8 Tips for Value Stream Identification

Value stream plays a significant role in the victory of the SAFe implementation journey as its support of organizational SAFe implementation. With the right idea, a company can kick start the journey and roadmap towards successful implementation making identification of your main value stream in business and using this data for initial improvement. This will also help you understand and establish a method that suits your organization. By identification of what brings value to the customer is a way of setting a value stream.

In our previous articles, we have already seen what value stream is and its details so here let’s have a brief revision of it.

The SAFe implementation roadmap consists of overall twelve steps and the identification of the value stream is the fifth step of it. The value stream is a process of crafting what customers require and are willing to pay for making an organization more responsive toward customers. In a single value stream, many actions require to be completed to achieve the goal and lead the team to provide value to customers. Among these actions some are useless, that can be eliminated but some are useless but still need to be carried on as they are important for safety, technology, and quality. There are four types of value stream

·       Manufacturing

·       Fulfillment

·       Software Product

·       Supporting

Value stream identification is a sequential process step taken by an organization to provide a product or service to their customer. Identification of value stream helps marketing, manufacturing, and all other employees of an organization to understand the internal process and their role contributes to the organization as it shows the corporation’s process step by step. By evaluating this identified value stream teams can ensure faster delivery and parts that delay production speed.

Tips for Value Stream Identification

·       The value stream, there are two types- The developmental value stream helps in listing steps for improving companies’ ability to create a product; and the operational value stream where business processes and delivery of the product to customers are shown. While identifying a value stream it is advisable to identify both of these value streams instead of going with any one of them.

·       After achieving identification of each step move forwards to list out each employee and solution that makes steps to progress. Listing employees will let the organization know about potential efficiency and setbacks in the system whereas listing solutions will help in making the product pathway more efficient and this listing will further help in looking for similar solutions during the evaluation of the process in value stream identification.

·       Defining a focused goal before starting any process will bring a more directed path for value stream identification. The goal and main points the team wants to improve, and the time and assets able to commit must be defined before the identification. This will help streamline the process.

·       Change management is a team of managing operators that work for inciting business change. Involving many change management employees in the process will help in leading the group in improving the project, creating an action plan within a timeline, and documenting change. This will also help in prioritizing meeting objectives.

·       While identifying value streams involve as many employees as possible in the process and especially try to involve employees related to the processes that are evaluated. This involvement during the process will make employees understand the point of interest and insight into the process.

·       Consider well-established programs. While going through system processes make sure to go through every process even if they are well established. As teams can create a significantly more efficient process considering every element during value stream identification for all the processes and update the process that seems inefficient.

·       Before moving towards an action plan after listing the change required prioritize the change. Some changes must be required but are not that effective and are more time-consuming so it is always better to prioritize the change and then move towards an action plan. This will ensure the most important required changes that can improve efficiency at a greater level with prioritized actions.

·       During prioritizing of actions go with focusing one value stream at a time this will help to complete work faster as a complete team will work towards a single goal providing the team with more concentration and faster realization. This focusing single value stream at a time will provide the team opportunity to complete one goal at a time and improve efficiency for others.

With the above tips in identifying values stream teams and organizations can easily and effectively identify and act on the values stream completing the purpose it is created for with more efficiency.

 We, at Advance Agility, are the new-age Agile Coaching, Consulting and IT services company. We enable end-to-end Digital Transformation. Agile execution is integral to our being. We are doing SAFe implementation with small, medium and large organization across the globe. Our vision is to be the leading Agile execution player globally. To keep adding value at every process stage. We are on a mission to empower our clients, move from concept to cash in the shortest sustainable lead time by adopting human centric approach to business agility. Embracing the change is in our DNA. Things that keep us apart are Quicker and Seamless execution with End-to-end gamut of services. Our Global presence and Stellar Track Record give us an edge over our competitor.

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