- Most organizations find it pretty challenging
to map up their current process.
After a while your business processes
start to feel like old office furniture.
Everyone takes it for granted and
they're comfortable with how it looks.
Don't fall into the trap of accepting things,
because that's the way it's always been.
That's why you want to spend plenty of time
trying to figure out your current process
to make high level process improvements.
This can help you eliminate as much waste as possible.
Waste are all the things that you do
that not necessarily add value to the customer
through the extra steps in your process
that don't improve the product.
That's why you want to focus on creating
the leanest path from beginning to end.
The best way to start is to create
a large visual presentation of your process.
Use three by five cards and sticky notes,
and paste them on a large whiteboard.
Most organizations map up their process from left to right.
On the far left side you have
the very first steps in your process.
Then the work flows from left to right
as you work items step through the process.
So let's say you work in a typical organization,
and you're developing a software product.
The team gets together, and you begin
to map out your process on a whiteboard.
They come up with 10 unique work items
in their current process.
So they create 10 three by five cards,
and then tape them on the board from left to right.
When they're finished, this is
what the value stream map looks like.
The work flows from one to 10.
You might also decide to add a few sticky notes.
You might want to add a few sticky notes
near user acceptance testing.
Maybe the customer has a few changes.
If this happens, then you might find yourself
starting back in your current tree.
Now that your team sees the whole process,
you can start to think about how to eliminate the waste.
Remember that waste can be any of the steps
that you take between the customer requesting the feature,
and your team delivering the feature.
So think about something like quality assurance testing.
Your customer might not explicitly say
"Make sure you do quality assurance testing"
but they certainly want the feature
working without causing any problems.
So that wouldn't be considered waste in the process.
On the other hand, there might be a little waste
in how your customer talks to business analysts,
and then, the business analyst talks to your team.
You might be able to eliminate a few meetings,
and even reduce the possibility of miscommunication,
if the customer talks directly to the team.
In fact, that's how many Agile teams usually operate.
They have a product owner that represents the customer,
and works directly with the team.
So you might want to look for other ways
to trim down your process, and make it more lean.
Maybe the quality assurance team
could also do user acceptance testing.
Maybe the development teams can use something like
continuous integrations so they can eliminate
the extra steps in the process.
You should always look for ways
to take steps off the process, and reduce waste.