Value Stream Mapping: When it Works, and Why it Fails

“There are at least four different versions of a process: how managers believe it operates, how it's supposed to operate, how it really operates, and how it could operate.” —Mark Richards

Introduction

This episode begins with beach envy and ends with facilitation mastery. In between: a sharp, field-grounded discussion about Value Stream Mapping—its purpose, practice, and perils.

Ali, Stephan, and Mark trace their own learning curves, revisit facilitation misfires, and offer clear-eyed advice to SPCs who want more than “a map on the wall.” They’re not trying to convince anyone that Value Stream Mapping is magic. They’re trying to make it useful.

Actionable Insights

From anecdotes and cautionary tales, here’s what emerges:

• Start with intent, not format. Mark opens the frame: “What are you trying to use this, the Value Stream Map for?” It’s a design question, not a tooling one​.
  Avoid detail spirals. Ali cautions against over-indexing on passionate specifics: “Even though they're valid, they're not that valid in that detail, in the grand scheme of things.”.
  Don’t outsource ownership. Stephan warns, “It looked like a delegate workshop… that doesn't work.” The lesson? Delegates can prepare, but decisions require presence from empowered leaders.
  Operationalize the map. Mark reminds: “Your Value Stream Map should become your Kanban… then you'd get your data for free.”

Highlights

Don’t Let the Map Derail the Dialogue

Ali recalls early workshops where things spiraled into endless details—some valid, some not.

“People are really passionate… even though they're valid, they're not that valid in that detail, in the grand scheme of things.” —Ali Hajou

Stephan agrees: the core challenge is “this competition between over-complication and over-simplification.”

Delegate ≠ Disengaged

Stephan names the trap bluntly: “It looked like a delegate workshop… that doesn't work.” But Mark reframes it. Delegates can help build the map—if the real decision-makers show up to own the outcomes. And those delegates must speak from real experience: “It’s their ‘aha’ moment that comes out of that.”

Mapping as Sensemaking

Ali offers a systems lens: Value Stream Mapping “is a trick to try to understand the system” as it really works—not just on paper.

Stephan builds on that metaphor: “Value Stream Mapping for me is this magnifying glass… your crime scene of inefficiency.”

Maps That Breathe

Mark’s closing gem is a pragmatic vision: when maps become systems, insight becomes flow.

“Your Value Stream Map should become your Kanban… then you'd get your data for free.” —Mark Richards

Conclusion

This episode isn’t about selling Value Stream Mapping. It’s about rescuing it.

From vague templates. From overzealous data obsession. From workshops that deliver nothing but fatigue.

And the biggest rescue move? Invite the right people. Ask the right question. Then let the map do its real job: show you what’s really going on.

Transcript

Mark Richards: 0:01

You're listening to SPCs unleashed a shaping agility project that emerged from the 2023 Prague safe summit. The show is hosted by Swiss SPC, T Stephan Nick and Niko kaintances, Dutch, spct, Ali Hajou and Aussie safe fellow, Mark Richards. We're committed to helping SPCs grow their impact and move beyond the foundations. Taught during implementing safe each week, we explore a dimension from the frameworks, competencies. We share stories about our journeys, the secrets we've found and the lessons we've learned the hard way. G'day and welcome to this week's episode of SPCs unleashed. We're a slightly small crew this week because Niko is still lounging a band on the Amalfi Coast, I think, still stuck in Sorrento. Stephan didn't go to Sorrento because, of course, he was in Lucerne Ali. Why don't we kick off with you and how Sorrento was while I fix our name tags,

Ali Hajou: 0:56

I just, I just indeed, came back yesterday, flew back yesterday night. Oh, my God, that location. It's, you know, imagine open up your hotel, a window or your balcony door of the hotel, and then you see a volcano right in front of you, and the azure blue waters knowing that that this is just another day at work. How awesome is that? I think we have an entire episode that we're going to dedicate about the learnings, the insights, the ideas, the chats that we had in Sorrento. However, with all of these things, you know, whatever happens in Sorrento, I guess stays in Sorrento. Some just, no, just kidding. I think, I think we had quite an opportunity to deep dive a bit in the future of safe, or at least, all kind of cool developments that are happening with the framework, with everything around it, the training material and cool ideas that we've been able to assemble during SPC T day. Some of those are a little bit secret yet. But generally, you know, all of this goes really into into the right direction. More specifically, we had the opportunity to just, you know, as a community, to connect again. And that is always nice. It all has always been nice and always has been a highlight for me. Specifically this,

