How value stream management can help you work faster

Every (good) business delivers value to its customers — whether its output is software, sandwiches, or salsa classes. And the series of steps from product from idea to happy customer is what’s known as the ‘value stream’.

Every business has one. But sometimes, those streams get blocked or slowed down — and the results are all too familiar: delays, wasted effort, and unhappy customers.

That’s why the smartest teams are turning to value stream management. It’s not just a way to smooth out operations — it’s a way to see how work really flows, and where it gets stuck. And when you can map that flow clearly, you can start making changes that really turn up the gas, from faster releases to bigger profits. Let’s take a closer look!

What is a value stream?

A value stream is the full sequence of activities your business carries out to deliver a product or service — from that very first spark of an idea to the moment it reaches the customer.

In practice, a value stream might start with a customer need, move through planning, design, development, testing, and deployment, and end when the customer receives and experiences the benefit. But if any part of that journey breaks down — maybe work gets stuck in a backlog, or bottlenecks appear in testing — the whole stream slows down, which is bad for resources, and bad for customers.

This is where value stream mapping and management come in.

Not every step directly adds value for the end user, but every action, delay, and handover plays a part. By laying it all out, you can start to see which stages drive outcomes and which just slow you down.

What is value stream management?

Value stream management is all a way of overseeing your entire work process so that you can steer it toward higher efficiency, fewer delays, and better outcomes — both for your team and your customers.

Rather than treating each department or team as a silo, value stream management looks at the full picture. It highlights the relationships between steps, tracks progress in real time, and helps you decide where to focus your resources for maximum impact.

If you’re struggling with any of the following issues, it could be a sign that your value stream management needs some TLC:

• Customer frustration with current processes or offerings
• Losing market share to competitors
• Adapting too slowly to the market
• Slow delivery of new features, products, or fixes
• Fewer resources due to cost-cutting measures
• Agile efforts and/or digital transformations aren’t delivering as expected
• Lack of organizational visibility due to silos
• Organizational structure is not fine-tuned for value.

Where did value stream management come from?

Value stream management isn’t new — it has its roots in Lean manufacturing, most notably the Toyota Production System of the 1950s. Back then, manufacturers used it to eliminate waste and maximize efficiency on the factory floor. But its principles proved so effective that they’ve since been adapted for everything from software development to service design.

Today, value stream management is more than an operations tool. It helps organizations of all stripes translate high-level goals into day-to-day progress. Instead of funding isolated projects or departments, leaders can fund and steer entire value streams, making sure every initiative ties back to what really matters: delivering customer value.

What are the benefits of value stream management?

Value stream management isn’t about fixing problems; it’s about creating a smarter, more sustainable way of working. Here’s what it can do for you:

1. Sharper decision-making

When you can see exactly where delays or waste are happening, you’re better equipped to solve the right problems, not just the loudest ones.

2. Organizational clarity

Everyone sees where their work fits in, which cuts down confusion and makes it easier to collaborate across departments. This added transparency also boosts motivation and employee engagement.

3. Better customer outcomes

With fewer delays and higher quality control, the final product or service is more aligned with what your customers actually want.

4. Stronger business performance

Whether it’s faster delivery, lower costs, or better use of talent, value stream management helps unlock the full potential of your team.

Why is value stream management important in software development?

In software development, a value stream captures the full journey from idea to usable software, including all the planning, coding, testing, deploying, and monitoring that happens along the way. It’s the flow of value as it moves from concept to customer.

This becomes especially powerful when viewed through a DevOps lens. DevOps connects development and operations teams into one continuous delivery pipeline, so you can release software faster, more reliably, and with tighter feedback loops. In this context, a value stream helps you pinpoint exactly where delays, handoffs, or rework are slowing you down.

By visualizing the full stream — including technical debt, manual processes, and deployment friction — teams can zero in on inefficiencies and work together to streamline delivery. The goal? More speed, fewer surprises, and a development cycle that delivers real value with every release.

What is value stream mapping?

