Value Streams

Welcome to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where Peter Maddison and Dave Sharrock discuss the complexities of adopting new ways of working at scale. Hello and welcome to Definitely Maybe Agile with Peter and Dave. And uh we're here again to have another great conversation. I really look forward to these. Uh so Dave, uh, how are you today?

Peter, it's been a good week. Uh looking forward to our chat. So maybe let's just try and kick something off uh around value, value streams. I think both of us have had a number of conversations in the last few weeks with uh some of the people we're working with, and value streams seem to be getting a lot more attention than they used to.

I I've noticed that too. I actually I published an article on uh LinkedIn recently around the differences between value stream mapping and value stream management. And I I'm wondering what exactly is driving this, but it seems to be kind of a natural evolution, although value streams have been around for a long time, that it's coming out of um both places like Gartner and other places have started talking about this more and creating maps for it. And it seems like uh everybody and uh and their mother and son is coming up with yet another value stream management product on a daily basis, so that's uh that's interesting too. Uh what are you seeing? What do you see as driving this at the moment?

It's an interesting um I think uh within the agile community and within this shift towards you know agility in organizations, there's always been this bubbling talk around value streams. But I think uh what's been interesting is that the understanding of value streams hasn't really been there. And it's been confused or conflated with lean and value stream mapping, which is focused a lot more on say a flow, a process flow and how to drive efficiency and understanding around value add and non-value add activities. And yet, when we look at product delivery and product streams rather than project streams, value streams become a really, really important way of understanding what's going on there, but just in a different context. It's less about process, it's more about customers, and it's more about what do the end users get and how do they get what they're getting.

Yeah, I normally like to uh say to organizations that you already have value streams, you're already delivering value to your customers. So this already occurs, so it's really more a case of identifying where they are in your organization, how is it you actually deliver value to customers? Uh, because that's the key starting point.

I totally agree, Peter. I think that's a really important point. So sometimes we go into that conversation of somehow having to, you know, make up or find a value stream, and it's there already. We know the value streams are there. I think for um in the last few years, organizations are really beginning to understand that they need to understand what they are. They can't just assume department A hands off work to department B, to department C, and magically customers get the value that you represent as a product or service company, whatever it might be. But that there's a lot closer that the need to understand that value stream is is has never been greater right now. Maybe just following on that, what do you see, Peter, as a driver behind what those value streams are? Why do we care? Why do we need to make these visible when before we didn't really need to know about them in quite the same way?

Well, I think one of the key pieces there is that we we've moved into a world where the customer is really the one who is driving the value. I mean, it it used to be if you go back and in the vast history of IT and technology, but if you're but we we were buying technology um going back before the 90s based on, hey, it's if this is expensive, how can I optimize the amount of money that I spend on this? And to a world where we've sort of, hey, technology kind of got cheaper, we got open source, we've got other capabilities of gluing things together. So now it's about all of the capabilities we can enable about with all these products that we can put out there, and new features, new features, new features, new ways of doing it. To the world we live in now, though, is becoming more and more driven by that customer, and the customer the one who dictates the value. So the customer can say, Hey, I've got this app on my phone, it's not doing the what I need, it's not giving me the value I need. I'm just going to delete it and install the one that does. And so organizations have to be able to understand how they are delivering that value, what it is that their customers do value, and your value streams are the things that can allow you to be able to understand and map those. So understanding your value streams becomes critical to managing your ability to deliver value to your customers, and that value delivery is the what we need to be moving towards.

I love what you're saying there, because what I was thinking about, I there's a graph that I've shared in many uh keynotes and conversations and so on that that I've done and had in the past where it talks about the average length of time a customer holds on to a product before they replace that product. And the timeline was over a hundred years. Basically, think of it as 1910 to 2010 or 1920 to 2020. And what's really interesting is the average length of time customers used to hold on to a product was measured in decades. Like 15 years would have been the time in the 1920s. When you look at it more recently, that time has dropped from years, in fact, more than 10 years, double figure years, to less than three to six months in some cases on average. So if if every time a customer replaces a product or service that they're using, and obviously this is talking about retail, um, but every time a consumer replaces their product, they have a decision point. And at that decision point, they can decide to keep using your product or service because they've been using it for a while or change to another one. Well, those decision points are more and more frequent, which means consumers are in a position where they can go, you know what, maybe the experience I had wasn't great. I should try something new. And we've always seen this, for example, with gaming consoles. There's famous, you know, uh business cool school case studies around the evolution of gaming consoles and how rapidly the big uh seller in one sort of cycle of gaming consoles loses out and they they drop off the radar uh very, very quickly. Well, we're seeing that sort of behavior, I think, happening in lots of places, coupled, of course, with people who are much more aware, you know, we're a lot less likely to put up with a non-exceptional experience. There's an expectation there. So I think all of this drives the fact that the the power has shifted somehow, and uh the the the the sort of it's no longer possible to go and say this is you know you you you can have any colour that you want, as Henry Ford said about the car, the Model T, as long as it's black. Well, that doesn't work anymore. There's people out there who want many, many different things. And so how do you stay relevant is that responsive shift, which brings us sort of full circle back to understanding the value stream, because without that we're going to miss something.

