Value Stream Architecture Glossary: 200+ Essential Terms & Collocations

A comprehensive terminology reference organized by domain: Strategy, SAFe, DORA Metrics, Technical Architecture, and Organizational Dynamics. Perfect for interviews and daily workflow.

This list has been restructured from a random collection of terms into a logical workflow that matches a VSA’s daily responsibilities: Strategy → Analysis → Measurement → Architecture → Organization → Tooling → Action.

PART 1: STRATEGY, GOVERNANCE & FINANCE

For high-level planning, aligning with stakeholders, and managing budgets.

Core Strategic Concepts

  • Value Stream: The sequence of activities to design, produce, and deliver value.
  • Operational Value Stream: The business flow (delivering to the customer).
  • Development Value Stream: The software flow (building the systems).
  • Value Stream Identification: The process of defining the boundaries of value streams.
  • Lean Thinking: Maximizing customer value while minimizing waste.
  • Systems Thinking: Viewing the organization as a complex, interactive whole.
  • Theory of Constraints: Identifying the most important limiting factor (bottleneck).
  • Business Agility: The ability to respond quickly to market changes.
  • Customer Centricity: Putting the customer at the center of every decision.

SAFe & Portfolio Management

  • Lean Portfolio Management (LPM): Aligning strategy and execution via Lean thinking.
  • Value Stream Funding: Funding teams/streams rather than temporary projects.
  • Agile Release Train (ART): A long-lived team of teams delivering value.
  • Solution Train: A construct for building large, complex solutions.
  • PI Planning (Program Increment): A cadence-based planning event.
  • Epic: A significant solution development initiative.
  • Enablers: Technical work supporting the Architectural Runway.
  • Architectural Runway: Existing infrastructure necessary to support upcoming features.
  • Governance by Exception: Intervening only when metrics fall outside safety bounds.
  • WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First): Prioritization model for maximum economic benefit.

Financials & ROI

  • Cost of Delay: The economic impact of not delivering on time.
  • Capex vs. Opex: Capital Expenditure (assets) vs. Operating Expenditure (subscriptions/usage).
  • ROI (Return on Investment): (Net Profit / Cost of Investment) x 100.
  • TCO (Total Cost of Ownership): Direct and indirect costs of a system.
  • Value Added (VA): Activities the customer pays for.
  • Non-Value Added (NVA): Regulatory/necessary tasks that don’t add direct value.

PART 2: MAPPING, ANALYSIS & FLOW OPTIMIZATION

For “Gemba walks,” workshops, and finding bottlenecks.

Mapping & Visualization

  • Value Stream Mapping: Visualizing flow to identify waste.
  • Current State Map: A snapshot of current flaws and delays.
  • Future State Map: The ideal workflow design.
  • Gemba Walk: Observing the actual work process in person.
  • Visualize Work: Making invisible knowledge work visible (e.g., Kanban).
  • Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD): Chart visualizing work flow and bottlenecks.

Time & Efficiency Definitions

  • Lead Time: Total time from request to delivery.
  • Cycle Time: Time to complete one specific task.
  • Process Time: Touch time (actually working on the item).
  • Wait Time: Time work sits in a queue.
  • Flow Efficiency: (Active Value-Added Time / Total Lead Time) %.
  • Little’s Law: Avg items in system = Arrival rate x Avg time in system.

Constraints & Waste

  • Muda (Waste): Activity that consumes resources but adds no value.
  • Bottleneck: A point of congestion slowing the system.
  • WIP (Work in Process): Work started but not finished.
  • Batch Size: Amount of work moving between stages at once.
  • Queue Depth: Number of items waiting at a step.
  • Handoff Friction: Loss of context/time when work changes owners.
  • Context Switching: Productivity loss from jumping between tasks.
  • Single Piece Flow: Moving one item at a time (ideal state).

PART 3: METRICS & DASHBOARDS

For monitoring the health of the delivery pipeline.

DORA Metrics (DevOps Health)

  • Deployment Frequency: How often code is released.
  • Lead Time for Changes: Time from commit to production.
  • MTTR (Mean Time to Recovery): Average time to fix a failure.
  • Change Failure Rate: Percentage of releases resulting in failure.

Flow Metrics (Value Stream Health)

  • Flow Velocity: Number of items completed in a timeframe.
  • Flow Time: Elapsed time from start to finish.
  • Flow Load: Number of items currently in progress.
  • Flow Distribution: Ratio of work types (Feature vs. Defect vs. Debt).

Quality & Reliability Metrics

  • Percent Complete & Accurate (%C&A): Quality of output between steps (rework loop measure).
  • Defect Density: Defects per size of software.
  • Escaped Defects: Bugs found by customers in production.
  • Technical Debt Ratio: Cost to fix debt / Cost to rebuild.
  • Uptime: System availability.
  • Churn Rate (Code): Code rewritten/deleted shortly after writing.
  • NPS (Net Promoter Score): Customer satisfaction proxy.

