From the course: Agile Requirements Foundations

Value stream

From the course: Agile Requirements Foundations

Value stream

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- Sometimes a new technology intended to make something better makes it worse in unexpected ways. Have you ever seen something improved at the cost of another part of it compromised or even getting worse? I'm guessing you've seen this. Value streams help Agile teams organize and deliver around what's valuable. Teams use value streams to ensure that one part of a solution does not adversely impact other parts. When value streams are not part of the analysis, value can easily be diluted overall to the customer and the organization. Value streams are simply a set of steps that deliver value to a customer, end user, or part of the organization. The value stream may include many processes, departments, systems, and the value may be delivered to multiple users in different groups. Agile BAs need to understand value streams to effectively analyze backlogs, slice user stories, and facilitate minimum viable discussions. Value streams can also be analyzed to find waste and improve the process overall, helping Agile teams see where business operations, processes, and technology can come together to create a better value stream experience for the customer. Let's look at an example from our online coffee store case study. You were the BA on a team, looking at implementing a customer feedback survey tool for the payments and shipping process. The vision is for the survey to be sent to the customer via email or mobile phone app a few days after receiving the product. In Agile, we slice the scenario into many pieces also called user stories and increments of value. Then, the team estimates and prioritizes and gets to work. Without looking at the value stream, we don't get the whole picture. Let's look at how the survey fits into the value stream in the overall customer experience. Here's the value stream map. It shows the value stream associated with getting a customer to provide feedback, starting with the beginning of the interaction. This value stream map shows the major steps, how long each step in the process takes, and the wait time between steps. Notice that packing the product may take one to two days total, but the active time is only 10 minutes. The rest is lag time. If the goal of the survey is to identify where the company can improve the process, the value stream shows us much of the process is invisible to the customer. Besides learning about the process wait time, the value stream helps a team think about the content and timing of the survey feature. The value stream map brings up questions like what if the customer returns the product before they get a survey? Does the survey acknowledge that? Or, what if the customer has an open ticket or call with customer service and the survey comes asking questions that just don't make sense, and really only irritate the customer? And, what if the customer is out of town and gets the survey, but hasn't seen the product yet? There are many places where this simple feature could alienate the customer and reduce the value of the survey to the organization. Knowing how to think in terms of value streams and how to use value stream maps can help teams discover great requirements and improve customer satisfaction.

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