Yeah, and making it visible. It's the that's that's the next piece. So now that we know that it exists, and we can all agree that it does, and that it's important, uh we've got to make it visible, and that's where we bring in uh techniques like value stream mapping can help with that. Um and to help you to look at how your value stream goes together. And then the next piece of that is looking at, well, now that we can see it, what can we do to make it better so that we can start to improve uh our effectiveness at delivering value to our customers.

Before we dive into the process bit of how to improve the value stream, just as we're chatting here, and I one of the realizations is value streams are normally, it's not just how you get your product out, but it's tied to a customer segment, persona, customer journey, whatever it is. And just in that conversation where I'm thinking about exactly where how um how much more control uh consumers and customers have, that actually means that element of the value stream, which is around the the intended end user and the problems or or expectations that we're trying to meet or exceed for those end users, that question about who the persona is, who the customer segment is that we're serving, is actually super important. Whereas again, if we go back a decade, the value stream was the process, but less connected to that that customer experience. And I think we should remember that customer experience as part of it.

Yes, because I mean if you go back, we it was more about we're just gonna throw this out. Well, it wasn't quite the simple. There was there was more thought that went into this, but it was much more about uh, hey, we're gonna put this product out into market and they're gonna take it or leave it because it takes more time to design and develop and create this thing to make it available out there, um, than it's certainly in the knowledge space. And when we're doing we're talking about software, where we can make those changes much more much faster and put things out into market and experiment much more quickly. Uh so that's that's a huge difference, really, as we as we look at the way that the world is uh is changing.

So can I ask, um, now that you've made a value stream visible and we've talked a little bit about why we care and what's there, what are what's the headaches with getting a value stream visible? What's the purpose of doing that? How do you use that information?

There's a couple of pieces that I've always found very insightful there, which is that when you actually bring the group of people together who are responsible for that value delivery process, and you ask them to say, well, and then you you you're applied about it, but you say, So what do you do uh in an office space type way? And uh say and start to map it out and draw out like, so what happens next, and and then what happens, and then what happens, and start to build up a picture of how it occurs. Uh then you lay over a time diagnostic, like how long do these each of these pieces take, and this now gives you some perspective. You can now lay in, uh layer in other pieces like uh, so what tools do we use, um, who's involved in these stages, at what point does it get handed from one area to another, so that we can see what this flow of value looks like through the organization. And that that visibility at that point, if you have everybody together to see that, very often just the conversation and the collaboration in the building that uh that piece out will provide quite a number of insights in of itself to be able to say, okay, I didn't realize that we did it this way. In fact, if now that I see it, I can realize that we could that there's a number of things we could do very, very easily to make this flow better and to stop um having all of this waste in the system.

Yeah, I'm reminded while you're describing that, that uh that of that lean discipline, optimize the whole, right? And absolutely. Until you can identify that value stream, you're not going to be in a position to optimize the whole. And of course, what you're describing there is the pain of handoffs. You know, the the process is not the sum of how long it takes to do each task, but the gaps in between are often the handoffs, the delays, the waiting for approval or whatever it is, the queuing piece. So there's loads of opportunities typically to see a way of sort of shortening that that uh delivery life cycle. But I think sometimes there's a confusion around value streams. If I take the value streams to the individual customer segments, the reality is organizations rarely break out standalone value streams. They're not going to be independent. There's something connecting them together. Um as I'm thinking of that, I'm more and more thinking of value streams as threads within a cord or within a rope, in the sense that you'll probably have multiple value streams entwined together to deliver um something that your customers can buy. Uh have you seen that? Have you got an ex uh maybe some ideas or or exper um examples you can share?

For sure. And that's completely the case. I mean, especially when you look at uh now now there's the exception to that is only if you're working in a very modern environment that's uh built out on a set of architectures that are intentionally decoupled from each other in a sort of clouds type structure. But then but in most organizations that isn't the case, and these and systems will be very heavily intertwined. Um and the common things will be even dependent services that all of your value streams may depend upon, like identity and storage and things like this, that where no matter which value stream it is, it may depend on that external service. So it's very important to to also capture and understand where those dependencies are. Um it doesn't it you so that you understand what does it actually take for me to get that value to the customer, and are there things that I can do to optimize around those uh constraints? Uh for example, if I have to hand it off to somewhere else to get a result pack, are there things I can do to to buffer that, or are there other things that I can do potentially to properly manage that without getting into technical terminology?