Value stream mapping (also referred to as ‘visualizing’) is a key part of value stream management. It’s a Lean process designed to help you analyze and manage all the steps in your workflow. It shows the flow of materials or information on its journey towards the customer, aka your ‘value stream’. It’s a key part of value stream management.

Because information is displayed visually, it’s easier for you to see the different workflows (as well as any bottlenecks) and then assess each one according to whether or not it adds value.

The ultimate goal is to refine your entire operations by erasing the processes that don’t benefit the customer. But it’s important to remember that not every single stage will provide direct value to the customer — some workflows will benefit you, like quality checks that help keep standards high.

Why is value stream mapping important?

Value stream mapping helps you root out wasteful steps in your workflow. This can boost your company’s bottom line, reduce lead time, and improve quality.

Aside from eliminating waste, value stream mapping helps foster better team communication. When multiple teams work across shared projects, groups or individuals can become too insular. Visualizing work via a map gives teams a bird’ s-eye view of where their efforts fit in the overall picture, improving company-wide collaboration.

It also gives you leverage when negotiating fees. Customers understand that when they pay less, they should expect lower quality. And yet when confronted with a higher price, many take their chances with a lower-cost option. One reason they do this is that they can’t see the full value of your service. So, how do you change this? You reframe things.

This is where your value stream map comes in. It shows the customer exactly what they’re paying for, which helps them justify a higher cost. It also makes the finished product more tangible because they can visualize the work being done.

How to create a value stream map with Kanban

Why Kanban? Because it’s one of the most straightforward value stream mapping tools out there. It sets out team tasks and incorporates identifying and addressing problems right into the cycle itself. It’s also easy to understand — so let’s get started.

1. Plan the size of your value stream map

First things first: the overall goal is to minimize waste, so this process needs to be balanced against the value it’ll provide. Make sure the effort you put in (e.g., time up-front) is worth the potential payoff.

One way to get a feel for this is to start small. Isolate one step first, improve it, and then, if that works, move on to the next step. Once you’re convinced the payoff is worth it, you can run a Value Stream Map across your entire workflow.

2. Work out the problem you want to solve

Do you want to lower the cost of your product or service? Increase production speeds? Improve quality — or all three? Define your problem and share it with the broader team so everyone knows what they’re working towards.

3. Explain the benefits

For this to work, you’ll need to get support from everyone on the team, so take the time upfront to explain the process and its benefits.

If you’re rolling this out across the entire organization, use your small-scale examples to demonstrate the payoffs. The proof is in the pudding, or so the saying goes — and the more tangible evidence you have, the easier it’ll be to get everyone on board.

4. Choose your tools

You’ll need a Kanban board and cards for your team’s assignments. This can be a physical thing, like a whiteboard and Post-It Notes, or project management software.

The latter is better if you’re working with lots of data because it can easily be shared and tracked later on. Once you have your tools, it’s time to get started.

5. Create your Kanban board

A Kanban board works across three work states:

1. To do
2. In progress
3. Done

For your first step, you need to isolate stage two — ‘in progress’ and record every stage of your workflow, including handovers. The more comprehensive you are, the more detailed and accurate your report will be, so go through it a couple of times to make sure you haven’t missed anything.

Because no one person ever has a full view of things, it’s a great idea to involve different team members in this stage so they can help you fill in the blanks or give you information about a process you may have otherwise missed.

6. Record the data and create metrics

Once you’ve noted down every stage, create some performance metrics. This will help you analyze the current state of things and give you something to measure your future performance against.

First, record your data. This might include some or all of the following: working hours, cycle time, uptime, downtime, lead time, resources, etc.

Next, take a closer look at your workflow and work out where there are issues. Here are some common problems you could unearth:

• • The amount of work in progress is too big
    If you have too much work in your backlog, it could result in customers waiting too long for their product or service to be delivered.
  • Lead time and cycle time are too long
    You may have jobs that can’t run in parallel or bottlenecks that are preventing work from being completed.
  • Too many steps that don’t add value
    You may discover unnecessary sign-off stages or paperwork that slows things down.

