The fourth step in making work visible: Continuous learning and improvement
It’s easy to get used to the beat of a rhythmic workflow, but as long as there are kinks and hiccups along the way, there must be a continuous effort in ironing out the process until it reaches its most perfect state. And though the definition of perfect may vary for every organisation, the perfect process is one that makes it possible for teams to produce work that is has high quality, is reliable, and scalable. After-all, a product can only be as agile as the team that developed it.
The fifth step in making work visible: Establish metrics and acknowledge those who meet their goals
Other than the usual meeting and brainstorming sessions, there must also be a time set aside to recognise the work and efforts of the people who work to deliver their work exceedingly well. Awarding and recognising these teams and individuals is another way to make their work visible. By mentioning their accomplishments and allowing them to share their best practices, it’s making work visible and a learning session in one.
The sixth step in making work visible: Keep improving the value stream mapping
To create a lean and efficient value stream map, we need to become better and better at doing steps 1 to 5, until we can find the perfect way to work. By carefully studying team dependencies, we can form the right teams, tap into the right individuals for help, manage time and schedules more effectively, and improve the way we receive and hand off work as well. In an effort to continuously find ways to improve the work process, a value stream map will surely and definitely go through some fine tuning, until it becomes lean, agile, and efficient to a level that works for an organisation.
A value stream map is an invaluable tool, especially for organisations who build and develop software. It is where teams can determine how much time is required to complete a project, from start to finish. It also shows the time it takes for a task to move from one step to the next, by showing the amount of time it sits in waiting (idle time), and the time it is actually worked on (productive time). These time elements are crucial in making work visible, as time consumption and time wastage are two major factors influencing the levels of productivity at work. A value stream map is a way to show which areas in the process takes more time and which ones take less. From here, we can improve the use of time by eliminating wastage, improving work processes, and allocating the sufficient amount of time for each step, and establish shorter lead times as well. When teams receive sufficient time to work and have enough margin for errors, the quality of their work will improve, making it beneficial to them, the organisation, as well as their customers.