• Do our customers pay for the outcome? (It's a Core stream)
• Does it facilitate core stream performance? (It's a Supporting stream)
• Is there value in improving quality, margins, performance, outcomes? 
• (If not, it's likely commoditized and should be outsourced)
• Supporting streams are typically operational unless the supporting streams are highly nascent (Platform development)

• Is innovation or product development a key goal? (It's a Development stream) 
• Are efficiency and consistency key goals? (It's an Operational stream)

• Is there a customer? 
• (If not, it's a process) 
• Is it repeatable? Are the operating conditions stable?
• (If not, it's a project or initiative) 
• Value Stream is a linear process
• Does it have to include more than one person? No
• Why do we want to identify value streams?

• The Future of Value Stream Management
• Where’s this all heading? 
• DAOs
• Is there a future where VSMgt intersects with DAOs?
• What does a futuristic value stream network look like?
• Human Collaboration models: Tribes -> Bureaucracy -> Digital -> DAOs
• Ethical risks - worker exploitation; 
• Optimization in natural systems
• Can companies be too efficient? Jevon’s paradox
• Externalities
• Human motivation: creativity vs. friction
• Increasing complexity of work
• Increasing education and adaptability required
• Increase in the number of humans not participating in the economy / on the margins of society
• Waste in knowledge work
• Lean as a way of exposing waste
• Pain and fear as a way of rebalancing what we’re doing

• How this fits in with x: 
• Business
• Tech
• Strategy
• Security, crypto/DAOs
• AI

Key Takeaways

• Visibility, Data-driven decision making, and the system of work
• Collective and personal flow

The shared value stream lexicon

Summary

In this episode of The Value Stream Show, hosts Andrew Davis and Steve Pereira discuss the challenging process organizations face in asking what is the psychological, cultural, information, and work environment it needs to be maximally effective and engaged. They talk about how engineers are improving tech by leveraging the value stream model. They share why the act of inspiring purpose, autonomy and mastery in workers is a necessary challenge for organizations.

Host Bios

Andrew Davis is a DevOps and Salesforce specialist and author of the book Mastering Salesforce DevOps. As Senior Director of Research and Innovation for Copado, he leads methodology and training for Copado's customers and partners. He's spent his life working at the intersection of technology, psychology, and culture change, including 15 years as a Buddhist monk. He's working towards a world in which we can all be at peace amidst constant change, and bring energy, creativity, and care to every part of our work.

Steve Pereira is a veteran of software delivery and operations. He founded Visible Value Stream Consulting in 2018, and serves as a board advisor for the Value Stream Management Consortium, a contributor to the Value Stream Management Interoperability Technical Committee, and as a Value Stream Management strategist for Copado. He’s always looking for ways to bring business and technology together by facilitating visual collaboration.

What You’ll Learn

• The strengths and weaknesses of org charts and the value stream
• Activating intrinsic motivators in workers within an organization
• How to optimize around the right things
• Balancing informal networks and formal structure

Quotes

• “I think we can borrow a lot of power and alignment by leveraging something like a value stream model and looking at more horizontal organizational models. You don’t have to throw away the org chart, but add this layer of flow across it and understand that the org chart isn’t how work happens, the value stream is how work happens.” -Steve [12:19]
• “The org chart is very useful in having people understand who to go to, to get help and to improve their individual performance. I think that having a clear leader and an escalation path helps individuals feel like they have someone to go to. They have a very clear definition of relationships that they need to develop, foster and maintain.” -Steve [22:48]
• “The most common map that I see on a day to day basis is the org chart. This hierarchical structure that shows basically how people fit together and what role they are playing in the organization. It is a visualization of an invisible social network. There is agreed upon structure, but fundamentally those interpersonal relationships and obligations are invisible. We are mapping an invisible social structure to try and give form to something that is fundamentally invisible.” -Andrew [04:12]
• “The terminal units of an organization are people and each of those people need nutrients to survive. They need to get paid, they need to have clarity about what they are doing and how they can get their work done. They need to have a basis to be inspired by the mission of what their role is in the organization. It needs to be something that activates intrinsic motivators.” -Andrew [18:12]

Timestamps

[00:03] Intro

[01:07] How work actually happens

[03:28] Is the org chart outdated? 

