Accelerate System Flow: Combining Value Stream Mapping with Root Cause Analysis

Combining the power of Value Stream Mapping with Root Cause Analysis to accelerate system flow

Introduction

The purpose of this blog series is to show how to use Value Stream Mapping and effective Root Cause Analysis to help identify and remove delays that are inherent in any system. Each post will provide a high-level overview of the topic and provide references to explore each topic in greater detail.

Value Stream Mapping

In today's fast-paced business landscape, organizations strive to deliver value to their customers efficiently. However, hidden bottlenecks, handoffs and other sources of delay often hinder this process, preventing businesses from delivering value and achieving optimal results.  Enter Value Stream Mapping (VSM) - a powerful tool designed to help organizations assess and optimize their value streams for faster flow and improved quality.

Value-stream mapping is a fundamental lean practice that involves diagramming a value stream and encompasses all the actions (both value-creating and non-value-creating) required to move a product or service from raw material to the customer. This includes material and information flow. It typically begins with creating a current state map to capture the actual condition of the value stream, followed by a future state map that outlines how improvements will enhance the flow.

VSM has its roots in lean manufacturing and was introduced by Charles E. Knoeppel in his 1915 book entitled Installing Efficiency Methods. In the 1950s, Toyota, via the Toyota Production System (TPS), popularized the use of VSM to shorten time-to-value in the manufacturing of its cars. One of Taichii Ono’s most notable quotes, the Father of the Toyota Production System, gets to the heart of the time-to-value mindset and the value of VSM:

“All we are doing is looking at the timeline, from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash. And we are reducing that timeline by attacking waste within the processes across this timeline”

The use of VSM has moved well beyond the realm of manufacturing and is used to map and improve any workflow used in the delivery of value. Effective VSM can help companies bring new products to the market or new features to existing products faster by reducing the delays inherent in their current ways of working.

Start by identifying what value stream should be mapped to improve flow and who are the right people to be involved in this exercise to maximize its benefits. For this post, we will use a simple example by applying VSM to a fictitious team experiencing multiple delays in getting their completed work items into production. We will call this team something incredibly non-creative and non-Marvel comics based. Let us call them Team Toaster Strudel.

VSM mapping follows 4 basic steps:

• Step 1 - Mapping the Current State

Map the essential steps of the value stream and establish a baseline set of metrics to identify areas of high and low value flow (i.e., delays).

• Step 2 - Identifying Bottlenecks

Analyze metrics, identify problem steps, and identify causes of delay to prepare you for designing the future state.

• Step 3 - Designing the Future State

Establish value stream performance objectives and then map the future state Value Stream. You will define forecasted metrics and measurable gains to determine its effectiveness.

• Step 4 - Developing an Action Plan

Developing an action plan will depend on your context. If you have mapped a team level VSM, then you can add enabler stories to the team backlog to implement the future state. However, if you have identified delays at the Portfolio level within a SAFe context, then this may require identifying a Business Owner and an Epic Owner and create an Epic and associated prioritized Features to execute via the appropriate Agile Release Train(s). The goal is to target a Planning Interval (PI) to begin Feature execution of the future state value stream.

Mapping the Current State

In today’s example, we will focus on Step 1 of the VSM process, Mapping the Current State. We will use a simple example from Team Toaster Strudel who is challenged by delivering working software into production every two weeks. This challenge should resonate with many since most teams have encountered this challenge or still do.

A key recommendation is to keep the current state map at a high level and ideally should not include more than 12 steps. For each step in the workflow, we will calculate the following metrics:

• Active Time (AT) – This is the average amount of time it takes to perform each step in the workflow. This is considered value-creating time.
• Wait Time (WT) – This is the average amount of time spent waiting to process a work item prior to each step in the workflow. This is considered non-value-creating time.
• Percent Complete & Accurate (%C&A) - Represents the percentage of the work items completed with perfect quality in a specific process step. It reflects how well the work item is done without requiring rework by a downstream workflow step.

