Value Stream Mapping
Visualize your delivery process end-to-end to identify waste and constraints before starting your CD migration.
Phase 0: Assess
Understand where you are today. Map your delivery process, measure what matters, and identify the constraints holding you back.
2 minute read
Key question: “How far are we from CD?”
Before changing anything, you need to understand your current state. This phase helps you create a clear picture of your delivery process, establish baseline metrics, and identify the constraints that will guide your improvement roadmap.
Team activity: The pages in this phase work as a facilitated team exercise. Run Current State Checklist as a retrospective to align on where your delivery process stands today before measuring baselines.
What You’ll Do
- Map your value stream - Visualize the flow from idea to production
- Establish baseline metrics - Measure your current DORA metrics: deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change failure rate, and mean time to restore. Track these throughout the migration - they are your evidence of progress and your case for continued investment.
- Identify constraints - Find the bottlenecks limiting your flow
- Complete the current-state checklist - Self-assess against MinimumCD practices
Why This Phase Matters
Teams that skip assessment often invest in the wrong improvements. A team with a 3-week manual testing cycle doesn’t need better deployment automation first - they need testing fundamentals. Understanding your constraints ensures you invest effort where it will have the biggest impact.
When You’re Ready to Move On
You’re ready for Phase 1: Foundations when you can answer:
- What does our value stream look like end-to-end?
- What are our current lead time, deployment frequency, and change failure rate?
- What are the top 3 constraints limiting our delivery flow?
- Which MinimumCD practices are we missing?
Next: Phase 1 - Foundations - establish the technical and team practices that make CD possible.
Related Content
- For Managers - how to recognize delivery problems from a leadership perspective
- Phase 1: Foundations - the next phase after assessment is complete
- DORA Recommended Practices - industry-recognized capabilities that underpin delivery performance
- Deployment Frequency - one of the key metrics you will baseline in this phase
- Lead Time for Changes - the metric that reveals how long changes spend in the system
- Infrequent Releases - a common symptom that assessment helps quantify
- Systemic Defect Sources - understand where defects originate before you start measuring them.
Baseline Metrics
Capture baseline CI and DORA metrics before making any changes so you have an honest starting point and can measure progress.
Identify Constraints
Use your value stream map and baseline metrics to find the bottlenecks that limit your delivery flow.
Current State Checklist
Self-assess your team against MinimumCD practices to understand your starting point and determine where to begin your migration.