Being Agile: Eleven Breakthrough Techniques to Keep You from “Waterfalling Backward”

Value Stream Mapping

From the lean world comes a practice known as value stream mapping. A value stream map (VSM) is a way of mapping out a process, determining where value is being added and where delays are occurring. As an example, say that you’re part of a software maintenance organization that’s using waterfall. When a customer defect comes into your queue, and you look at it and determine that Bob is the best person to work on it, that’s something of value. However, the time it takes from when you pass the defect to Bob, and Bob starts working on it, is not valuable; it’s a delay. After Bob gets to work on the defect, he’s doing something of value. When he finishes the fix, it goes into the tester’s queue and waits until the tester can ...