Mark Richards: 2:18

if there was, I don't normally get Fear Of Missing Out for a location for a conference I don't go to. This was one exception to that, but it was certainly it was. It was hard this week seeing all the photos come out of my friends having fun together and going, Well, I'm not there, but let's get stuck into this week. So last episode, couple of weeks ago, we talked about the value stream and art identification workshop, and we got to the end of it, and was like, Well, actually we should really talk about value street mapping, because obviously value street mapping is a key activity that takes place in that workshop. And let's start off a little bit definitionally, right? A Value Stream Map is a tool that visually depicts the sequence of activities an organization undertakes to deliver on a customer request. Okay, so that's the definition according to my favorite book on the subject, which, conveniently enough, is called Value Stream Mapping by Karen Martin and Mike osterling and and that's our topic for today. And along the way, Stephan is going to share how to do it the lazy way, and Ali is going to focus on trickery. But just before we hear about their love of lazy tricks. Just a couple of seating comments, right? So if I think about what a Value Stream Map is, you know, some of the things that really characterize it? For me, I'm going to go to just a couple of quotes to anchor us in. And one of those quotes is, I think it's, it's the essence of a Value Stream Map. For me, it's, again, from the value stream mapping book. And the quote is, there are at least four different versions of a process, how managers believe it operates, how it's supposed to operate, how it really operates, and how it could operate. And for me, you know, Value Stream Mapping is about learning how something really operates. But then, if I go to my other favorite book on value stream mapping, which is learning to see an Ali, but a very goodie by Mike Ruther and John Shook you know their comment is the value stream is not the end. It's a tool to help you see the waste in your value stream so you can eliminate so why do we create value stream maps? Well, to learn how our processes really operate. See the waste and start eliminating enough definitional stuff. Stephan, tell us why you're feeling lazy this week. It's not a word I normally associate with you, probably

Stephan Neck: 4:24

the wrong word, but I use it quite often to kind of poke holes when I talk to people. I would replace lazy by an economical perspective or economic perspective, and that ties neatly to what you just said, Right? A clever and smart way to achieve goals. Sometimes the shortest distance between A and B is easy to do, but sometimes there are obstacles, impediments. You can't do it, but still finding an economic way and also then to adapt your behavior. Then this is what. Drives me, right? And again, you do it in sports, even in the military. When it comes to all these things about achieving goals, you always have to be economical, and that's one of the first principles in safe and yeah, let's, let's dive into it today, how we can do it, maybe in a lazy way, all

Mark Richards: 5:21

right? And so from from lazy economical into trickery, Ali, what's the highlight around your trickery?

Ali Hajou: 5:28

My highlight is actually it came by accident, I guess. Have you ever experienced a moment where, in which you sort of think you fully grasp a concept, concept that we even teach during, for instance, our SPC classes or our RTE classes. You think you really grasp the concept. However, whenever you would like to translate that to practices, it's actually pretty tough. And for me, a while back, that was systems thinking, the idea of looking at the entire system, yeah, I don't know. Made total sense to me. However, if you try to translate that into practices, what does that mean? Yeah, well, for me that I didn't have a very clear answer to it, and it actually came from a training participant had a very strong, lean background in the in the past. And that person was like, Wait a second, but you know, for systems thinking, the way that I know it, and now I'm paraphrasing that person, but the way that I know it is, I used Value Stream Mapping to really understand the system, in this case, the process, the people that are associated, how inventory is built, whether Whatever it is knowledge or whatever it is, an increment of a product. But value stream mapping is a, is, is a trick to try to understand the system. And I'm like, huh, yeah. And, you know, I've done value stream mapping in the past, but never sort of associated that with systems thinking. Even though it's, you know, there's, there's a bit of overlap. It's not a direct one to one. How do you call it explanation? But I found that a very neat approach look at an entire system, even though it's not an entire system, but within the scope that you define, it allows you to really zoom in into that system. And I found that quite an eye opener.

Mark Richards: 7:21

That's a really nice mapping, but very straight mapping as a system singing tool. I've never actually thought about it like that, and then you said it. I went, well, that's so obvious, because the boundaries of the system is the boundary of the value stream exactly, and value stream mapping is just a way of exploring and modeling what the system is exactly, exactly. Yeah, indeed, right. So, so I'm willing to bet before you had this magical answer, you'd probably already tried it out a few times. You know, I, I know that there have been, for me, moments in the training room where I taught somebody a technique I'd never used because I got a new copy of some training material, and it went, ah, teach this tool. And you looked and you went, Ah, I better at least read a blog post or something about that tool before I try and teach somebody how to use it. Luckily, with value stream mapping, I managed to use it in anger before the first time I had to try and teach, you know, I think back to that first time I used it. And I think for a lot of people, the first time that you use value stream mapping properly is pretty powerful moment. And I used it way back. It was actually in the space where I did my first safe implementation, like nearly 15 years ago, before we started talking about safe, we had this thing, and it was the process, was it? It was for making a new report. We were the business intelligence that are of excellence, and it was the process putting a new report into the world. I had read, well, I'd actually spent a lot of time with some mentors who were deeply in value stream people. I'd read the value stream mapping book. And I went, I'm just going to follow that as closely as I can. We built this value stream that was a really big one. And then we got about 20 people into the room, and, you know, it was a pretty scary map. And we got about three steps in, and somebody went, Oh, look, the hardest thing here is filling out this spreadsheet, because it's, we really don't know all the information we need to fill that spreadsheet out by this point. And it's a real pain. You know, it's the hardest thing at this stage of the process, and it seems to cause the most stress to us in terms of trying to get the answers it's looking for. And somebody across the other side of the room who was like, down the other end of the value stream said, Well, why do you produce a spreadsheet? And the first person went, well, because you guys asked us to and the guy who asked the question went, but we never look at that spreadsheet. And then somebody else in the room goes, Oh yeah, I remember that was, like, two or three years ago. We thought that was gonna be really helpful. We used it a couple of times, and realized that, you know, it was no use to us. And so you had these two people at opposite ends of the room witness systems, thinking, one of whom, going, this is the most painful thing we do, and the other of whom, who they thought they were doing it for going, well, we never look at it. And there was this magic. I think that's a magic, something like that, for most people when they first experiment with value stream mapping. So I'm gonna run with Stephan Tell me a little bit about the first time you actually tried Value Stream Mapping.

