 So welcome to the value stream presentation. We're hoping this is a complement to the value stream guide that came out earlier this year. And we're going to try our best to bring that guide to life. So what is value? It's one of those very interesting things that's articulated all the time. And value is arguably in the eye of the beholder. But it's essential that we understand value when we're from an architectural perspective because arguably value and the perception of value ends up holding the basis for a lot of our requirements. And there are a lot of frameworks out there for delivering value, but this is the one that we're trying to do right now is articulating what is a value stream. And a value stream is an end-to-end collection of value-added activities that create a result for a stakeholder, whether that's a customer, an end-user, or somebody. So we are trying to understand what a result for a person is. And so there's one depicted here, and this is an example we're going to walk through in more detail as we go through. But this is an example that most of us go through when you go to any kind of retail store. We want to acquire a retail product. And so in this situation, the customer is the trigger for this. But there's a lot of other things, obviously, that have to be done within the organization for us to actually have the customer receive the value, which is the merchandise from a retail store. So value stream is trying to make sure that we understand value, and we're trying to understand value from a stakeholder perspective. From multiple stakeholder perspectives, not just the customer, but others within the value stream. So there are other value perspectives out there. Porter has an excellent value chain, which is really focused largely on a macroeconomic view of an enterprise or possibly a sub-aspect of an enterprise. This is the original traditional Porter value chain. I personally work for Alberta Health Services. There's a healthcare value chain, which is slightly different. But it's a very macro level view. So it's got a lot of similar concepts in that it's considered to be a chain, and there's steps along the chain. But it's looking at it from a big picture perspective versus a stakeholder perspective. Similarly, a value network is showing a web of relationships that are in a particular enterprise. And that itself can show some insight. And the lean value stream, which has the commonality of name, is a really, really important concept. But its target is actually eliminating waste. And even though its focus is to try and make sure that we are delivering value, its primary purpose is actually trying to eliminate waste, usually from a product and time perspective. I think many of these concepts are complementary, but they're not quite the same. But what we're here to talk about is value stream. And our value stream, we're going to walk through, as you can see here in our relationship, is obviously trying to create value. It's trying to create value that a particular stakeholder receives. It is triggered by a particular value stream, and each stage may have one or more different stakeholders participating in it. And a business process operationalizes capabilities which enable a value stage. And so this tries to show you some of the relationships. So when we're looking at value streams, there are immense compliments to your capability map, right? So in our last webinar, there's a capability guide available to you. And that walks you through how to create a capability model or map for your organization. And that's amazingly, that's important. That's a prerequisite, I would argue, for you to be able to start to articulate value streams. And a lot of you just start to say, so if I need to try and change the way that I'm operationally delivering value to my customers, where are the capabilities in that value stream? And are they sufficient for us to deliver the value that we're looking for? So when you're trying to either strategic planning because of a situational context change, or just strategic planning to say what are the things we need to do next, value streams are a mechanism to try and say, are we really focusing on, and can we show that we're focusing on value, right? And it puts the context on how we use individual capabilities into that value perspective, right? Because a capability model or map by itself doesn't necessarily show you how you're using it. I think a lot of people get fixed on what the capability is supposed to be trying to do in and of itself versus how it's being used with usually other capabilities within a particular value stage or value stream to deliver value, right? And in the end, it gives us a framework for analyzing business requirements because if we've got stakeholders and we've got the stakeholder needs or value that we're trying to deliver, that ends up being a requirement, right? And so when we are able to do that, it gives us a mechanism to break these down into smaller pieces, which of course is a lot of the things that we're trying to do on the capability side for putting the value context in. And so if we do this properly, then it means that we focus our investment in maturing the capabilities that are inhibiting our delivery of value for our stakeholders. So let's get into mechanics, creating a value stream. You know, this may seem pretty straightforward, but the first thing that we want to do is name it, right? What's in a name? It's really amazing how much time you can spend on a name because the name itself, a lot of business areas sometimes don't look beyond that. So we want a name that, you know, acquire retail product. I think most of you can understand. A good description, right? And a description to try and bring that a little