How to Map and Optimize Your DevOps Value Stream

Slow software deliveries frustrate your team and delay customer satisfaction. Many teams struggle with bottlenecks, inefficient handoffs, and poor visibility across the software delivery process. 

That’s where a solid DevOps value stream makes all the difference, with complete visibility into activities that transform ideas into a finished product. 

If you’re ready to tackle these challenges and maximize your software delivery efficiency, you’re in the right place. This guide explores how to map value streams, best practices,  and other crucial details to help your team optimize workflow. 

So, let’s begin!

What Is a Value Stream in DevOps?

In DevOps, a value stream represents the entire sequence of activities involved in delivering software as a product or a service to customers. This includes all steps, value-adding and non-value-adding, across the software development lifecycle (SDLC), from initial concept to production. 

Value streams break down functional silos to create continuous value flow across teams. Instead of stop-start workflows, they connect development, testing, and deployment into a seamless pipeline. This cross-functional collaboration optimizes delivery speed, improves efficiency, and aligns teams around delivering customer value, not just completing tasks.

What Is an Example of a Value Stream in DevOps?

The CI/CD pipeline is a clear example of a value stream in DevOps. It captures how activities flow from ideation to delivering a functional product to end users.  

During this flow, cross-functional teams—developers, testers, and operations—work together to ship high-quality software efficiently. Each stage contributes to delivering real user value, not just completing tasks.

The main stages include: 

• Start: Ideation. The process begins with a developer committing code and translating ideas into incremental value that can be built, tested, and deployed.
• Process: Build. The code is built into deployable software, ensuring a consistent, automated development process that eliminates bottlenecks. 
• Process: Test. Automated tests ensure the software is free from poor quality issues and meets defined standards. The point is to improve reliability without slowing the flow.
• Process: Deploy. The software is deployed into the production environment to make it available for external users. Aim for continuous delivery while maintaining stability.
• End: Feedback/Release. Feedback is gathered from external customers, or the product is formally released for use. User feedback loops drive continuous improvement because you can iterate based on real-world usage and optimize future releases.

The following section will introduce a detailed template for creating your value stream map.

Why Do You Need Value Streams in DevOps?

Value streams are essential for delivering value to customers sooner and more consistently, which is done by: 

• Identifying inefficiencies like idle time during handoffs between teams or poor quality affecting final delivery
• Improving productivity by allowing teams to focus their efforts on high-impact tasks. 
• Providing visibility into the SDLC
• Reducing unnecessary steps like repetitive tasks or redundant approvals by analyzing the sequence of activities in the development value stream
• Informing stakeholders by highlighting how resources are being used and where improvements can make the most significant impact
• Negotiating with executives for better support
• Encouraging collaboration between development, quality assurance, and product teams to stay aligned

A Medium article sheds more light on how value streams benefit the entire system: 

Value Stream Map Pillars

Value stream maps are built on three essential pillars: information, product, and time ladder. As Team Asana explains, “A value map may not be helpful if you’re trying to solve a problem that has no relation to information, product, or time flow.”

Each factor plays a critical role in visualizing how work moves through the software delivery process: 

• Information flow: Clear communication is key to delivering successful software. A value stream map visualizes how information is shared between teams, which makes it easier to spot communication gaps or breakdowns. This helps improve collaboration and ensures that work transitions smoothly across teams.
• Process flow: This concept is also known as material or production flow. This pillar focuses on tasks as a product or service that progresses through your organization. Mapping these steps highlights where waste accumulates or waiting states slow progress. This assists teams in addressing inefficiencies effectively.
• Time ladder: It helps measure how long each process takes by separating it into two types of time:
  • Active time (touch time): This is the total time a feature is actively worked on at each stage. It highlights the productive effort being applied to move the feature forward.
  • Waiting time (queue time): It refers to the time that a feature spends idle while waiting for action or resources at each stage. It reveals delays and bottlenecks that can slow down the overall workflow.

How to Use Value Stream Mapping in DevOps

For effective value stream management, follow these steps outlined by the experts at Axify: 

1. Create a Current State Map

The first task is to decide which value stream you want to map. Is there a specific product, service, or process that could benefit from streamlining, like your deployment pipeline or backlog refinement? Focus on areas slowing things down or where even small improvements could make a noticeable difference. 

