Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

by Karen Martin

Ideally, an organization seeking transformation already has a clearly defined purpose, consensus around its strategic direction, clearly defined business goals, and alignment around a limited number of improvement priorities that are needed to meet or exceed its business goals for that fiscal year. If it doesn’t, adopting the practice of strategy deployment* is a wise foundational step before the organization gets too far down the value stream mapping path. The practice of strategy deployment enables an organization to create an action plan that focuses on a limited number of problems to be solved and/or opportunities to be leveraged. Once the problems and opportunities are clearly defined, the value streams that must be improved become rather obvious.

When to start: ideally already has clear purpose and goals