• Output too small or quality too low.

7. Create a new workflow

Create your new, streamlined workflow (or part of it) and make sure it matches up with your team goals and the broader company vision. If you’re using project management tools (which of course we highly recommend!), then the platform can do the heavy lifting here. Just enter your parameters and let the tech do the plan.

8. Implement your workflow

Start using your new map. Measure your metrics (more on that in the next section) to make sure your adjustments benefit your customers and solve your original problem(s). Monitor it regularly, learn from the insights, and make adjustments as you go.

Remember to be flexible. Lean is all about iterative improvement — so once you’ve created your workflow, revisit it and tweak it as you go. Teams change, as do customer needs — so stay as agile as possible so you don’t fall behind.

How can you tell if your work is actually making a difference?

Finishing tasks is one thing, but knowing if those tasks are having a real impact is another. That’s where understanding value comes in. It encourages teams to look beyond outputs like fixing bugs and instead focus on how those actions affect customers and the business.

For instance, a team might roll out a new feature, but if it doesn’t boost customer satisfaction, increase usage, or cut down on support calls, it’s not really adding much value. By tracking these results over time, companies can keep improving what they offer.

Aligning results with OKRs and KPIs

Many companies now use Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and/or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to connect strategy with execution. The idea is straightforward: start with a clear goal (like “Be the go-to platform for remote teams”) and then set measurable results to see how you’re doing (like “Grow feature use by 20%”). Then track data to see whether you’re hitting those goals.

Value stream management complements OKRs perfectly. It creates the visibility and data needed to measure whether those key results are being hit — and gives teams the power to adjust course before it’s too late.

Value stream metrics for measuring goals and progress

Value stream metrics help you track time, performance, and waste across your workflow, so you can make smarter decisions backed by data. It’s a key part of value stream management and OKR/KPI setting — without it, you’re just creating pretty pictures,

Here are the key categories to monitor, divided into groups for easy reading:

Time-based metrics

These track how long work takes at different stages — and where it might be getting stuck.

• Lead time: The total time from when a request is made (e.g., a customer order or new feature idea) to when it’s delivered. This includes both waiting time and actual work.
• Cycle time: The time it takes to actively complete a task, from the moment work starts to when it’s done, excluding wait time.
• Working hours: The number of person-hours required to complete specific stages of work. High working hours may indicate inefficiencies, understaffing, or complex processes.
• Downtime: Periods where processes or systems are idle, often due to waiting on approvals, resources, or technical issues.
• Uptime: Time during which systems, equipment, or processes are fully functional and available. High uptime supports faster delivery and better productivity.

Process and resource metrics

These help you understand how much effort and input is going into your value stream (and whether it’s being used wisely).

• Resources used: This could include tools, materials, budget, or personnel required for each stage. Tracking resource allocation helps you spot overuse or underuse.
• Work In Progress (WIP): The number of items currently being worked on. Too much WIP can clog your system and increase lead times.
• Handovers: The number of times work switches between people, teams, or tools. Frequent handovers often introduce delays, errors, or lost context.

Output and quality metrics

These assess whether what you’re producing is meeting the right standards — and being done at the right pace.

• Output volume: How many deliverables (e.g., units, tasks, features) are completed over a set period. This helps track capacity and throughput.
• Quality levels: Can be tracked through error rates, rework frequency, or customer complaints. Poor quality often means time and resources are being wasted downstream.

DORA and flow metrics

If you’re working in software development or DevOps, you’ll want to track specialized value stream metrics that reflect delivery performance and team velocity. DORA and flow metrics are ones to have on your radar.

The four core DORA metrics help you measure software delivery performance:

• Deployment frequency: How often you release to production.
• Lead time for changes: The time between committing code and it being live in production.
• Change failure rate: The percentage of deployments that cause failures requiring fixes.
• Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR): How quickly you recover from a production failure.

Flow Metrics are KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that measure the end-to-end flow of work through the value stream in a software delivery process.

