Value Stream Mapping
Part of the Business Analyst Roadmap
In short
A loan approval takes 12 days, but the actual work adds up to about 3 hours. Value stream mapping shows that shocking difference and points straight at where the time disappears.
Mapping the full flow of a process from start to finish, specifically highlighting which steps add value for the customer and which are waste — a Lean technique for spotting inefficiency at a glance.
Think of it like this
The bank token queue
You take a token at the bank and sit for 50 minutes. The clerk's actual work on your request takes 4 minutes. If someone timed every step, they'd see you spent over 90% of your visit waiting. That timing sheet is a value stream map.
Watch it happen
Mapping a laptop request: work time vs waiting
1/5Employee fills a request form: 10 minutes of work.
The big ideas
What you need to know
End to end
Map from the customer's request to the moment they get value, crossing every team along the way.
Work time vs lead time
Record how long each step takes to do and how long work waits before it. Lead time is the total.
Value-adding or waste
Ask if the customer would pay for each step. Waiting, rework and extra approvals usually aren't.
Flow efficiency
Work time divided by total lead time. A low percentage is common in office processes and shows how much waiting dominates.
Save yourself the pain
Common mistakes
Oops
Only timing the work and ignoring the waiting between steps.
Do this instead
Waiting is usually the biggest chunk. Time the gaps between steps, not just the steps themselves.
Oops
Mapping from memory in a meeting room.
Do this instead
Follow real items through the process, or pull timestamps from systems, to get true times.
Your mission
Time a real value stream
Quick check
A process has 2 hours of work and a total lead time of 5 days. What should you look at first?
Go deeper
- 1Build a simple value stream map for a process, marking each step as value-add or waste.
- 2Learn why waiting time between steps is often the biggest hidden inefficiency in a process.
- 3Calculate a rough 'process efficiency' ratio: value-add time versus total time.
More topics at this stop
Business Process Modeling Basics
BPMN (Business Process Model & Notation)
Process Flowcharts
As-Is vs To-Be Process Mapping
Swimlane Diagrams
Gap Analysis
Process Improvement Techniques (Lean, Six Sigma Overview)
Root Cause Analysis (5 Whys, Fishbone)
Stuck on this topic? Ask an Insider
Get 1:1 guidance from people who've walked this exact path — on the InsideEdge app.