But it it it's what's interesting is it's not just technical, right? So if you look at uh a value stream, as you say, and this is part of the challenge, is your competitors, if they're starting from scratch, have the great opportunity to build out formal value streams which are truly independent, and they can they can then compete and and out-compete quite easily in that space in in many cases. However, um the reality is that cost, that dependencies and dependencies opens up a lot of things, prevent value streams from sort of being carved off. Um I what I do think is that organizations are beginning to have those conversations about how to understand and create, you know, move from a position where value streams are effectively theoretical and less to do with how products and services are delivered, to a place where the dependencies and that entanglement of different value streams and dependencies on technical technology, on partners, delivery partners that may be partnered with them, or knowledge which is trapped in parts of the organization and is not freely available, lots of different, you know, the dependencies that are way beyond just purely technical. Uh, but they're beginning to tease that apart because they know they have to move towards that clearer cut, transparent value streams that they can really optimize around.

Yeah, there's uh and what the classic examples of that are where we're afraid to duplicate is one of the is one of the common ones where we're they're making the strategic decision that actually maybe I need to maintain two copies of this because it allows me to split something apart. That can be a very difficult decision. Maybe I need to, and that can especially if there's other like capital costs, I need to run two network switches. Because if I run one network switch, then people are gonna be standing on each other's toes all the time. And just understanding that actually it when it may not necessarily be the best thing to optimize for cost, for example, that where you see different optimizations, they may not necessarily have the effect you think they will have, and it's starting to have a more holistic look at uh the entire end-to-end value stream. Where do you see the future going? At the moment, uh what I'm seeing a lot of, and I think I touched on this right at the start, is um well, there's a couple of interesting spaces. One is that um value stream management systems are becoming far more prevalent. So this idea that once I understand my value streams, I can now document them in a system that's going to expose back to me in a visual way, like where am I having problems. The the next piece I'm seeing beyond that is then then applying um algorithms over the top of that uh to identify where's anomalous behavior happening, where should I be focusing, what sort of things should I be looking for here? If this trend goes this way and this trend goes this way, this is there's a whatever statistical chance that this is possibly what the thing we should be looking at is, so that you can start to get deeper insight into how your organization is performing and how your organization is delivering value to customers. Uh, and that can be done through extraction of different types of metrics and different ways of making that kind of thing as well.

Yeah, I I'd kind of take in a different spin on that one as well, just to add in another layer, which is um I think uh that we're now entering that complex space of product management and product ownership. So product ownership has already always talked about maximizing return on investment of a product or a value stream is the next obvious extension of that. And I think we're now sitting and hitting that, you know, either organizations can clearly identify a value stream, separate it out, and away they go. What's much more likely to happen is this is an emergent practice. As you said, the tools are becoming more and more readily available and tuned towards that focus on value streams. But I think there's a big customer element of you, if you don't understand how your value streams are delivering value. And um, so there's a big area there to really explore and understand. And I think the companies that get really good at it will see opportunities and be able to respond to opportunities very, very well. They'll match much more closely than the organizations that see their job as heavy lifting in terms of product and service delivery, but are failing to discuss and articulate those ideas behind the value stream.

I agree. That's why I look at it as there's the management piece of it, which is where the technology is kind of to make it easier to start to look at our organizations in this way, uh, which has not really been as easy to do before. Uh, but we still need to have that count conversation, the collaboration, the discussion, the bring of the ideas. And that that's the mapping processes and other ways of doing that are really good ways of creating that conversation or creating a forum for that conversation. But we need to ensure that it's happening, or else the the we'll end up going in the wrong direction no matter what tooling we put into place.

Um so would would you like to sum us up today, Dave? Okay, let me try and give it a go. So I really liked what you said right at the outset, which is you already have value streams. You might not be able to see them, but they're there. And we've articulated, we've kind of discussed some of the reasons why you definitely need to make those visible and understand what they are. So I thought that was one really key thing. It's not something that we create, it's already there. How can we get to see it and understand it and move with that? Um, I think uh another key takeaway, and maybe this is just my particular drum that I want to keep beating on, but is the the end users or the customers' involvement, the big difference between a value stream that we talked about in the past, which was about process improvement predominantly, not only by any means, but that sort of is the flavor that comes away. Well, the value streams now are driven by customer segments, and how do I meet their expectations or exceed them because of that the the power that they're able to exert, which perhaps wasn't as firmly there in the past. So that customer piece coming in is critical. Um and then we barely started uncovering it, but of course, there's a difference between a theoretical value stream that we can all nod our head and say, Well, yes, you should all have a single value stream to optimize around. And the reality is, of course, there's dependencies and cost constraints and legacy that we have to look at and understand. So that in sort of entanglement of value streams and understanding how they pull apart becomes a really interesting conversation to have as and when you make those clear.

Yeah, I think that's that's a beautiful way of summing it all up. Uh, I like it. Um, so so with that, I mean I think we've done our uh our 20 minutes for the day. I hope everyone enjoyed this conversation. And as always, you can reach out to us at feedback at definitely maybeagile.com. We'd love to hear from you and uh hear what new ideas people have about what we might talk about. So uh thank you very much. And thanks again. Look forward to the next conversation. You've been listening to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where your hosts Peter Maddison and Dave Sharrock focus on the art and science of digital, agile, and DevOps at scale.