Value Stream Mapping Workshop Planning Template

An overview of the planning of a Value Stream Mapping Workshop. The full workshop includes:

How do we plan for Value Stream Mapping workshops?

This document guides our planning. We talk about improvement needs, goals, benefits, team members and next steps.

Why do we want to improve?
What are the benefits of improving?
How will we measure if we are improving?
What are our improvement goals?
What is the Value Stream we will focus on?
What are the key teams with a major role in the process?
What’s in the way of meeting our goals?

The conversations we have around these questions are already aligning everyone on what we want to accomplish, how the customer, business and teams benefit from it, and how we can know if we are making progress.

The point is not to fill out a template. But to get people’s input and have conversations that align everyone on where we want to go, and what value stream we should focus on to get there.

Here’s a link to the template in a google doc: VSM Planning Template

Value Stream Mapping Workshop Planning Template

Scope: Ex: Improvement of the deployment and release process for ____.

Purpose of this document: Define improvement needs, goals, benefits, team members, and next steps.

1. What’s driving the need for improvement?

Current state problems and business needs:

(for example)

Improve release quality and reduce unplanned downtime to increase customer satisfaction.
Improve the end-to-end deployment process to reduce errors, unplanned work, and costs, while increasing speed, team productivity, and the value delivered to customers.
Increase release frequency to deliver features faster, remove obstacles, and generate higher returns.
Align teams with a major role in the process on a clear path from development to customer value delivery.

2. Benefits of Improving

How will internal/external customers benefit as a result of improvements to the Value Stream? (directly/indirectly)

Benefits to the Company:

Benefits to the Customer:

3. Metrics

3-5 Metrics used to track progress towards adding value to the customer and the business:

(for example)

Deployment lead time: 4 weeks
Number of incidents: 3 per year
Incident lead time: 2 weeks

4. Goals

This is what we want to achieve over the Improvement time frame of 3 months:

(for example)

Reduce deployment lead time from 4 weeks to 3 weeks (25% improvement)
Reduce number of incidents from 3 per year to 2 per year (33% improvement)
Reduce incident lead time from 2 weeks to 1 week (50% improvement)

5. Scope

Aspect	Description	Example
Value Stream	Describe the value stream to be mapped.	Release changes to customers.
Main Steps	Outline the main steps in the value stream.	Start - changes pushed to main, …, End - changes are running successfully on customer’s side.
Specific Conditions	Focus on one product, customer type, or scenario to reduce variation. Narrow the path as much as possible for clarity.	Deployment of only one of the products; most relevant subset of customers; most common/important circumstances.
Demand Rate	Volume of incoming work per day, week, month, year, etc.	1 deployment per month
Boundaries and Limitations	Organizational, financial, systems, or customer related constraints.	We have to go through a change management process, attend CAB meeting.
Improvement Time Frame	Given where we stand in our Metrics, what is the time window where we can realize our Goals?	3 months

6. Relevant Stakeholders

Who has a significant role in the value stream?

6.1 Mapping Team

Role	Description	Participants
Executive Sponsor	Ultimately accountable for the results, ideally oversees the entire value stream.	1.
Value Stream Lead	Ideally accountable for the performance of the entire value stream. Close to the work being done.	2.
Mapping Team	Ideally, 5-7 participants.
Development Team		3.
QA Team		4.
Infrastructure Team		5.
Product Team		5.
Facilitator

6.2 People to keep in the loop / Final Briefing Attendees

7. Risks

What is in the way of meeting our goals?

8. Logistics

Sessions	Duration	Date	Purpose
Workshop Planning	It varies. Ex: 2 sessions of 45 min + interviews	Week Before	Define improvement needs, goals, benefits, and next steps
Current State Value Stream Mapping	1h30min	Monday	Find and measure key constraints
Dependency Mapping	1h30min	Tuesday	Connect constraints to dependencies
Future State Value Stream Mapping	1h30min	Wednesday	Design improved flow
Improvement Roadmap	1h30min	Thursday	Create and plot clear next steps
Final Briefing	30min	Friday	Share workshop findings, create buy-in
Follow-up period	30min every 2 weeks	Following 3 months	Measure progress, adjust, remove blockages

9. Next Steps

Onboard relevant stakeholders.
Define the mapping team.
Collect relevant data about the releases - the current state of the metrics.
Schedule the workshop sessions.

10. Relevant Information

11. Glossary

Change lead time: The time it takes for a code commit or change to be successfully deployed to production.
Deployment frequency: How often application changes are deployed to production.
Change fail rate: The percentage of deployments that cause failures in production, requiring hotfixes or rollbacks.
Failed deployment recovery time: The time it takes to recover from a failed deployment.

Inspiration

This approach is heavily inspired by Karen Martin and Mike Osterling’s Value Stream Mapping book.