Stephan Neck: 9:56

Yeah, the key word is seriously and all. Firstly, I was in awe when we decided to do a safe DevOps course, so do value stream mapping with a whole art. We had a situation where we had different opinions. We had different statements from we are good, we're doing Agile. Others said, No, we are just following protocol. But where's the value? I dove into the material of the safe DevOps course, and has soon realized to cover everything, this is pretty tough. I need the architects. I need the product management. I need the business owners. I need feedback from different people before I can start this, this endeavor. You need, you need those cornerstones. You need data, you need you need a lot of stuff. Nevertheless, we set the date. We prepared for me. It was one of these experiences as an sp CT, where I really was on my toes for more than only these two days. But that was good. It forces you to to really ask the right questions, and what you just told us, Mark, that's something we experienced as well. During preparation phase, people asked why? And you had to answer the why. Why should we think about certain parts of our value stream? Why should we dig into data and stuff like that? So what happened is we had lots of aha moments, and I think also the business owners. I We invited them. We asked them to come to observe, to see how their system, how their organization, works, because through the reporting line, they always got, it's good, it's good. We're delivering output. What's the fuss? So they came and they had the aha moments and said, Oh, we thought that, and now we even see, in the first round, when we went through the current state, that people who always believe they are experts, and even people being in the organization for more than 10 years didn't have the data, didn't have a good idea. What is the process time? How much time do we spend refining features? How much time do we really need over those, those test phases, and even simple questions like, What is testing like? There's different types of testing at different stages through your value stream. This was really an eye opener, and the big the big hit was at the end, when we had the current state, some people looked at the flow efficiency less than 3% and they said, That can't be It can't be that we are that bad, using that much time delivering that minuscule amount of value. And we looked at the percent of complete and accurate and said, oh gosh, maybe one of 10 features is arriving at the end of the pipeline as intended, more or less, everything else has to go back, has to be revamped, has to be reworked. I think it was a good exercise. Day one was an eye opener, and a lot of oh gosh yes, it makes sense that we are here. That was my experience. So my personal experience, I was in awe through the different steps. I got better and better in the moderation, in the facilitation, including the right people. We even had to add more people on day two, because they had the data, they had the information. They knew what we were talking about, and we talked about already, about some some some borders of the system. We had to extend some stuff. Even we had so called exit and entry points, and nobody wanted to talk about that, but there was always this blame game, like we have to wait for them. That's why we have to delay. And that wasn't the case. Yes, we had exit and entry points, but not that much of a delay. And I like value stream mapping, since I wrote right since I read the book, doing it with whole arts. And one probably can feel it. It's a real passion for me nowadays. And

Mark Richards: 13:57

I think you hit the nail on the head about the safe DevOps course. Like, I really wish they'd rename it to the safe Value Stream Mapping course. I think people would teach more often because, as a course to naturally gather the right cross section of people step you through and create empathy. It's, it's phenomenal. And if you've never done a big scale value stream map, like the ones Stephan was talking about before DevOps course. And you know, the material that helps you prepare to teach that can be just brilliant for Did you manage to get the business owners to stay in for most of it Stephan, or did they try to drop in and out?

Stephan Neck: 14:29

Some dropped in and out after you? They took debate. They wanted to join more time, for sure, they too. They wanted to see the results. They wanted to see the improvement list, and some, really, on day one, saw that, yes, if you look at the curriculum, we will have an improvement list. I want to be part of that one, because this is my system, this is my organization, and I don't want to fail. I want to give input. I want to give even constraints or. Um, maybe guidance for the people to come out with the right improvement list. And probably we will talk about that one as well. The improvement list was a bomber. It was it was huge.

Mark Richards: 15:13

How about you, Ali, what? What about your first time?

