Value Stream Management and Organizing around Value

This paper explores how enterprises can more effectively organize around value streams to improve customer-centricity and business agility. The author presents four key challenges that companies often face when adopting value stream management practices: focusing too much on lean optimization rather than customer-centric opportunities, building new silos after reorganizing around value, oversimplifying and creating large, slow-moving value streams, and underinvesting in essential DevOps practices that enable value stream performance.

For each challenge, the paper provides actionable solutions. These include using design thinking to understand the customer perspective, defining operational value “streamlets” to manage complexity, mapping digital threads to business processes, measuring value through working solutions rather than just productivity, and building in quality and nonfunctional requirements from the start.

With insights drawn from real-world case studies, this paper offers guidance for enterprises at any stage of the value stream management journey. By addressing these common hurdles, organizations can optimize for customer value, improve collaboration, and gain the business agility needed to innovate and compete in today’s fast-moving digital landscape.