Once you’ve chosen your value stream, it’s time to bring the right people together, such as: 

• Architects
• Developers
• IT operators
• Security teams

Having everyone in the same room—or at least looking at the same dashboard—makes it easier to connect the dots, build alignment, and ensure every team knows how their work fits into the bigger picture. Plus, it opens up valuable lines of communication to uncover pain points you might not have noticed before.

With your team assembled, the next step is to break the value stream into manageable pieces. Consider dividing the process into 5 to 15 key blocks, each representing a step that delivers value. 

For every step, document what happens and who’s responsible. You must also track key metrics like:

Flow Metrics

Flow metrics provide insights into how efficiently work moves through your value stream. They measure delivery speed, throughput, and quality to help teams identify barriers and improve processes.

Key flow metrics include:

• Flow time: Total time it takes to complete a piece of work, from start to finish. This metric highlights delays or inefficiencies in your value stream efforts.

• Flow efficiency: Ratio of active time (when work is being done) to the total time it takes, including waiting periods. A higher flow efficiency means less time is wasted.
• Flow velocity: Refers to the number of work items completed within a specific period, such as a sprint, week, or month.

• Flow load: Total number of work items currently in progress. Too many items can lead to inefficiencies due to multitasking and resource constraints.

• Flow distribution: The proportion of work allocated to different categories, such as features, bugs, and technical debt. Optimizing this helps teams maintain a balanced workload.

DORA Metrics

DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment) metrics are industry benchmarks that assess the performance of DevOps teams.

These include: 

• Deployment frequency: It tells how often code is deployed to production. Higher frequencies indicate shorter development cycles.
• Lead time for changes: The time it takes for a code change to move from the first commit to production. Shorter lead times reflect faster delivery.
• Failed deployment recovery time (formerly MTTR): It refers to the time it takes to recover from failures. A lower MTTR indicates a more resilient system.
• Change failure rate: The percentage of changes that fail. Lower rates signal better quality and fewer disruptions.

% Complete/Accurate (%C/A)

The % Complete/Accurate metric measures the proportion of work passed between stages without requiring rework or corrections. It’s an indicator of process quality and handoff efficiency. 

For example, if 80% of tasks move from testing to deployment without issues, the %C/A for that stage is 80%. A low %C/A suggests poor quality or unclear requirements, which can lead to inefficiencies and delays.

Value-Added Time

Value-added time is the amount of active time you spend on tasks that directly contribute to delivering value to the customer. It excludes waiting periods, unnecessary steps, or any activity that doesn’t enhance the end product.

2. Analyze the Map

Once the current state map is complete, analyze it to identify inefficiencies and waste. 

First, analyze how quality issues accumulate across different stages. Instead of viewing problems in isolation, you see the cumulative impact.

For example, let’s say each step in a six-stage process has a 90% success rate (meaning 10% of work items have defects). Since there are six stages, the probability of an item passing through all stages without defects is:

P_final = Pⁿ _stage

P_final = 0.90⁶ = 0.5314

By the end of the process, only about 53% of the work will have passed through without encountering any quality issues.

This highlights why early-stage improvements compound and why a strong quality focus at every step is essential.

So, the next thing to do is look for bottlenecks, redundant steps, or delays in the workflow. For instance, long review times could delay deployments, and frequent handoffs between teams might create unnecessary idle time. 

To address these issues, consider streamlining the review process by automating code reviews or setting clear timelines for feedback. In addition, reducing the number of handoffs between teams can minimize idle time. 

This might involve cross-training team members to enhance flexibility and collaboration across the development value stream.

3. Create a Future State Map

After analyzing the current state of your value stream, the next step is to envision a future state that eliminates inefficiencies and improves flow. However, optimizing every part of the process at once isn’t practical—value streams are interdependent systems, and improving one area in isolation might not enhance overall performance.

Instead, take a systematic approach:

1. Identify the primary constraint: In any value stream, one key bottleneck usually limits the entire flow. That’s called the theory of constraints (ToC). If a process has delays in multiple areas, start by addressing the biggest blocker first rather than making scattered improvements.
2. Optimize the flow, not just the parts: Once you locate the constraint, focus on changes that increase throughput with minimal disruption. For example, automating deployment pipelines can reduce delays, but automation alone won't resolve the core issue if the primary constraint is in code review.
3. Measure impact and adjust: Use metrics like cycle time, lead time, and work item age to track whether changes make a meaningful difference. If you eliminate one constraint, another will appear—so continuously refining the value stream is key.