Ali Hajou: 15:16

Well, talking about the improvements lists I'm going to because for me, something similar came out, actually, no, the first time that I used Value Stream Mapping was actually, I mean, it was quite a quite a while ago. It was during a lean SIG sigma course. This was way before I was sort of exposed to safe. This was during another course that I, that I that I followed from a brilliant trainer. I think, you know, it's only fair if I just mention his name. His name is Michelle topper. He's a Six Sigma Black Belt trainer and has been, let's say, a thought leader in the world of Six Sigma forever. Just what, what struck me was his way of teaching. I think that gave me a little bit sort of the fueled the my sort of ambition to do something similar, because he sort of encapsulated training with stories, with an endless amount of stories, and had the ability to explain topics nice and and I think in a topic like value stream mapping, it is required. So after that training at the time, was working at a pharmaceutical company, they were trying to map all types of processes and therefore identify where the waste was. I tried to host something like that as well. I completely forgot everything that I was taught. So we had a group of people that was, I'm not sure anymore, probably six, seven or eight people or so in total. And we wanted to map quite some, quite a few processes that were relevant for the system that we were building. And I thought, You know what? We just have the right people in the room. We have a whiteboard, we have we have an endless amount of post its and things will happen automatically. It completely forgot the fact that you need to feed people with very clear instructions, and you only do that after you've explained in a sort of a story way, why we're doing this activity. Typically, you add a little bit of an example in it, and you're trying to highlight what we're trying to achieve with the activity. I didn't do any of that, and it became quite a chaos, because you had people that were very data oriented, so they really wanted to add a lot of data. The thing is, that type of data, the wait times, the you know, the times of how long an actual activity, how much time it takes. It's very it varies, you know, activity by activity. It varies by the type of work that we're doing. So it's very tough to identify an average. And whenever, sometimes you have people that are very good in mentioning averages, and sometimes you have people that need to have it exactly right. So I had those type of people in and had people in that wanted to create a Value Stream Map that encapsulates every process. It became like extremely generic. So it's just, I was like, Wait a second, wait a second. You know, let's, let's, let's try to choose a, I think we call that a definition. Let's define what our scope is. Let's define our level of granularity, and let's take it from there. So my first value stream mapping exercise was actually very, very it became a little bit better after but that was my, my intro to, well,

Stephan Neck: 18:46

I can add to that, what Ali said, it's a learning curve, right? Yeah, just jump into into this adventure as as well prepared as you can. But then it's learning time, and don't do it alone. It's one of my experiences. Have a good team facilitating, for example, such a an exercise which can go over several workshops. If you do the safe DevOps, it's a two day course or workshop, right? But have a team doing it which allows you to then really tackle it the right way. Yeah,

Mark Richards: 19:18

I think it's, it's probably, particularly if you if you look at value stream mapping the book, if you look at learning to see the book, they'll both say, you've got to go and walk the value right. Value Stream Mapping says, Yeah, you take the people who manage the various component areas of the value stream, you assemble them as a group. You walk the value stream from beginning to end on day one, returning to a ballroom, building the map, and then you walk it from end to beginning on day two, because when you walk it backwards, you see new things to update your map. You know when you when you read, learning to see, it's like, Well, you got to walk the factory floor. And boy, their value. Street maps are complex. They've got all kinds of things going into theirs. But you know, these days, particularly in this kind of post COVID world and in the digital space, rarely feasible to walk it right. We're in these kind of slightly artificial situations. Having a team super important. If I had one tip around facilitating, probably I'm gonna say two. One is just to really back up the guys with have a team. If you can, have a team that's tried it, like your facilitation team, that's tried it before, and maybe it's not on a real one. I've seen a couple of adaptations. Probably my favorite. Was one of the big agile conferences years ago, a couple of guys adapted the pizza game as a value stream mapping exercise. They actually got people to build a Value Stream Map of the way that their pizza factory was working. Then they set up like multiple timers, and they ran orders through the factory, and they collected timings, and they did debriefs analyzing the timings. And so they got that whole end to end experience. And, you know, it's really powerful. If you can get a simulation, you can take a group through the simulation so that they understand the kind of insights and our has that are going to jump out before they're facilitating the real thing for the first time. So there'd be that. Probably the other thing that would be for me is, you know, get your leaders there. The vaish Stream Mapping book has a beautiful way. It frames it. It says Kaizen events should be heavily biased with the people doing the work being improved value. Stream Mapping activities should be heavily biased with the people who oversee the work being improved. Not like your favorite way to facilitate. It was actually the safe DevOps course. Stephan, we've already talked a little bit about that. Would you add anything else around facilitation before Yeah, we head back into Ali land just

Stephan Neck: 21:22

just to underline what you just said, the safe DevOps course is a very good package to start with, Value Stream Mapping, but then it evolves over time, and it evolves because I learned to better include business owners, senior management, talking beforehand about, what's the job to be done? Where are your challenges? What's your agenda? We talked about that in one episode when it comes to leadership. Right now, the agenda of senior management, and this has a should have a heavy influence on such a workshop, and that is, creates the invitation for them to join or to even shape such a Value Stream Mapping, if it's just going through the agenda of the curriculum. Yes, you will teach an art a lot of things, but what's the outcome? Then? Not the output. The output might get better, but it's about the outcome. It's about the impact you will have on your organization, also regarding achievement of strategy. And that's these are the keywords that probably resonate for senior management. So they should set the challenge. And if you, and that's what I tried to achieve, they have the opening speech. So it's involvement. They set the frame, they even and I tried to teach and coach them. You set the frame, but be aware the frame might change over the time. Let's be open for that one and the other one the facilitation. What I'm after is you are probably only the facilitator. Let's have architects, PMS, whoever is most challenged in the art triad lead that workshop, and that creates a team that involves them, and they are in the lead. It's not you, it's not an RT. It's really, where's the challenge, where's the topic? Maybe you, as Karen Martin also explains, you start somewhere where it really, where you have the burning platform, and it might not be the whole value stream. I In one case, we had to reduce to only, like a quarter of the value stream. But this solved so many problems. The rest, after a few weeks or months, was nitty gritty detail. It just fell into places where it should be, yeah, that that's probably what I would would throw in when it comes to facilitation, if I,

