Miguel Dias

Intro to Value Stream Mapping Workshop - Additional Resources

Intro to Value Stream Mapping Workshop - Additional Resources

On Wednesday, July 9th, we had Lisbon’s first hands-on Value Stream Mapping workshop! Participants from diverse backgrounds—business, industrial engineering, IT, product, and design—came together to learn how to systematically improve their work processes. They left with concrete ideas for applying VSM to their own challenges, from streamlining partnership deals to optimizing customer onboarding.

Do you have some ideas or questions about how to apply Value Stream Mapping to your work? I’m happy to brainstorm with you, book a slot here.

Here’s what participants learned

1. Starting with Purpose

Every improvement effort must begin with a clear business outcome. We practiced outcome mapping to align everyone around why we’re investing time in process improvement and how it directly benefits customers and the business.

2. Making Work Visible

Participants mapped their current-state processes step-by-step, learning to distinguish between value-adding cycle time and non-value-adding wait time. This visualization revealed hidden inefficiencies that teams often work around without questioning.

3. Finding the Constraint

Teams identified their biggest bottleneck—the constraint that has the most impact on achieving their desired outcome. This focused approach prevents teams from optimizing the wrong things.

4. Strategic Waste Reduction

Participants learned to categorize different sources of waste in their value streams and strategically prioritize experiments that address the constraint, rather than random improvements.

5. Cross-Functional Collaboration

The real magic happened when people from different business functions shared their perspectives on the same process. Engineers, designers, and business stakeholders discovered blind spots and generated richer solutions together.

The best part? It’s not about the maps themselves, but about creating a shared understanding across teams and a structured approach to continuous improvement.

This was my second in-person Value Stream Mapping workshop, and seeing participants immediately connect the concepts to their daily work challenges confirmed the universal value of this approach. Ready to do more!

This workshop was organized by Productized, a leading Product conference in Europe, and co-facilitated by Patrice Corbard, DevOps Advisor with 30 years in IT and 4 years with the Value Stream Management Consortium.

Here are some more photos of the event.

Let us know your thoughs and feedback here!

Getting Started Resources

Foundational Overview

Start here: My Introduction to VSM

Deep Dive Resources

Patrice’s Comprehensive Resources

Connect & Learn More:

Essential Reading:

Stay Updated:

Advanced Approaches:

Community & Professional Development

Value Stream Management Consortium (VSMC)

Flow Engineering Resources

Next Steps

  1. Start small: Book a call and decide how to apply Value Stream Mapping to your own work.
  2. Cover the basics: Skim over my overview and Patrice’s whitepaper.

Remember, Value Stream Mapping is most effective when applied iteratively. Start small, measure improvements, and gradually expand your mapping to cover larger portions of your delivery process.

What’s next with Productized?

We’re hosting Productized Conference 2025 this October 15–17 in Lisbon; a 3-day experience packed with hands-on workshops, inspiring talks, and real stories from the world of product, design, and tech. If you enjoyed this session, you’ll love what’s coming at the conference.

Check out the full program and grab your ticket: https://productized.co

About me

I’m a Software Engineer with over five years of experience, building and scaling systems for large companies, startups, and a nonprofit.

I spent 2024 leading Value Stream Mapping initiatives at Relex, a global SaaS company, involving individual teams, multiple teams, and an entire technology department.

I’ve partnered with these teams to increase revenue by onboarding customers faster, preventing service disruptions, delivering value more often, and wasting less time.

About Patrice Corbard

​Patrice Corbard - DevOps Advisor with 30 years in IT and 4 years with the Value Stream Management Consortium. He’s helped organizations at IBM improve their software delivery using lean principles and value stream mapping.

Patrice also writes Value-Driven - a monthly newsletter sharing the latest in Value Stream Management practices.