• Flow velocity: The number of work items (features, defects, etc.) completed in a time period.
• Flow efficiency: The ratio of active time to total elapsed time (like cycle time vs. lead time).
• Flow time: Total time to complete a work item, from start to finish. Too much can mean a bottleneck.
• Flow load: The number of work items currently in progress.
• Flow distribution: The proportion of work items by type (e.g., features vs. bug fixes).

How to use your metrics

Once you’ve gathered the data, use it to create a baseline — your “current state.” Then, track the same metrics after implementing process changes to see what’s improved, what hasn’t, and where to focus next.

Look for patterns like:

• Long lead times paired with low cycle times (suggesting too much waiting)
• High WIP with little output (a sign of blocked or overloaded teams)
• Consistent downtime at specific stages (potential for automation or restructuring)
• High resource use with low quality (pointing to inefficiencies or skill gaps).

When tracked consistently and reviewed regularly, metrics provide the clarity to improve your workflow, justify changes, and build a more resilient, efficient value stream.

What happens when your team isn’t the only one?

When value stream management works well at the team level, the natural next question is: how do we make this work everywhere?

Scaling VSM isn’t just about doing the same thing on a larger canvas — it’s about making sure different teams and tools are all pulling in the same direction. That calls for structure and the right systems to bring it all together.

Step 1? Understand that your organization probably has more than one value stream. Each major product, service, or business function likely has its own — and each one flows differently.

Start by mapping them individually, so you can see how value is delivered in different parts of the company. Some might move quickly from idea to delivery; others might be slowed down by handovers or approval layers. That’s all valuable insight.

To make sense of it all, you need a way to track what’s happening across teams. This is where value stream management platforms come in. The best ones can connect to all your existing tools — from code repositories and design systems to support tickets and analytics dashboards — and pull everything into a single view.

With the right VSM solution in place, you can:

• Break down silos and share real-time info
• Align multiple teams to common goals
• Spot bottlenecks and dependencies before they cause problems
• Create continuous feedback loops that support innovation

How to scale (the right way)

As you scale, consistency becomes ever-more important. That means getting clear on what your core metrics are (lead time, flow efficiency, deployment frequency, etc.) and making sure everyone’s measuring them the same way. Without that shared baseline, it’s hard to compare performance or know where to improve.

• Have a lightweight governance model in place. Not to slow things down, but to keep efforts aligned. Some organizations set up a central team or ‘value stream office’ to coordinate across departments. Others embed alignment into existing structures. Either way, the goal is the same: make sure everyone’s working toward the same outcomes, even if they take different paths to get there.
• Stay focused on the customer. When multiple teams are involved, it’s easy to get lost in process for process’s sake. But value stream thinking is ultimately about delivering what matters most — and doing it better over time.
• Ask the big questions often. Are we building the right things? Are we getting better at delivering them? Are customers actually seeing the benefit? And are we learning from what works — and what doesn’t?

With that mindset — plus a few essentials like shared data, open collaboration, and the right tools — VSM can go from a team practice to an organization-wide superpower.

Backlog was built for fine-tuning your value stream

To really scale value stream management — and keep it working — you need more than just good intentions. You need tools that support visibility and continuous improvement. That’s where project management tools like Backlog come in.

Backlog was designed to help teams (and entire organizations) fine-tune their value streams without overcomplicating the process. It brings all your work into one place, making it easier to see what’s moving, what’s blocked, and where things could be smoother.

Sure, you can start with sticky notes on a whiteboard. But as your projects grow, physical boards quickly run out of steam. They can’t give you context, they’re hard to update, and they’re impossible to access remotely.

With a digital platform, you get a live, searchable, shareable view of your workflow — complete with all the extra detail you need, from screenshots to specs, progress monitoring to metrics. Plus, because it’s all in one place, it’s easier to spot trends and keep delivering real value to your customers.

In short? If you’re serious about value stream management, give your team the tools to make it stick. Ready to take Backlog for a spin?

This post was originally published on March 13, 2020, and updated most recently on June 4, 2025.