Ali Hajou: 23:45

if I may, with with respect to facilitation, I think there is, I grew to like, especially the, you know, the identification of the different steps, the identification of of the bottle necks. But I grew to dislike the identification of the, you know, the wait time, or the total lead time and the sort of activity time, because very often, I mean, if you'd fall into the the trap of, well, yeah, well, I don't know, so I'm just gonna, you know, give a rough estimate, if that, if you have too many of those rough estimates, you know, then we're going to do that exercise, the calculation, you know, the percentage complete and accurate, and so forth and so forth. You're going to do that based on very rough estimates of a few people. And I just, I've, I find that, I found that, like a little bit of a downer in the activity. Whenever we talk about the the different activities themselves, and sometimes even there is a side step, you know, from a moment that we have a certain design, it goes to this team and goes to that department, and it happens in parallel, and there is a delay that pops up over there. You know. But that's the sort of discussion that I would like to see, that I would like to sort of facilitate. So I've I grew to be extremely focused on these type of things, and, you know, compound that with my agile nerdiness, you know, I'd like to make sure that for whenever we create an overview like that, we, you know, double down on visual management, so that we use the right color of post its for the right thing, so that the moment that anyone just glances to the board typically becomes like a wall. They directly see what is an activity, what is a bottle neck, what is an involved team or an evolved person or an actor? So I really enjoy, let's say, generating that type of clarity. But I must say that I haven't, I haven't had a like a good, good way to handle the data part, even though the data part of value stream mapping is sort of almost the essential part. But I have another example that I will share in a second. But I found, I found the the ability to create a visually useful overview of the process. Just that really, really helped, and it made me a pretty happy boy.

Stephan Neck: 26:17

May I add to that one? Ali, I had a similar experience. I have people telling me, before the first round of the current value stream, they said, We don't know exactly what the data is. And I said, guys, you're part of this value stream, you should have an estimate. That triggered a valuable discussion. And that was really the big aha moment from for business owners. Okay, if this is estimates, what do I get in my reporting line? Week after week after week, it's an estimate, and it's not exact figures, right? Or it's, we try to fake it, or whatever. So I like it. So I go through the first round current state, and I say, Guys, it's sketching time, and I, in contrast to you, Ali, I'm, I don't care what color the stick key is as as long as I have a sketch. And then second round, yes, then we add discipline and say, Guys, now, okay, let's reveal what's under the table. Let's use the right colors. Let's, let's use some rules so that your customers, your business owners, the business understands what we are doing here. Yeah,

Ali Hajou: 27:26

yeah, absolutely valid. And, you know, for me, the, I think the one of the only times where it really went well in terms of data gathering, and, you know, looking at the data was, this was at an airline client, which we had, we hosted the workshop, and we had somebody from PMO parts in the team, and that person was just gem, was it gem? Why? Because every single time that it was a little bit of a discussion about, you know, what? Well, from this activity, you know, there is some either, like an increment that goes to this department. There is another, something else that goes to another department. How long does that take? Person from PMO just open up the laptop and could directly see that, because it was part of so they, they were very involved in how, let's say, measuring, how projects went through through the organization. This was an organization that used certain milestones or certain stage gates. These were not, these were much more financial stage gates, and because of that, they had the data on how long it took for, you know, a project to go from one stage gate to the other. And therefore, you know, had the ability to just get that, get that out of, out of the tools that they were using. So I found that really useful.

Mark Richards: 28:47

Okay, so if overly caught up in the precision or lack thereof of some of the numbers is one of the big traps to watch out for. What? What are the other traps you're watching for? Yeah, so

Ali Hajou: 28:58

in, in these kind of workshops, these, the this, the discussion can just really derail. We can spend hours talking about an extremely minuscule detail simply because people are so passionate about it, or it has really bothered them for for so long. And I've, you know, I've made the mistake before where I just didn't sort of intervene, you know, for the sake of the workshop, for the sake of, you know, maintaining momentum, yeah, but, but what I do didn't notice is that specifically in workshops like these, people are really, really passionate, and therefore they really want to go to the minute details, because they would like to fix it. They would like to fix it based on their experience. And it could be that they've experienced a huge delay just once, but that meant, means that that delay will be used over and over and over and over again as part of a discussion. And therefore, I think that the trap to avoid. Is the trap of falling into these unstructured and too detailed conversations. You know, even though they're valid, they're not that valid in that detail. In the grand scheme of things, you

Stephan Neck: 30:14

both mentioned that it's for me, it's this, this competition between over complication and oversimplification, right? And if you give people a good structure of the workshop or the workshops that are ahead, people can relate to how deep should we dive and and as a facilitator, most often, I had to either push to go deeper, to really get the questions and the answers, or to say, guys, that's good enough for a first round. That's good enough for this part. And then let's go on the other one I see or I experienced before one of the workshops, I went through the attendees. It looked like a delegate workshop, right? Not the real people in there, not the deciders, not the senior management, not the people who are affected. That doesn't work. A delegate workshop doesn't work. So I'm

