Operational and development value streams
SAFe distinguishes two. An operational value stream is the sequence of activities needed to deliver a product or service to a customer. A development value stream is the sequence needed to convert a business hypothesis into a digitally-enabled solution. ARTs are organised around development value streams.
Why it is like this
The business runs on the operational stream; the organisation that builds and improves it is a different sequence with different people. Keeping them separate is what stops "organise around value" collapsing into "organise around the org chart".
Not to be confused with
Two names for the same thing. Identifying operational value streams comes first — you find the development streams that support them — and getting the direction backwards produces trains shaped like the existing departments.
In practice
A bank's operational value stream is "apply for a mortgage". The development value stream is the people and systems that improve the mortgage platform. The ART sits on the second.
Source: SAFe Glossary (Scaled Agile, Inc.) — Operational Value Streams (OVS), Development Value Streams. Read on .
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Predict Check yourself
An enterprise defines its ARTs by existing department — front end, back end, data. What has it most likely skipped?
Show the answer
Identifying operational value streams first, and deriving the development value streams that support them — ARTs organised by function reproduce the silos they were meant to remove.
Component teams wearing train names is the most expensive mistake in a SAFe rollout, because the structure outlives the programme that created it.