bit alive. And usually there's one triggering stakeholder. Sometimes there's proxies, but for the most part, we're going to say that there's a triggering stakeholder and we want to define the value that's going to be achieved within the context of delivering that value stream. So that's pretty straightforward. A value stream stage. So we're going to break the value stream down into a number of stages. In my experience, five seems to be the kind of magic number. Sometimes it goes to seven. Sometimes it's down to three. But five seems to be an interesting, a common number of value stages, right? So we're going to try and describe each stage. And then the stakeholders who are receiving value or contributing to creation of value within that stage. And that's probably the most important part, right? Have we identified all of the stakeholders that are part of this particular stage? We know hopefully what caused you to come into that stage and we want to describe when we know we're done that particular stage. And one of the things about a particular value stream stage is that we may decide that if the value criteria for one of the stakeholders isn't being met, then we might exit not just the stage, but we might actually exit the value stream entirely, right? And then we want to get down into granular detail, right? So what are the specific value items or requirements that a particular stakeholder has? So what is a value item that is an incremental value that is achieved within that particular value stream stage? So we've got value streams, we've got value streams stage, and now comes the real fun part. We've got our capability map, a model on the bottom here, and we've got four stages in this one. Or I said we do only do five and they only model four. And so now we want to say, so what business capabilities are required to map to enable a particular value stream? So this is the biggest part of the whole thing. The rest of it was really great, but now we have to say, so what business capabilities enable this? Now in our example here, this is a very high-level example. In our organization where we have a value model, or sorry, a capability model that's trending towards 300 business capabilities, right? So it's going to become very interesting to map these stages. So you're going to have to be able to map through the individual stages and have to decide when you might want to break value streams apart a little bit to see where a particular value stream stage or particular value stream might cause a stakeholder to trigger a different value stream. So that's going to be an interesting way to think about how you might try to get to a lower level of granularity but not getting to the point that you're going below the capability level. That's going to be kind of your living style, right? So we're going to map each of these stages to a particular set of business capabilities that enable that stage. So when you're creating a value stream, there must be a clearly defined triggering stakeholder. You have to have obviously otherwise why are you doing this? Right? We recommend that you start by looking at mostly your external stakeholders. So a number of times it's easy to try and start with the internal ones because you probably know more about those and it's maybe a little bit easier. And we have given an example in the guide for an HR of higher employee value stream. But the more you can focus on customer-centric or usually external, sometimes it's governance, but mostly customer-based, I think the better off you are at leveraging the value case because it always makes sure that internal stakeholders value concerns are in the context of a customer. And so when you start to add on value streams, one of the things that we typically find is that people have created capabilities in their business capabilities that are actually value stages or value stream stages. They're not actually capabilities. And so one of the things that we really have an interesting test once you've got your capability catalog set up is that we're going to be able to go back and say, no, no, no, that's really a value stream stage. It's not actually a business capability. And so that can end up simplifying your capability. And so there are also not components of capabilities, right? So components of a capability are processes, organization, or people, tools, and information, right? So if you're getting to the point that a value stream or a value stream stage is down to that level of detail you've gone too far down. And I think that the power of a value stream is keeping it at that high level, right? So you've got to try and keep things as complacent as possible. We're not trying to do... We're trying to do enough to help support analysis so that we can start to understand where we may have a capability gap or maybe where we've actually got capabilities that aren't actually contributing value to a particular value stream where we might want to be in that. So that's an interesting aspect as a litmus test to say, are my business capabilities there actually generating tangible value for people? A number of times I find that we go with implied requirements, meaning that somebody imagines what somebody else's value is. And then when we get out to the end of the analysis we actually find that that's not real, that's not true, right? So anyway, but keep it concise so we can get the value. So that's a really, really fast walkthrough on how to create a value, the mechanics of creating a value stream. What we're going to go through now, and I'm going to hand it over to Brian so that he can actually bring it to life with some actual scenarios so that you can see the value stream technique in action. All right. So real quickly, this is Brian Lill. I