Mark Richards: 31:03

going to give a caveat on the delegate workshop, and this is my caveat. There are times when I think about the activity of creating a map and the activity of processing your creation do distinct things. It's not necessarily we're going to do a mapping event, and it's the one event it might be. It's going to be a series of conversations over a series of days to build a candidate map. And I think if you've got delegates helping you build that, that can be okay, so long as you've got the right senior people in the room when you process it together, and you make sure that if you're the coach or you're the facilitator, it's never you talking about the map, it's actually the delegates should be from the areas that are being mapped, and it's and it's there speaking to what's happening in their world as part of the map, so that it's owned by, you know, the senior management and their delegates. It's not owned by you in terms of what the creation is, because they've got a their ha moment that comes out of that. But I think the other thing for me, and I love over complication. I haven't Googled yet to see if it's a real word, but it's beautiful.

Ali Hajou: 31:59

It's so I think we need to copyright it over complication. Stephan Neck,

Mark Richards: 32:04

but I think the other one is, what are you trying to use this, the value stream map for? Because I think there are times when, if you've got the right people in the room, there's a map you sketch with 20 minutes, and that map is really useful to support a discussion. There's other times when you want a map that, you know, actually has accurate measurements of the, you know, wait time and the average Touch Time and the percentage complete and accurate, right? Because you're trying to do different things. So, you know, know what you're trying to do with the map before you figure out how complicated or over complicated, it's going to be nice. And in that moment of like delving into swinglish for a second, although Niko is busy sending us photos of himself sitting next to the pool, he did leave us with a jiggle this week, and the jiggle was assuming that value stream mapping is a Sherlock Holmes adventure. What's it about? And Ali, you obviously were a big Sherlock Holmes fan when you were responding to that one. Absolutely

Ali Hajou: 32:59

not. I don't think I've ever seen a Sherlock Holmes video, movie, read a book, or read a comic book or whatever about it, honestly. I mean, I know about the concept, but I have, I don't think I've ever seen anything or read anything about it, and I'm not sorry about it. So when I was thinking about, Okay, well, Sherlock Holmes wasn't that the person who tried to solve some mysteries, you know, in the dark alleys in somewhere in the UK. Well, it was a detective and trying to link that to value stream mapping. Again, one of those Niko moments where I connect these two topics together. I thought, wait a second, so the value stream mapping exercise is, you know, you're trying to understand the system. You're trying to zoom in onto, onto this, let's say, a problem, or at least a process. So I thought, what if I would call it something like the magic magnifying glass, because essentially, that's what the value stream mapping activity does. It tries to magnify, magnify hidden villains.

Mark Richards: 34:12

Go for it. Stephan, no, that's okay. Cool. Mark, I was just gonna say on the segue, I worked with an art a few years ago where their naming thing for the art was Sherlock. And so I learned more about Sherlock Holmes metaphors with that art, because everybody had to explain the rationale for their team names. But anyway, over to you. Stephan,

Stephan Neck: 34:30

yeah. I asked AI, what could be a really fancy, good title when it comes to value stream mapping, and it gave me the case of the vanishing value. Where does or did our value go? So you need an investigation. Where's the waste? You need some clues, like unfinished work. You need to find the idle times. You need maybe you have these redundant approvals, different, different boards, and, yeah, you already mentioned it. The resolution is, it's about. Streamlining. It's about empowerment without the work. Should be able to decide reduction of wait time, aligning steps and in the end, yeah, one probably needs this magic magnifying glass. Ali,

Mark Richards: 35:12

so it feels like at least two of us. I mean, I never respond to Niko jiggles without bpt help. Nice. So, so I wind up inevitably learning all kinds of things about worlds that I've never explored before, and I learned a little bit more about Sherlock Holmes this week. So came up with one of his specific stories, and it was called the final problem, a confrontation between poems and Moriarty. And Moriarty turns out to be an invisible, intelligent adversary. He's been orchestrating many of the crimes that Sherlock Holmes has been encountering and trying to solve. Before this encounter, he realizes that it's kind of pointless solving the crimes he's got to solve Moriarty. And so it's that, that notion that it, you know, takes something invisible and reveals the root cause and then encourages you to act on the root cause once it's been revealed so nicely. Found I knew the name Moriarty, and I knew that one of the teams had laughed a lot about the evil connotations when they called themselves Moriarty. Now I understand a little bit more about it, however, very cool. Well, let's move along, right? And we've already talked a lot about, you know, what are the outcomes that you are looking to achieve? And you know, if you're thinking about one of the top three actual actionable outcomes you're looking for, once you've got a Value Stream Map. And for the sake of this argument, let's say it's a reasonably detailed value stream that not a 20 minute sketch. Where are we going? Feels like we should go to Ali Sure,

