How can you apply value stream analysis in business architecture?

1 What is value stream analysis?

Value stream analysis (VSA) is a method of mapping and analyzing the steps, inputs, outputs, and resources involved in delivering value to your customers. It can be applied to any process or activity that creates value, such as product development, service delivery, or customer support. The purpose of VSA is to identify the value-adding and non-value-adding elements of your value stream, and to find opportunities to eliminate or minimize waste, improve flow, and enhance customer satisfaction.

2 What is business architecture?

Business architecture (BA) is a practice that defines and models the essential aspects of your business, such as your vision, mission, goals, objectives, capabilities, value propositions, stakeholders, and governance. It also describes how your business operates, how it delivers value to your customers, and how it aligns with your external environment and internal resources. BA helps you communicate and coordinate your business strategy, design and implement your business solutions, and measure and improve your business performance.

3 How to apply VSA in BA?

In order to apply VSA in BA, you must define the scope and boundaries of your value stream, map the current state value stream, analyze it to identify sources of waste, and design a future state value stream. To do this, you may use tools such as value stream maps, process maps, swimlane diagrams, SIPOC diagrams, future state maps, gap analysis, root cause analysis, and solution design. Evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of your value stream is essential for calculating the performance indicators such as cycle time, lead time, throughput, quality and customer satisfaction. Furthermore, envisioning and proposing improvements to your value stream can help reduce or eliminate waste while enhancing or adding value. Aligning or integrating systems can also be beneficial.

4 What are the benefits of VSA in BA?

Applying VSA in BA can bring you several advantages, such as improving your understanding of customer needs and expectations, enhancing visibility and transparency of your value stream, increasing agility and adaptability to respond to changing demands, reducing costs and risks by eliminating or minimizing waste, errors, rework, and delays, boosting productivity and quality by optimizing and standardizing activities, resources, and systems, and ultimately elevating customer satisfaction and loyalty by delivering more value faster and better.

5 How to implement VSA in BA?

To implement VSA in BA, you need to plan your project by defining objectives, scope, schedule, budget, team, stakeholders, and deliverables. Additionally, project governance, communication, and change management plans must be established. During execution of the VSA project, it is important to involve your team and stakeholders while documenting findings and recommendations. Furthermore, solutions must be validated and tested. Lastly, progress, performance, issues must be tracked and reported while managing any changes, risks or dependencies that may arise during the monitoring and controlling of the VSA project.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?