25+ years increasing small & medium sized business's revenue with: Faster Delivery | Product Quality | Sustainable Improvements | Data-Driven Solutions | Lean & Agile Mastery | Dramatic Productivity & Efficiency Gains
We must stop this charade, that we can make words mean whatever we want them to mean. #ValueStream is one of the most mangled terms in product development & value creation. This is the relationship between value (valuable products or services) and value streams. * we don't start with value streams * we start with a hypothesis about value (and we attempt to quantitatively predict an ROI on creating & fulfilling that value) * if our hypothesis about value is baking and selling cakes, then we have an end goal in mind: a positive return on the upfront investment required to bake and sell cakes * to further refine our required investment to bake & sell cakes we *identify* the value stream (not design; value streams aren't designed, they are identified based on the value we want to create) * that value stream might look like: procure an oven --> procure ingredients --> procure storage --> procure cake boxes --> procure equipment --> mix the ingredients --> bake the cake --> decorate the cake --> package the cake --> deliver the cake --> secure payment That's our value stream. It is derived FROM, and aligned TO baking and selling cakes; we didn't create it out of thin air. From here, we can make modifications to the value stream to do things like: find ways to reduce our required investment to increase our ROI, scale to make more cakes, outsource part of our value stream for cost effectiveness, etc.
