Value Stream Management
The most successful physical businesses have excelled at Value Stream Management (VSM) for decades,
but its principles and practices are now powering the most successful digital transformations and high performing
software delivery.
VSM is the foundation for continually optimizing flow and value realization by providing holistic, actionable insight
into value, waste, quality, and velocity across any enterprise. VSM provides the missing link to connect cost and
revenue, development and operations, business and tech. Excelling at VSM enables optimal organizational performance,
and effective assessment is the cornerstone progress.
Created by:
Helen Beal
Founder and Chief Flow:er at Flowtopia
Value Stream Management Will Define the Future of DevOps
Value Stream Management is a field that encompasses a number of practices and techniques to organize, map, measure, manage, improve, govern, and accelerate the flow of measurable outcomes to the customer. It makes work visible and in doing so surfaces insights into where delays, waste, and non-value adding work can be removed in order to improve customer experience.
Gartner 2020
Map Your Path to Value
Navigate Value Stream Management
1. Start
Get going from wherever you are.
2. Assess
Where are you today? Scale your assessment from super-light, to whatever weight you need to spark the depth of evolution you want.
3. Vision
Set your long-term vision and goals.
4. Identify
Identify your value streams—anything that delivers a product or service. You're aiming to accelerate the flow of value to the customer.
5. Organize
Find the people accountable for every step in each value stream.
6. Map
Bring the players in your value stream together for a mapping exercise. Find where the idea starts, and track every step until the value is delivered.
7. Connect
Connect the parts of your DevOps toolchain aligned to the steps in your value stream map and start getting real-time data and insights into your value stream flow.
8. Inspect
You're automated your value stream map, now use it! Set goals for your value stream and use retrospectives to determine where you are.
9. Adapt
Use your insights to design and perform experiments that adapt and optimize your flow so you can continually delight your customers.
Sample Questions
Starting Point
Our team regularly reviews the metrics around flow, throughput, WiP, and delivery.
Vision
We have identified our key drivers/pains for Value Stream Management (VMS).
Leadership
Our leadership is more focused on long-term outcomes than short-term outcomes.
Identification
We have defined the types of work our value stream has to manage.
Organization
Our teams are organized around products, not projects.
Mapping
We have an experienced and engaging mapping facilitator available.
Connection
We can trace work from start to finish in our value stream using data from our tools.
Adaptation
We use metrics to measure the efficiency of our value stream and continually improve and adapt.
Next Steps
We have a clear understanding of how to improve value stream performance.
Top Features
Leverage proven, peer-reviewed research to quickly identify where your organization needs attention and initiate informed intervention.
Adopt a common language around flow, value, measurement, and holistic performance that enables powerful progress.
Gain insights into hidden gaps and validation of assumptions—perform analysis at the team, program, and organizational levels.
Benchmark Value Stream Management adoption across your teams and organization against other organizations in your industry.
Helen Beal
Founder and Chief Flow:er at Flowtopia
Helen Beal is the founder and Chief Flow:er at Flowtopia and leads the ambassador program at PeopleCert for DevOps Institute, ITIL, and PRINCE2. She is a writer and speaker on DevOps, AI, and value stream-related topics at industry conferences and corporate events. She is a consultant, coach, and strategic advisor for companies large and small.
She regularly appears in TechBeacon’s DevOps Top100 lists, was recognized as the Top DevOps Evangelist 2020 in the DevOps Dozen awards, and was a finalist for Computing DevOps Excellence Awards’ DevOps Professional of the Year 2021.
She has served on advisory and judging boards for many initiatives, including Developer Week, DevOps World, JAX DevOps, and InterOp.
When she’s not knee-deep in a value stream, she’s likely outside somewhere warm looking for butterflies or nurturing bees. She once saw a flamingo lay an egg.
The Value Stream Management Assessment was developed as a Consulting Huddle initiative led by Helen at Flowtopia, with inputs from a team of value stream expert practitioners.
