As mentioned in the previous article, delivering high-quality products in a fast way is essential for organizations to be competitive. One of the alternatives to speed up software development and continuously deliver value to customers is through Value Streams Management.
What is Value Stream?
According to the Lean Manufacturing method, value is defined through the eyes of the customer. Meaning value is everything that adds value to the customer. Any activity, product, or service that consumes resources but does not add value to the customer is considered waste. One eliminates unnnecessary processes and tasks to optimize processes. So, how can production processes be optimized to create more value?
To create more value, we must understand how it flows (the stream) within the organization. Therefore, working from the organization’s perspective is the key. The proposal consists of implementing the Value Streams Mapping Tool.
Value Stream Mapping is a technique that helps organizations define and visualize the steps required to obtain a product, service or add value to a project from the design to the final delivery to the customer.
How to apply Value Streams
We take some principles of the Lean Manufacturing method on which agility is based on to apply Value Streams. The steps are the following:
- Visualize customer value delivery points across the organization
- Create a value stream map to identify end-to-end value delivery
- Create cross-functional teams to cut down as many dependencies as possible within value delivery
- Visualize the work with Kanban boards
- Create policies and new working rules
- Create value KPIs
- Work on continuous improvement
To conclude, Value Streams Mapping is a useful tool to understand your organization’s processes. If applied effectively, it can help you optimize the stream of value by creating a more efficient, predictable, and Agile system.
We cannot say that Value Streams are always the best for your organization. However, it is something to consider for customer satisfaction by early delivery of value. Remember:
Agility= Effectiveness + Efficiency
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