[06:16] Making decisions based off of power

[08:23] How the org chart shapes company goals

[11:34] Retaining customer outcomes

[15:28] Optimizing around the right things

[18:27] Activating intrinsic motivators

[20:10] Shared platforms

[21:36] Strengths and weaknesses of org charts

[26:26] The Organism vs. The City Model

[29:11] The resiliency of autonomy and decentralization 

[30:22] Informal and formal social networks

[31:27] Outro

Takeaways from the Lean Leadership Forum

• What is it? Who attended?
• Structure & format
• Similarities and differences between physical and knowledge work domains
• Insights and learning
• Should we all be walking through factories to understand our work better?

Key takeaways

• Similarities and differences between physical and knowledge work
• What ‘going to the gemba’ really looks like
• “If it’s in the computer, it’s invisible”

Summary

In this episode of The Value Stream Show, hosts Andrew Davis and Steve Pereira talk about value stream management and the process of improving the end-to-end flow of work in an organization. They discuss the complexity of value stream management and how it can expand the scope of a business or technology to see the big picture, while also addressing concerns in the short term. As the IT world matures, value stream management allows for successful optimization by exposing the work process and its inefficiencies. Andrew and Steve also distinguish the differences between knowledge work and manufacturing it.

Host Bios

Andrew Davis is a DevOps and Salesforce specialist and author of the book Mastering Salesforce DevOps. As Senior Director of Research and Innovation for Copado, he leads methodology and training for Copado's customers and partners. He's spent his life working at the intersection of technology, psychology, and culture change, including 15 years as a Buddhist monk. He's working towards a world in which we can all be at peace amidst constant change, and bring energy, creativity, and care to every part of our work.

Steve Pereira is a veteran of software delivery and operations. He founded Visible Value Stream Consulting in 2018 and serves as a board advisor for the Value Stream Management Consortium, a contributor to the Value Stream Management Interoperability Technical Committee, and as a Value Stream Management strategist for Copado. He’s always looking for ways to bring business and technology together by facilitating visual collaboration.

What You’ll Learn

• Understanding the work process within value stream management
• Value stream thinking in the physical world and virtual world
• The pursuit of optimization during challenging times
• Adaptive knowledge work

Quotes

• “What is really important about value stream management is this concept of looking at the work holistically. Looking at the end-to-end flow of work in an organization in such a way that you are focused on improving that flow of work, not just looking at it and measuring it. You are doing that to improve the system.” -Steve [02:07]
• “There is a giant section of the world that is physical and virtual at the same time: building software, building physical products, and integrating those two things. That is an area of the world that is underserved by our focus on the old world and the new world. They are run by different ways of thinking but more and more we are seeing these models blend together.” -Steve [09:35]
• “Unless you lower the water level in the stream you won’t notice all the big boulders in the stream. What we are doing with value stream management partly is lowering the water level and starting to look at the actual work process. You can begin to see you have these incredible inefficiencies that are embedded in the whole work process.” -Andrew [15:55]
• “If you are working for the man, that isn’t giving you that thrill of autonomy or that intrinsic motivator. But mastery, whether that craft is managing finance for the organization, building software, or setting up systems. That is your craft. Every job is worthy of respect and it is providing value to something.” -Andrew [27:30]

Timestamps

[01:03] Intro

[01:27] Defining value stream management

[09:16] What the value stream looks like in the physical and virtual world

[16:34] Knowledge work adaptations

[23:05] Software tools vs. the mindset approach to value stream management

[27:33] Intrinsic motivators

[34:09] Managing time and effort

[36:42] Continuous experimentation in organizations

Resources

• Inside Out: The Power of Value Stream Clarity