Value Stream Mapping Explored
at the most recent xp-nl (the dutch Extreme Programming Users’s group) I facilitated session on value stream mapping. This was an interesting case of team learning – if everyone brings a piece of the puzzle it is possible to get a complete picture!
None of the participants, including myself, had much prior experience with Value Stream Mapping. Everyone involved was just very keen to learn.
After a 5 minutes introduction of the technique, we just starting by doing, working on a value stream from one of the participants. Everyone chipped in, and as we went along we developed our ‘diagramming technique’. Since our new office didn’t even have a flipchart yet, we settled on using index cards to create our map.
As we went along, we clarified the meaning of the stations and queues, discussed about using average times, probability distrubutions or numbers from just one project.
At the end all of us understood much more about value stream mapping (you can read our findings in Dutch.
