In SAFe, a Value Stream is defined as a "long-lived series of steps that an enterprise uses to provide a continuous flow of value to a customer."
From wikipedia, Value Stream are artifacts within business architecture that allow a business to specify the value proposition derived by an external (e.g., customer) or internal stakeholder from an organization.
In BIZBOK v10.0, the Value Stream is defined as "a visual depiction of how an organization achieves value for a given stakeholder or stakeholders within the context of a given set of business activities."
- A Value Stream may depict how a customer achieves value or satisfaction when licensing or procuring a product or service.
- A second Value Stream may depict how that same stakeholder achieves value when making and receiving payment for a claim.
The origin of today's business architecture value stream can be cited back to James Martin's book The Great Transition: Using the Seven Disciplines of Enterprise Engineering to Align People, Technology, and Strategy. In this book, Marting stated that a value stream has one clear goal "to satisfy or to delight the customer". One way to summarize the essence of the value stream is that is provides a stakeholder triggered, end-to-end depiction of how a business delivers value to that stakeholder.
Value can be defined as "the benefit that is derived by an organization's stakeholder while interacting with that organization".
Value Proposition is defined as "an innovation, service, or feature intended to make a company, product, or service attractive to customers or related stakeholders."
Value Item is defined as "the judgment of worth, made by an individual or organization, attached to something tangible or intangible and attained in the course of a particular interaction with one or more other parties."
Value Items represent a judgment of worth within the context of an interaction defined by a value stream.
A value stream's end state is the value proposition, which can be thought of as the proverbial "gold at the end of the rainbow" because the value proposition is what the stakeholder ultimately seeks to achieve.
Consider value items as representing road markers along a journey, while the value proposition represents the journey's fina destination.
A value proposition represents the aggregated collection of all value items associated with a value stream but can have value beyond the sum total of the associated value items.
From ArchiMate Cookbook, following are the GOALS view for cross layers modeling:
With this meta model, once we have Business Capability defined in the enterprise, we can use "Serving relation" to link Business Capability to Value Stream, this can be one important mapping step for business to connect value concept with the capabilities they have (or expect to have depending on the Capability heatmap).
Value Streams, like Capabilities, may also be heat mapped. Heat mapping is the exercise of evaluating an aspect of business architecture, determining how well it is performing, and assigning a rating that reflects performance.
Performance indicators often used in heat mapping are applied to the value stream stage within a value stream.
The following criteria represent a common way of evaluating various aspects of business architecture:
- Quality and Correctness
- Efficiency and Timeliness
- Consistency and Standardization
- Availability to Stakeholder Comminity
- Performance against Expectations
As with the capability map, a value stream heat map is represented using a color-coing scheme. One common approach used for color-coding value stream stages uses the red/yellow/green concept that is shown below:
- Red = Poor
- Orange = Problematic, Not Severe
- Yellow = Not Working to Ideal
- Green = Working Well
- Purple (or other color) = Does Not Exist but Should
- No Color = Not Evaluated
Finding the enabling capabilities of a value stream should be completed for all customer-driven value streams of an organization.
Representing relationships among various value stream stages and the capabilities that enable those stages is one of the most important cross-mapping concepts in business architecture.
Value items have a direct relationshop to capabilities and capability outcomes.
The value item assigns value to outcomes of one or more capabilities that are used to enable the value creation embodied by the value stream. The value item's value is separate from any value that could be associated with a capability's outcome outside the context of the value stream.
Value stream / capability cross-mapping is informed through the specification of the relationship between the outcomes of various enabling capapbilities and the value item(s) specified for a given value stream stage.
Value stream / capability cross-mapping also explains how work moves across a value stream, accruing value along the way. Explicit object state transitions associated with certain capabilities contribute to the work as it transitions across a value stream. These explicit state transitions ultimately result in the dlivery of a value item where capability outcomes drive the resulting state changes.
- BIZBOK - Business Architecture Body of Knowledge from BA Guild, ver10.0
- Daniel Lambert, Practical Guide to Agile Strategy Execution, 2021
- hosiaisluoma.fi, ArchiMate Cookbook