Ali Hajou: 36:37

the top three actionable outcomes? Well, I think the first one is more procedural than anything else. I'm a total lover of, and it's, it's, I know it's quite controversial. Quite a few people are like what you know, your sort of templates are bounding you are sort of or forcing you into sort of a type of decision. You know, you're not allowing ideas to flow free, sure, but whenever you're facilitating a session with multiple people that have different interpretation, templates really help out. For instance, whenever we are going to identify a delay, I have a small little template for delay, because for each delay, I want to have a clear title, want to have maybe a little bit of description, but definitely I would like to have an impact of the delay. So what does it do, and potentially a root cause? If people know that, if it pops up. So these filled, in templates allow allow for a good further discussion, and more specifically for from a very administrative point of view, it's very easy to, later on, put everything into a tool or in whatever an Excel sheet to it, and so you can sort things. But having filled in templates is, for me, really an actionable outcome, having some clarity on what to do afterwards. Some people call it action holders, or an action list, or something like that. But what are we going to do after identifying a bottle neck, or after identifying, you know, very bad percentage complete and accurate. These type of, these, this, this type of detail. So ideally, we would like to do something about it. But yeah, who's going to spend a bit more time on? Which would be my second and perhaps my the third one? I'll keep that one open yet, because I'm not really sure. I'm willing to

Mark Richards: 38:40

bet Stephan is going to start talking about later. Laters kind of,

Stephan Neck: 38:44

when you go through the workshops, you start with sketching mark through in like with delegates, and you build it up over the time, but for a certain time, it's more experience and gut feeling, and then, sorry, you have the discussion. How could we accelerate flow bingo. We're using that in our courses with RTS, with team coaches, even talking about, how could we accelerate flow for for P or PMS, because, hey, they're waiting. Okay. So with this intermediate discussion, we come to, how do we find the right metrics that gives us that the tools and the indications and the direction to improve towards a future state value stream right, and that's going back and forth, back and forth and depending on the structure of the workshop. So I like having this discussion. Flow accelerators find the right matrix, because reporting line is reporting line. If you report the wrong stuff, grab in crap out second one. Ali, you mentioned, sorry

Ali Hajou: 39:48

if I may. So those metrics that you're searching for, are you? Are you identifying them already during a value stream mapping exercise with the people in the set. You,

Stephan Neck: 40:00

I tried to have this conversation, how could we speed up the process? Is it? Is it? Is it meaningful? Because you can, you can reduce the delay. But in the safe DevOps, course, you also talk about, okay, you find a delay. What caused the delay? It's not the step before. Maybe it's five steps before that caused a huge delay, now accumulating a lot of a lot of debris, a lot of stuff that shouldn't be done, right? And during this discussion, I asked people to find what could now accelerate and have this discussion before we then jump into metrics and then provide maybe the metrics. We have asked the question, what does your tool provide? At the moment? What should be changed? Because in one case we had, we had a DR administrator in there, and he said, No, I don't want to change that, because that's that's too much work. And we said, hey guy, you will adapt, because we need data. It's not about you, it's about the value stream. Come on, do the work right now. It's more about again, the discussion, do we find the right sweet spots? And then coming to conclusion, what is a tool support? How do we get the metric? Sometimes we have to do it manually, and then we start automating it over the time. So second thing I'm looking for, you mentioned it Ali, it's the improvement list right separated into where's the field of the team? What can the team do? What can the art do? And what is an environmental thing, organizational thing, where artists, business owners, senior management, have to do their chores. And finally, what I'm looking for his management, buy in. Is this the way we are heading now? Is this the improvement list we want to see the next few inspect and adapt, not inventing new stuff. Stick with it and be more precise. And if you if you're not achieving it in one or two. PIs, okay, let's invest three. Pis, this is the marathon attitude that I want to see. But I need the clear statement for management. I'm going

Mark Richards: 42:06

to back up the clear statement from management. I think huge aspect of the Bay Street mapping workshop, to me, is to generate the momentum, the alignment support, to start shifting. I think for me, part of the prep for the workshop is making sure that you've had the right discussion with the right senior leaders to go. How are we going to make sure we've got the right support behind whatever we decide? So that's number one for me. I'm also with you guys. I'm not going to obsess about metrics. To be honest, the numbers that come up in that in these workshops, or the vast majority of people are going to be gut feel guesstimates that when you add them up, look really scary. If we can get that impact that says, Oh, that's really scary, and they might be wrong, but they're directionally Right, yeah, maybe an outcome is it's really bad that we don't actually have the real data, and we want to do something about that, yeah,

Ali Hajou: 42:51

but at least we have the indicator that there's probably something really wrong should be enough for the workshop. I

