The crucial need for an Enterprise Value Stream Architect (EVSA)

The growing significance of value stream management in business

To build the capabilities required to sustain agility, there is a growing significance of value stream management in business with the urgent need to organize around value. A lot of organizations have decided to marry agile transformation with other disciplines concerned with managing and delivering better value to customers. To organize around value, the value stream concept is a critical underpinning of Lean thinking and fundamental to SAFe. Value stream management is a set of practices that provide end-to-end visibility into the value streams that run and support your business, and align business with technology. In addition, VSM improves the way solutions deliver high-quality customer experiences. It focuses on two things – how quickly customer-requested features or updates are delivered and whether the customer realizes the value of those changes. Visualization is enabled with value stream mapping, defined as a lean tool to document every step in the process. It pinpoints waste, bottlenecks, and non-value-added activities. Those are proactively addressed by pursuing improvement opportunities. Conducting a value stream mapping workshop involves experienced people from the business and technology teams. Keeping in mind the wider organization scope is key. The common center of interest for this cross-functional team is about shifting to the “value” pillar which translates into the creation of value for customers (whether internal or external), and without losing sight of other efficiency dimensions.

In SAFe, each Operational Value Stream (OVS) is supported by one or more Development Value Streams (DVS). The former represents the flow of business and contains all the steps and the people who deliver end-user value. The latter builds and operates the systems and digital capabilities that enable the delivery of business solutions. Based on my own experience, organizations tend to work in a siloed manner and focus on each portfolio separately for the creation and identification of the value streams. Delivering value in the shortest sustainable lead-time requires decentralized decision-making, hence decentralized portfolios, they “were told”, “I was told”! Don’t get me wrong, I still buy into the principle of decentralization; however, there are challenges when delegating away from a central organization. During the process of identifying the Development Value Streams, this has led to the creation of duplicated Development Value Streams, identified here and there, especially the ones that support the management of infrastructure and platforms. Because DVS crosses many boundaries and has different groups with different facilitators working separately they can both come across the same set of DVS without realizing they have them in common.

In my previous consulting gigs as a business agility transformation coach, I was part of a cross-functional team that had the mandate to Identify, visualize, and optimize value streams per portfolio. At some point during the process, we managed to identify the potential Agile Release Trains (ARTs) that are required to implement the work and realize the flow of value across functional silos and boundaries.

For each business solution, the implicated corporate and business units had a solid plan and clear vision. However as we embarked on the definition of the Development Value Stream, we soon realized that something critical was missing: an enterprise facilitator who could oversee and optimize the overall set of Development Value Streams. The scope of work involved enterprise-wide business solutions from customer loans, to insurance product design to marketing to talent management, and customer support. Each business solution represented a unique flow based on triggers, a set of processes, and priorities. However, often IT support, IT platforms, and other IT teams are used as common services provided to the overall enterprise.  As we progressed, it became evident that the lack of coordination across the OVS was causing significant delays, bottlenecks, and inefficiencies. Coaches and teams involved would spend time collecting details separately, not thinking of possible integration between the value stream networks that took shape during the discovery stage. As a consequence, we witnessed a lot of frustration from the leadership.

On the operational side, the process was straightforward but not necessarily easy. There were some hurdles as to whether a process block could be treated as a standalone OVS or part of a larger one. In the end, we managed to address those challenges through many iterative refinement sessions.

Talking about the lack of coordination, this is mainly due to the facilitator’s unawareness of the organization’s broader mission and larger set of solution offerings. The lack of a holistic view of the DVS hampered our ability to work efficiently. I was pushing for validation and integration points between value stream discovery teams. We always advocate breaking silos by organizing around value, and we forget to cater to a centralized enterprise value stream architect role who would be responsible for making sure we are not duplicating Development Value Streams, encouraging reuse, and reducing rework.

My experiences serve as an illustration of why the need for an EVSA is crucial.

The aha! moment: the role of an Enterprise Value Stream Architect (EVSA)

It was during this challenging period that I began researching if this role ever existed as part of the SAFe framework or another one. I could not find anything. There was a great article about value stream coordination but the context of this topic was about the inter-coordination resulting from some dependencies within a single portfolio.

An EVSA role, which I had played without being familiar with, appeared to be the missing link we desperately needed. This role serves as a bridge builder and ensures the orchestration of value streams across the entire organization during the identification and creation of the value stream network. They have the expertise to identify bottlenecks, streamline processes, and ensure that all solutions offerings work in harmony. The EVSA coordinates work between different teams, aligns their efforts, and ensures integration and reusability of the common pieces

Often fulfilled by a group of business/enterprise architects who share the governance responsibility for the value delivered by the Development Value Stream (DVS),  this position can also be fulfilled by an experienced enterprise lean-agile coach. EVSAs are not necessarily subject matter experts but know enough about the technical domain and business context to be able to guide the definition and identification of the value streams. They can “see the whole” and play a critical role in optimizing and improving the value delivery processes within the entire organization. Their primary focus is on aligning business strategies, technology capabilities, and operational practices to create efficient and effective value streams—partly by removing duplicated value streams.

Here is an overview of EVSAs responsibilities:

Conclusion

Documenting my experience here helped me delve into the key aspects of the EVSA role and its significance in improving organizational efficiency and competitiveness. I encourage organizations to invest in this critical role to avoid the common hurdles in value stream discovery. FYI, I highlighted the need for an enterprise Value stream Architect back in 2016 when I submitted an experience report for the Agile Alliance conference. Here we are in 2023 and I still feel there is a gap. This happened on many occasions when I worked as an agile transformation coach during the transition from traditional Portfolio Management to a Leaner approach to Portfolio Management.

Just to set expectations, writing about this role gap does not reveal any weakness in any agile framework but this is based on my own experience and work that I have been doing in the last ten years when supporting business agility and guiding organizations to focus on value.