During a Toaster Strudel retrospective, the Scrum Master, Dorothy, had the team focus on the biggest challenge they are facing which is getting working software into the hands of their users. The team has been taking too long to get stories done and it takes the team even longer to get the completed stories into the hands of their users. Both the userbase and the Business are frustrated, and the heat is on for Team Toaster Strudel. No pun intended.

Dorothy facilitates a session with the team to review the flow of work from start to finish to understand where the delays are in their system. They use the existing states that the work moves through to create their current state value stream map. They then review the data from their Agile work management tool to determine on average how much time is spent during each step in the workflow to capture the Active Time per state.  See Figure 1.

The team determines that, on average, it spends approximately 2 days in the Define state, 3 days in the Design state, 2 days in the Build state, 3 days in the Test state and 1 day in the Deploy state.

The team then reviews the data to determine how much time work items were sitting idle between steps, i.e. Wait Time. This could be due to multiple reasons, such as a dependency on another team or waiting for someone on the team with a specialized skill to become available. See Figure 2.

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The team determines that they wait an average of 10 days between the Define and Design states, a half a day between the Design and Build states, a half a day between the Build and Test states and 20 days between the Test and Deploy states.

Next, the team determines what the percent complete and accurate is for a work item at each step. The lower the percent complete and accurate, the more rework is needed causing the work item to revert to a previous state for additional work. The more rework, the more delay there is in delivering value to their users. See Figure 3.

The team determines that the percent complete and accurate for the Define state is 70%, the Design state is 90%, the Build state is 65%, the Test state is 50% and the Deploy state is 50%.

The final activity in mapping the current state is to calculate the Flow Time, Total Active Time and Flow Efficiency. See Figure 4.

Flow Time is the total amount of time it takes a work item to complete the workflow from Define to Deploy. To calculate this, add up all the Active Times for each state and all of the Wait Times between states. In our example, the Flow Time is 42 days.

Flow Time = 42 days (2 + 10 +3 + .5 + 2 + .5 + 3 + 20 + 1)

Total Active Time is the total time spent working on a work item. You calculate this by adding up the Active Time for each state. In our example, the Total Active Time is 11 days.

Total Active Time = 11 days (2 + 3 + 2 + 1)

Finally, we calculate Flow Efficiency. Flow Efficiency lets us know how efficient our workflow is. We calculate this by dividing the Total Active Time by the Flow Time and multiplying it by 100. The Flow Efficiency is 26%.

Flow Efficiency = 26% (11days / 42 days x 100)

Ideally, we want to get as close to 100% flow efficiency as possible by either reducing or eliminating delays in the systems. A Flow Efficiency of 26% is not good but I have seen far worse. The good news is that there is a lot of opportunity to improve Team Toaster Strudel’s flow by identifying bottlenecks and determining root causes so that they can define a future state that will help them accelerate. That will be the focus of our next post.

What’s Next

Our next installment in this series we will explore Step 2 of the VSM process, Identifying Bottlenecks. Check out part two of this series here.

Additional References

To learn more about Value Stream Mapping, I highly recommend Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation by Karen Martin and Mike Osterling. This book is the de facto standard VSM.

To learn more about effectively facilitating a VSM workshop in your organization, I encourage you to check out SAFe’s Advanced Facilitator: Value Stream Mapping workshop. This micro-credential is a half day, virtual workshop that covers the VSM process soup to nuts.

Learn more at Advanced Facilitator: Value Stream Mapping and please join Frameworx for our scheduled class on July 9th by registering on Eventbrite!

 

Thomas Wessel

Director of Agile Delivery

Tom Wessel brings over 30 years of experience in various industries in software development. His experience spans the entire end-to-end product life cycle from inception to delivery. With over 15 years of experience as a trainer and coach, Tom has worked with various organizations of all shapes and sizes to train, coach, and mature their agile mindset and transform how they deliver value.

View Tom's calendar here to schedule an introductory call.