Value Stream Mapping is a tool that every Agile coach should know how to use. It’s not just the mapping, but what design concepts can you employee to deliver value to customers?
With process design, you could eliminate, simplify, or change sequence of a step in the process.
The book, Value Stream Mapping by Karen Martin, provides several design questions that help create the future state of a value stream. Consider these questions:
General Questions
What are the business issues (quality, speed…) we wish to address?
What does the customer want?
How can we reduce delays between processes?
How can we increase the quality of incoming work at each process?
Delays
Can we reduce batch size or eliminate batching completely?
How can we create more capacity or reduce work load at the bottleneck?
Technology
Is unnecessary technology involved?
Is available technology fully utilized?
Are systems connected to so data flows smoothly?
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These are some of the questions and design approaches in the book. I encourage you to study design because the best way out of a problem is to design your way out.
You can also listen to Karen Martin discuss value streams in this free webinar.
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