals with external
transport movement between multiple locations or third-party partnerships where
motion deals with internal movement in the same location.

A software development organization doesn’t deal with physically moving raw

materials around warehouses to build a finished product. Software development
entails shipping ideas into tangible user experiences that provide value to the
customer.

Value stream mapping for a software enterprise looks at the flow of taking “idea input”
from sources like customer support, sales requirements, competitor analysis and
delivering that as valuable output to the end customer. The software development
value stream mapping flow stages are primarily concerned with cross-team
communication.

The user requests a feature, product teams design functionality, engineers receive the
design and build the software, and the software is shipped to the end user. Value
stream management for software can be used to identify points of waste between
these stages.

The following is a list of seven types of waste found in software development or other
creative work.

Partially completed work

This occurs when software is pushed out in an incomplete state. It may happen due to
a lack of complete specification, or lack of automated test coverage. Partially
completed work also causes a cascade of other waste since additional work is needed
to push more updates and fill in the missing functionality.

Extra features
Often referred to as “feature creep”, extra features cause waste by doing more work
than is required. Extra features are features directly not requested by users but
cooked up internally on a hunch or speculation. Extra features may present
themselves as well intentioned but often are a byproduct of a disconnect from actual
customer needs.

Relearning
Relearning waste can also occur from lack of internal documentation. If a software
failure or outage occurs it is a best practice to investigate and document why the
outage happened and how it was remedied. If a failure occurs again and it has not
been documented, there will need to be another investigation and remediation.

Relearning waste also occurs when a team or individual needs to overcome the
learning curve of an unfamiliar technology. Tech trends rapidly come and go. Flavor
of the month frameworks and libraries get jumped on by junior developers pumped
by market trends and hype. Even though an organization already knows how to build
a certain feature they may have to relearn how to build it in new framework.

Handoffs
Handoff waste occurs when project owners change when roles change or there is
employee turnover. Key team members leave and a project gets handed to a team
member without context. This scenario is hard to avoid. Handoff otherwise occurs
from poor management and changing team member priorities while in action.

Handoff waste can also occur through communication pipelines. For example, in
a DevOps team, the development team can integrate more closely with the
operations team to help prevent any communication errors when passing off a
product to be maintained. This is an example of avoiding handoff waste.

Delays
Delays usually occur when there are tightly coupled dependencies on a project
Downstream execution on a project may be halted due to a dependency on an
upstream decision or resource. While it's best to avoid dependencies between these
tasks, it can be challenging to perfectly decouple tasks. A delay in one task may cost
delays in dependants. Delays can cause a cascade of waste. Software development
often happens at a rapid pace and tasks are distributed amongst team members.

Task switching
Task switching waste has similar qualities as handoff waste. Where handoff waste
occurs when tasks switch owners between team members, task switching waste
happens to an individual. Mental context switching is expensive. There is a mental
cadence or “flow” that software engineers achieve to optimally produce good code.
Efficient organizations work to optimize this mental state for their engineers.
Inefficient organizations bombard their engineers with non-critical distractions like
meetings and emails that disrupt their workflow.
Defects
Defect waste happens when bugs are pushed in software. Defects are similar to
partially completed work but can be more wasteful because defects are unknown and
partially completed work is usually known ahead of time. Defects may be identified
by customers and then reported to customer support, which can be an expensive
pipeline that causes delays and task switching.
The value stream mapping symbols

There are standard symbols for outlining value stream mapping.

How to create a value stream map - one step at a time

1. Decide the problem you are solving for

What problem are you solving from the customer’s standpoint? Do your customers
feel like it takes too long to deliver new features or improvements to a product?
Publish the problem statement and get everyone on the same page.

2. Empower the right team

Empower a mature and experienced team who can skillfully address these
problems in a timely fashion. The C-suite should set aside enough budget to ensure
that execution is uninterrupted.

3. Bound the process

Once the problem statement is published, limit the scope of your value stream
mapping accordingly. You may not need to map the release process in its entirety,
and focus on a particular area instead.

4. Map the bounded process

Be sure to review the bounded process. This can make a difference, since firsthand
experience cannot be substituted by (possibly biased) narratives and (possibly
incomplete and inaccurate) documentation done by others.

Define the steps. I conduct a value stream mapping analysis multiple times. While
this may sound redundant, I have found missing pieces in the second pass that were
not exposed in the first pass. And when we investigated further, skeletons fell out of
the closet during the third (and final) pass!

5. Collect process data

As you conduct value stream mapping, note the process data in the data boxes of the
map. Process data includes (but is not limited to) the number of people involved, the
average number of working hours, cycle time, wait time, uptime, downtime, and
more.

6. Create a timeline
Map out process times and lead times.

7. Assess your current map

Be inquisitive. Do your teams have multiple dependencies with each other? Is your
lead time too long? If it is, is it because your test suites don’t (or can’t) run in parallel?
Do you have stable environments, or do you observe intermittent test failures that the
teams cannot reproduce?

Or, you may have process steps that you think are valuable but don’t mean anything
to the customer. Regarding the information flow, look for stagnation and drag in the
flow. Note whether it was a push versus a pull.

8. Design the future map

You may not be able to nail a full and final version, and that’s okay. Make sure your
new map aligns with the company’s vision.

Also, nothing is set in stone. Based on customer needs, make continuous adjustments.

9. Implement the future map

Follow the value stream mapping of the future and validate that it makes better sense
for the customers. It should have solved the problem statement that you started with.
Monitor KPIs regularly and learn from trends. Make sure everyone is rowing in the
direction of customers.

If you're interested to see what the finished product looks like, here's a value stream
map example.
The application of value stream mapping to continuous delivery

In software development, value stream management can reveal inefficiencies from

idea to production, including feedback loops and rework. It can help reduce the
number of steps and the need for rework. Mapping your process can help you
visualize where handoffs occur so you can also discover where wait time keeps work
from moving through your system.

By definition, continuous delivery (CD) doesn’t need to make use of value stream
mapping and it is perfectly possible to design and implement a CD pipeline without
knowledge of value stream mapping.

With proper implementation, value stream mapping fosters a culture of continuous

improvement that has been proven effective in software engineering and operations.
The map illustrates the outcomes of the value stream analysis, providing a visual tool
to facilitate understanding and communication.