To guide your team in designing an improved value stream, ask:

• Where are the most significant slowdowns in our workflow?
• What single change would have the most impact on overall efficiency?
• How can we improve collaboration between teams to reduce unnecessary handoffs?
• Where does automation provide real gains versus adding complexity?

By following this constraint-first approach, you optimize for value delivery, not just process tweaks—ensuring real, measurable improvements rather than just moving inefficiencies around.

Value Stream Mapping Template

Want to streamline your value stream mapping? Use our customizable template as a starting point to visualize and optimize your processes effortlessly!

Templates can be helpful, but why settle for a static document when you can visualize your entire development cycle in real-time? 

Axify’s Value Stream Mapping (VSM) tool takes the guesswork out of process optimization by giving you a clear, data-driven view of how work flows through your team, from planning to delivery.

Why choose it?

• Visualize everything at a glance: VSM offers a complete visualization of your development cycle, including cycle times, lead time for changes, bottlenecks slowing you down, and more. 
• Real-time analytics: Track key value stream metrics live, so you can fix inefficiencies before they become blockers.
• Actionable process improvements: Axify’s VSM doesn’t just show you the problems, it suggests optimizations based on historical data and industry best practices.

Value Stream Mapping Best Practices

Some key strategies to implement effective value stream mapping efforts include:

1. Prioritize Simplicity

Don’t get caught up chasing perfection. Value stream maps are meant to provide clarity, not exact precision. Instead of stressing over whether a step takes 15 minutes or an hour, focus on the bigger picture. 

For instance, if the next step has a 4-day delay, that’s where your attention should go. The real issue lies in these major bottlenecks rather than minor differences in touch time.

Prioritize identifying areas where inefficiencies or poor quality disrupt the flow of your entire value stream. The key is to use rough estimates. They’re more than enough to highlight the main problems, and you can then refine the details as you iterate over time.

2. Focus on Metrics

Metrics are the backbone of effective value stream mapping. Every step in your development value stream should connect to measurable outcomes that reveal whether it’s running efficiently or causing delays. 

These numbers also help you uncover where things are slowing down or where waste is building up in the process. For example, tracking how long it takes for a pull request to move from submission to approval can reveal delays in code review. If reviews consistently take days due to resource constraints or unclear criteria, it’s a clear sign of a bottleneck.

Addressing these delays ensures smooth team handoffs and keeps your development value stream flowing efficiently.

3. Iterate Continuously

Value stream maps shouldn’t be a one-and-done exercise. Treat them as living documents that evolve as your software development process grows. Your development, product, and security teams will encounter new challenges as projects progress, so your map should reflect those changes. Regularly review new stream improvement opportunities and update your processes accordingly. This iterative approach is key to aligning with your business strategy and achieving continuous improvement.

4. Leverage the Right Tools

Tracking and optimizing value streams manually can quickly become overwhelming, especially when managing complex workflows and metrics. That’s where tools like Axify come in with a more thoughtful, streamlined way to monitor metrics and enhance your development value stream. 

For tracking and continuous improvement, it offers dashboards like:

Software Engineering Metrics Dashboard

With a focus on aligning development activities to corporate goals, the software engineering metrics dashboard delivers clear resource allocation insights while tracking engineering metrics. This approach keeps your teams focused, efficient, and committed to continuous improvement.

DORA Metrics Dashboard

This dashboard comprehensively tracks DORA metrics, giving your team a clear view of trends, bottlenecks, and successes. Whether you're presenting to stakeholders or reviewing progress internally, Axify makes it easy to monitor performance and identify areas for improvement.

Of course, you can use the Value Stream Mapping feature to visualize your entire workflow with detailed maps.

Streamline Your DevOps Value Stream with Axify

Optimizing your value stream isn’t just about drawing out workflows; it’s about finding inefficiencies, eliminating wasted time, and ensuring that every step in your software delivery process brings value. 

Axify supports you through this journey with real-time tracking, intuitive dashboards, and seamless integration with tools like Jira and GitLab. From operational to digital value streams, it empowers your team to make smarter decisions, improve collaboration, and deliver high-quality software faster.

Ready to see the difference? Book a demo with Axify today!