This is the ‘Continuous Improvement - Agile Value Stream Mapping’ tutorial of the PMI-ACP Certification course offered by Simplilearn. In this tutorial, we will have an in-depth knowledge of Value Stream Mapping, Agile Spaghetti Diagram and other Frameworks.
After completing this lesson, you will be able to:
Value stream mapping is a technique used to analyze the flow of information, people, and materials required to bring a product or service to a consumer. Value stream mapping is a concept that originated in Lean manufacturing methodologies. A typical process will consist of a series of steps and activities.
These are classified as “value-adding,” that is, factors that add value to the customer and “non-value adding”, that is, factors that do not add value to the customer. Value stream mapping is a key tool to identify and eliminate process waste to increase efficiency, throughput, and effectiveness.
Note that just being classified as “waste” does not mean the step or process is unnecessary. It is important to understand that ‘waste’ is not adding value to the customer and hence should be minimized or avoided.
Value stream mapping involves creating visual maps of the process, called Value Stream Maps. Value Stream Mapping progresses in the following stages:
Step 1: Start by identifying the product or service to be analyzed and the value being created by this process.
Step 2: Create a value stream map of the current process by identifying the steps, queues, delays, and information flows.
Step 3: Review the map to find delays, waste, and constraints. This can be done by reviewing the process and identifying activities that can be classified as waste. Also, identify the constraints if any.
Step 4: Create a new value stream map of the optimized state to be achieved in the future, by removing delays, waste, and constraints.
Step 5: Develop a roadmap to achieve the future state.
Step 6: Plan to revisit the process in the future to continually calibrate and optimize.
The steps involved in the value stream mapping process are as follows:
Step 1: Identify the starting point of the process, that is, who initiates it and the endpoint that is, who gets the result of the process. For example, the objective is to get an approval of a story from the customer. The value stream mapping begins when you initiate the process of getting approval and ends when you and the customer agree on the story.
Step 2: Identify the high-level steps, inventories, and queues through the process. When these elements are arranged in a sequence and showcased using a flowchart, they depict the primary flow. In this example, the second step comprises the following activities:
Step 3: Identify any supporting groups. These are added to the value stream flowchart, in turn, they become the alternative flows. In this case, on selecting the story from the product backlog, you get the story cards, which need to be considered for development in the iteration. If the customer is unavailable, the alternative flow would be to meet the customer representatives, who would act as a proxy customer.
Step 4: Classify each of the steps in the value stream as either a value adding or non-value adding activity. Please take some time to look at the illustration of this process given below. In this case, there are delays in between the workflow that is non-value adding activities. With these details, you can create the value stream of the system wherein the value adding activities span for 140 minutes and non-value adding activities span for 90 minutes.
Once this demarcation is completed, you can compute the efficiency of the process cycle using the formula, total value-add time divided by total cycle time. The total value-add time is 140 minutes and the total cycle time which is the sum of value adding time and non-value adding time is 230 minutes prior to optimization. Hence, the process efficiency is 61%.
Step 5: Either eliminate or minimize the non-value adding activities thereby optimizing the process. After optimizing, compute the efficiency of the process cycle using the formula, Total value-add time divided by Total cycle time. Post the optimization, the total of non-value add time is reduced by 55 minutes, thereby the total cycle time is reduced to 195 minutes. Hence, the process efficiency has improved to 72%.
A subsidiary group of a publicly traded company produces a variety of products used in the metal brazing, cutting, and welding industries, and an array of gas-control equipment used in industrial, medical, and laboratory applications.
As part of its continuous improvement drive, the group wanted to improve the preparation of chrome-plated components to assemble in its gas-pressure regulators. To achieve this goal, they decided to use the technique of value stream mapping.
The group performed a Value Stream Mapping analysis. The given image depicts the analysis and implementation processes. The Value Stream Mapping tool provides detailed information on the flow of materials through a production process. It helped identify areas for improvement. The analysis revealed that to ensure a steady flow of these components through the production process, “supermarkets” have to be placed at various points along the production chain. Supermarkets are locations in which a standard amount of inventory is stored. When employees notice that the supermarkets are running low on materials, they restock them.
After reorganizing the production process, the group witnessed various improvements. For the last 18 months, there has been no shortage of components for assembly into regulators. There was a 75% reduction in WIP related to the components. This helped to minimize inventory costs leading to significant savings.
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The Lean methodologies provide guidance on identifying waste in the manufacturing industry. Mary Poppendieck identified seven forms of waste for the software development activities.