Mark Richards: 42:57

guess you know that that the alignment and the traction to start shifting. And then I think the other thing is, what's your mindset around the way you're going to shift? Because there's a mindset that says we're going to change one thing, we're going to measure what happens. We're going to change the next thing, right? And it could be, particularly if you're a Theory of Constraints person, I'm going to fix my biggest metal bottleneck, and then the next biggest bottleneck is going to emerge. So I can have a really long list that you know, most of it becomes completely irrelevant once I fixed my first bottle neck and and that's kind of a make a change study. Make a change study. Make a change study, which is the right thing to do for some value streams, for other value streams, maybe it's going to be quite a big change. Now. It's one of the things that really struck me when I did my Toyota tour, was the the guys here, and I forget the correct name for them, but the Kaizen ninja said, when we go in to run a Kaizen event, we're looking for 30% better, right? And I've spent my whole life going kaizens, the 1% the 1% the 1% and these guys like they're walking us through things they did and, and they use the zoomed out systems level view of the value stream map to design quite major shifts. And then they use the 1% to stabilize after the major shift. And, so you know, know whether you're going to look for a sequence of small events, or know whether you're going to look for a but I think the other most important outcome for me is that you know how you're going to measure the difference you make. Because you spend a lot of political credit to get the people into the room. You're trying to get them mobilized. You've got a big call to action moment. You've got to be ready to prove that life's getting better. So

Ali Hajou: 44:20

which is very tough to do in in the session itself and hence. But having, having that as a sort of a closure to to this session, I think is probably, is it is just very important,

Mark Richards: 44:32

if we with the couple of minutes we've got left, I just want to the closing question for me is, you've just put a lot of work into creating a roughly right? Value Stream. How do you keep it up to date? Right? You've got all these people aligned. You've got this beautiful Value Stream Map. It's probably spread all over a Miro board. Once upon a time, it's spread all over a meeting room wall. How are you keeping it up to date after the workshop? Ali, is you're not? Right?

Ali Hajou: 44:58

No, yeah. This. Thing is, I use it incidentally, which is so therefore I'm just not, I'm not the right person to ask the question to, I guess, and because it's incidental, it, you know, it might come back accidentally later on. But I know it's not the right way to to to handle these value stream maps. But it is, it is quite a task to, you know, to maintain, maintain overview, and maintain data. And come back to to the value stream design, or value stream map that you've that you've created, I think you should, yeah,

Mark Richards: 45:36

okay, so, and I'm going to back you, though, right? Don't feel too guilty, because I think there are times when you use a Value Stream Map, where you used it for something, you got something, and that was good enough for the purpose. There are other times maybe where perhaps you want to do a little bit more. Stephan, how about

Stephan Neck: 45:49

you? Yeah, I'm in sync with you guys, but I'm a bit more disciplined, and that's where I'm moving away from being lazy. I just had discussions again with and I'll try it. What should we do the next i and A and I say, guys, that's the wrong question. We have lots of improvements. We should have the continuous delivery pipeline as a holistic view, as you mentioned, Mark, and that's the hint for me. Always discuss what pops up, where does it fit? Is it the right place? Is it the right topic? Or should we then open up the perspective again? So the continuous delivery pipeline is an ongoing part of ina for me, and I tried to foster that. I tried to facilitate that, the achievement of pi objectives. Most of the business owners and teams, they just do it because slave says you should have the actual value or the percentage of pi objectives, achievement. And I say, Guys, if it's not in the attended range when it comes to peer objectives, so if it's an uncommitted let's discuss, does it have an impact? And then I might go into this update mode of the continuous delivery pipeline, which is mainly our value stream, right? It's, it's, our value stream mapping. Mark, you mentioned that, and I find that very important. You will have major changes. Pareto rule 2080 rule, right? You have a long list. It might crush you at the beginning, but go with the first 20% and you will see most of the flaws in your value stream maps are or in your steps are done and again, from one solid, stable state to another, communicate what's the outcome, or what's the intended outcome of the value stream mapping workshops, and then maybe either incidentally or orchestrate it going back and tackle the new stuff that arises over the time, there

Mark Richards: 47:43

you go. I think I maybe come from me to be OCD, because I don't want to lose it. I'm a flow guy, nice. And I think the best way to design a kanban system is to create a Value Stream Map, because your value stream map should become your Kanban, and if your value stream map becomes your Kanban, yeah, you start getting all the data for free, right? Yes. So doing that conversion, right? And if it's an art and it's a self, self sustaining art, right, then, then it's basically your feature campaign, is your value stream, map, different situations might be different

Ali Hajou: 48:11

things, but what a gem. Okay, I'm going to change the just one key takeaway that I've written down, as you know, the closure of this episode. I'm going to take that out, and I'm going to mention that my just one takeaway is that your value stream map should become your Kanban, because then you'd get your data for free. Oh, my God, Mark, how do you produce these

Unknown: 48:34

gems? Fantastic. That's experience. That's experience. Really nice.

Mark Richards: 48:38

How about you, Stephan, what's your one cake

Stephan Neck: 48:41

I borrowed from Ali. Value Stream Mapping for me is this magnifying glass. It's also old fashioned way, the notebook and the deductive turned mind turned towards what's your crime scene of inefficiency, and that's an ongoing job

Mark Richards: 48:57

that would just tell Niko more, sure, like homes jiggles, huh? Thank you coming. Alrighty, folks, that has been very stream mapping, and it's my job to wrap up. I know that we're not back till the other side of Easter. I can't remember what date we said we were back again, and I can't remember what we're talking about next, so I'm madly scrolling and let me see. Oh, there we go. May 3, we're back on the face of Mary, and we're going to talk about what happened on the Amalfi Coast, other than beautiful and pool and limoncellos. We'll see you then.