work for ATON. I was the American on the team. So as you can imagine, while we were developing this guide last fall, I took a lot of jokes from Alica Steven on our election cycle and how that works in the United States. I had to explain to them that it wasn't the process and how it was applied that was important and was the value being achieved for the American public and the stakeholders. So I'm not sure if I ever convinced some of that. To get down to business here, I want to take you through the examples or scenarios that we provided in the guide to apply the methods and principles that Alica just walked through. So building on that acquire retail product value stream that was used in the introduction, we now want to show how that is defined and shows those components of the value stream. So you see across the top, it doesn't show it on the slide, but again the triggering stakeholder, this is an external value stream, triggering stakeholder is the retail shopper. And so even though some of the stages you see there across this value stream model can be in common with an internal value stream, one that's from the focus of sales and marketing or something where you want to sell products. These stages as you'll see in the table are defined from the context of providing value to the retail shopper. They're the trigger. Each stage must in some way deliver value to that retail shopper or it doesn't really belong in this value stream. So the elements need to be defined. You see across the top of the stage, the description of that stage, as Alex said, the participating stakeholders in that particular stage entrance, exit criteria, and what's the value item coming out of that specific stage? So hopefully as you look into that, those definitions, and if you go across to the right side and focus on the value being delivered, you can see that what we tried to do was be clear, even though advertised channels, for example, might sound like something that's internally focused, the retail shopper can't find your offerings and your products, which may be the one they want, unless there's some way to be able to access that. So that's a retail channel available to the customer. So I mentioned, then they get more product options than they would otherwise. Enable the selection they have. If they are interested in choosing to buy something from you, whether it's at a storefront or online, on a web page, they're able to locate the exact desired product quantity at the price they want. Then of course, process, pavement, and then deliver merchandise, which is what they care about at the end. They get the product into their hands, given that it was the right product. So it needs to step through the defining stage to be clear about the key stakeholders that are involved with delivering that value to the retail shopper and then what value they get. So with that, next slide, please. Yeah, as Alex said, we were also tempted to go straight to an internal value stream. It is easier in your company, in your business, to focus on an internal value stream, this retail or recruit employee with the triggering stakeholder being the hiring manager that needs personnel. It's easier to think about because we tend to focus on our internal processes, our internal organization information, our systems. But this is an internal value stream that is focused on that hiring manager and getting the employee in the door. But it is not the same as those processes, those systems, those information. It is at the level of what is really delivering value. And then after you've mapped the capabilities, which we will show next, we're going to show you mapping this value stream to business capabilities as an example. Then and only then are you getting down to where you can then say how you implement that in your company to process information systems, technology, so forth. So let's step back. Recruit employee, the hiring manager triggers the need for employees to see the stages defining the position, communicating that position, assess responses from interested parties, the candidates, and then onboard the employee. So again, you see the definition for each of those stages down in the left. You see the specific key participating stakeholders in that stage, entrance criteria, extra criteria, and the value items in this case are still about that new stakeholder. What is the value to the hiring manager who at the end of the day just wants to end up with the right employee to do the right work for the company? So time and expense saved on search for candidates, efficient interview process, making sure to select the best qualified employee, and then of course at the end of the value stream, they want to end up with a productive workforce meeting the business commitments and so forth. So now we're going to use this value stream as an example of mapped business capabilities. So Brian. Please. So there's a question in the chat window on why in the retail shopper, why the retail shopper was not a stakeholder in every single stage? Good question. So what you didn't see on that slide is, if you look in the guide, you will see above the value stream model, that small table that Alec used as an example, making clear that the turning stakeholder forward, the whole value stream is the retail shopper. And they're the ones you're measuring value to in the whole sequence. So we as a practice don't see a need to repeat them in each stage where that stage is who are the key stakeholders that are making that stage deliver that value. The value must be measured in context of what's it providing to the retail shopper. So that small table, Gemma comes above the buy this stream model. Okay, thank you. So continuing the recruit employee value stream, you now see