The Agile flowchart is a useful tool to illustrate the process flow. A process is a set of activities with a defined ‘trigger’ or starting event that produces a specific output of value to a customer. The flow chart for a process must capture each activity between the start and finish to be able to visualize it better.
Flowcharts are a form of modeling technique, which helps gather feedback from the stakeholders on the workflows. Flowcharts are used to analyze, design, document, or manage a process or program in various fields. They help uncover process gaps that contribute to waste, delays, and bottlenecks. It helps uncover the loopholes in a process like a missing path or to identify steps that may be unnecessary.
By visualizing the flow, flowcharts are considered an effective problem detection and problem-solving tools. Further, the Agile flowchart is also known as
Flowcharts help to illustrate and understand a process from start to finish. It includes all intermediate and decision-making steps. Various flowchart symbols and their uses are listed on the table. It is recommended to go through the contents of this table to understand the symbols used in flowcharts.
The given image showcases a sample flowchart created to depict the process flow for an e-commerce site. Please take some time to view the image to understand the concept.
Let us understand in detail about Spaghetti Diagram.
A Spaghetti diagram is a graphical tool that uses a continuous flow line, tracing the path of an item or an activity through a process. It is used to visualize the physical movement of items on the work floor as the team completes the process.
The continuous flow line enables process teams to identify redundancies in the workflow and presents opportunities to expedite the process flow, thereby making the entire system work more efficiently and also eliminate waste. Spaghetti diagram is also known as the Physical Process Flow and Point-To-Point Flowchart. A sample spaghetti diagram is illustrated below.
The steps involved in creating a Spaghetti Diagram are as follows:
Note: As more wasteful or redundant trips are made, the chart gets thicker with more lines.
The benefits of using spaghetti diagram are as follows:
Self-assessment is the process where an individual, an organization, or a team conducts a comprehensive review of themselves to understand the strengths and weaknesses, and opportunities to improve. Some points to remember while conducting self-assessments are as follows:
Organizations perform self-assessments with the purpose of triggering change. Peter Drucker identified the following five questions as a framework for conducting self-assessment. The organizational self-assessment helps in the success of Agile projects. The questions are:
Agile Manifesto of “Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation” conveys that documentation in Agile projects should be kept lean or Just Barely Good Enough (JBGE). Some of the key reasons why written communication is needed in Agile projects are as follows:
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Many organizations are achieving success by fostering interactions between the teams, with the help of facilitated workshops. These workshops are special meetings with clear objectives, empowered participants, and a facilitator. The key stakeholders of such workshops are:
Workshop Owner: Is responsible for setting clear objectives for the workshop, provides the necessary budget, and is interested in the outcome of the session.
Facilitator: Ensures the meeting is conducted in a fair and focused manner. However, he or she does not have any stake in the outcome of the workshop. Facilitator ensures the participants work with synergy and achieve the objective of the workshop.
Participants: Based on the topic to be discussed, participants are identified and empowered so they provide their view. Participants are people with sufficient knowledge, skills, and experience needed to achieve the set objective. They are expected to add value to the workshop.
The facilitated workshop is the most efficient and effective way of enabling communication and collaboration between the participants. It can be used for many purposes, such as Architecture envisioning, developing a project delivery strategy, fostering innovative ideas, strategic decision making, developing models or prototypes, problem-solving, and requirements gathering.
Workshop facilitator plays a key role in the facilitated workshop. The primary focus in on process not on the product, hence the facilitator is a neutral person, focused on running the workshop in an unbiased manner.
Some of the key roles of a workshop facilitator include:
Principles of system thinking are required to understand the project complexity and also determine if Agile is the right choice for the project under consideration. Projects undertaken to meet customer requirements can have a range of complexity, such as Simple or Low Complexity, Anarchy or Chaos, and Complex.
An illustration of the Principles of System Thinking is shown below. The given image shows how projects are labeled as Simple, Low Complexity, Complex, and Chaos. Projects, where the technology and requirements are close to certainty and agreement, fall under the Simple category. On the contrary, projects where technology and requirements are far from agreement and certainty fall under the Anarchy or Chaos category. Note that the Agile methodology works well for projects falling into the complex category.
Let us summarize the topics covered in this lesson:
This concludes ‘Continuous Improvement - Agile Value Stream Mapping’ tutorial and with this, we have come to the end of this course.
Name | Date | Place | |
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PMI-ACP® Certification | 6 Feb -27 Feb 2021, Weekend batch | Your City | View Details |
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