underneath each of those stages a set of business capabilities. In this case, you see them down to a level two capability. Program management, HR management is a level one. Then you see one or more specific level twos called out in that context. And so these business capabilities are literally vertically aligned with that stage because it is program and human resource matching done in the program management capability that is enabling that defined position stage of the value stream. Now, in this example, these are not all of the capabilities that you would have in your company that would necessarily be involved with communicating positions, interviewing candidates and so on. So for the purposes of clarity and brevity, we really match what we want to show out as very key business capabilities. Core ones are critical to that stage. And so you see a change in complexity from defined position. There's only a limited set of capabilities that are necessary for your company to be able to enable that stage of defining the position and producing value to the hiring manager. The last stage, onboard employee, I think it's much more complex because the decision has been made to bring the employee in. Now your company has to have a lot more capabilities to provide the ability to onboard the employee. It's not just the human resources and the payroll. It's also getting them assets. It's where they're going to sit in a facility sense dealing with security or background checks. It's managing the information about that employee and what systems they should have access to and so forth. So it gets a lot more complex. Therefore, you would expect to see a lot more business capabilities mapped at that level. But to be clear, these are not processes. These are not how you've implemented in the current day or in the future state those capabilities to enable that downstream stage. Next slide, please. So now with a mapping of business capabilities to the stages, we can start doing heat mapping. This is when you really get to something actionable where you can really start making decisions and improving the ability of your company to deliver the intended value because what we're showing here is green, of course, for the level two capabilities where we're saying, my company has all the capabilities and needs in those level one and level two capabilities to enable that stage. Yellow, meaning that there's some risk. I have some difficulties in policy management, which was not on the previous slide. I'm going to go ahead and explain that. So that policy management on the lower left, that is shown as yellow because there are risks in my company at understanding how we disseminate policy to the hiring managers so they know what some of the rules and constraints are on hiring employees. The reason that policy management capability was not on the previous version is because when we got to the heat mapping, we then realized that there was a missing capability mapped to that position because there are issues with disseminating policy. Over on the right, we see some red elements in the heat map because we have some problems with how well we're tracking the onboarding in human resources as we onboard the employee. We have employee information management and some difficulties with making that cohesive on the lower right. And so those are the big gaps that the company needs to go address and do something different to enable the onboard employee stage. So next slide, please. We'll all start the conclusion and then hand it back to Alec. What we hope to show here today is that I think is an important business architecture technique. They are distinct from the operational level of your business. They're distinct from processes, information, the systems, and so forth. They provide a means to measure value to specific stakeholders. You, of course, will have external value streams focused on the customer and perhaps on your shareholders if you are a publicly traded company. You will have internal value streams that deliver value that make you more effective, make you more profitable, grow your company, and so forth. Those are the stages of moving that value through, not how you've implemented it through your organizational map, through your processes, through your information systems, and so forth. Value streams provide a rich-related counterpoint to business capabilities. The great power is in combining value streams, the stages with mapped business capabilities, doing the heat mapping, and then being able to clearly show at a higher, more effective level where you need to improve business capabilities to improve a key value stream and deliver better value to those stakeholders. And they're a tool set to model the most critical paths of how your company delivers value. Taluk, would you like to close? Yes. Thank you. Back to what we said at the beginning, this is business, the value streams are a complement to capabilities. And so fundamentally, if you're going to look at using capabilities as a way, business capabilities as a way to describe your enterprise, then a value stream and the value stages is a very good complement to try and make sure that we're aligning the capabilities that we've decided that we need to enable an operationalized business in a way that they actually deliver value to stakeholders largely to our customers' stakeholders, but all stakeholders within our enterprise. And it's important to consider that there's many ways to try and visualize value and that there's going to be some overlap. But this is, again, back to using capabilities as a way to support your planning process to say, do I have the necessary capabilities? Do I have too many? And are they mature enough to do the things that I need to do to be successful?