PART 4: TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURE & PATTERNS

For designing the systems that enable flow and decoupling.

Architectural Patterns

  • Monolith: Unified, hard-to-scale application.
  • Microservices: Independent services to improve deployability.
  • Event-Driven Architecture (EDA): Decoupled apps communicating via events.
  • Domain-Driven Design (DDD): Aligning code with business domains.
  • Bounded Context: Distinct boundaries for a model (critical for VSM).
  • Strangler Fig Pattern: Migrating legacy systems incrementally.
  • Anti-Corruption Layer: Translation layer between systems.
  • Sidecar Pattern: Helper processes attached to main apps.
  • Loose Coupling: Components that can be released independently.

Deployment & Infrastructure

  • CI/CD Pipeline: Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery.
  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Managing infra via definition files.
  • Immutable Infrastructure: Servers are replaced, never modified.
  • Service Mesh: Infrastructure layer for service communication.
  • GitOps: Git as the source of truth for infra/apps.
  • Canary Release: Rolling out to a small user subset first.
  • Blue/Green Deployment: Using two environments to reduce downtime.
  • Dark Launching: Releasing to production but hiding from users.
  • Feature Toggles: Modifying behavior without changing code.
  • Circuit Breaker: Pattern to prevent recurring failures.

PART 5: ORGANIZATION, CULTURE & PEOPLE

For structuring teams and managing the “Human Stack.”

Team Structure & Dynamics

  • Conway’s Law: Architecture mirrors communication structures.
  • Inverse Conway Maneuver: Changing org structure to fix architecture.
  • Team Topologies: Framework for team organization (Stream-aligned, Platform, etc.).
  • Stream-Aligned Team: Team aligned to a single value stream.
  • Platform Team: Team providing internal self-service services.
  • Enabling Team: Experts helping other teams bridge gaps.
  • Cross-Functional Teams: Diverse skills in one team.
  • Silos: Isolated departments.
  • Cognitive Load: Mental effort limit for teams.
  • Dunbar’s Number: Limit to stable social relationships.
  • Bus Factor: Risk of knowledge loss if key members leave.

Culture & Leadership

  • Psychological Safety: Safe to speak up without fear.
  • Generative Culture: Performance-oriented, cooperative.
  • Servant Leadership: Leader serves the team.
  • Mission Command: Focus on intent, not how.
  • Radical Candor: Caring personally, challenging directly.
  • Change Fatigue: Exhaustion from constant organizational change.
  • Communities of Practice (CoP): Interest groups sharing knowledge.
  • HiPPO: Highest Paid Person’s Opinion (anti-pattern).

PART 6: TOOLING, DATA & INTEGRATION

For managing the Value Stream Management Platform (VSMP).

Integration & Data Flow

  • Value Stream Management Platform (VSMP): Tools integrating the toolchain.
  • DevOps Toolchain: The set of tools for delivery.
  • Common Data Model: Standard format for cross-tool data.
  • Traceability: Linking requirements to code/deployments.
  • Event Bus: Pipeline for pushing events.
  • Webhooks: Automated messages for tool integration.
  • API Gateway: Entry point for backend APIs.
  • ETL (Extract, Transform, Load): Moving data to analytics.
  • Data Lake: Centralized raw data repository.
  • Log Aggregation: Centralizing logs (Splunk/ELK).

Tooling Specifics

  • Artifact Repository: Storage for binary files (Nexus/Artifactory).
  • CMDB: Database of hardware/software assets.
  • Internal Developer Platform (IDP): Self-service layer for devs.
  • ChatOps: Managing workflows via chat (Slack).
  • Synthetic Monitoring: Simulating user transactions.
  • Distributed Tracing: Tracking requests across microservices.
  • Shift Left: Testing/Security earlier in the process.
  • Shift Right: Testing/Observability in production.

PART 7: THE VSA ACTION KIT

Common phrases used when defining work or writing resumes/reports.

  • Accelerate delivery: Speed up time to market.
  • Architect for flow: Design systems for continuous delivery.
  • Automate handoffs: Remove manual friction.
  • Break down monoliths: Refactor into microservices.
  • Bridge silos: Connect disparate teams.
  • Calibrate WIP: Adjust limits to match capacity.
  • Conduct post-mortems: Analyze incidents blamelessly.
  • Decouple dependencies: Reduce reliance between teams.
  • Democratize data: Make flow data accessible.
  • Eliminate waste: Remove non-value-added tasks.
  • Establish guardrails: Set safety limits for autonomy.
  • Evangelize DevOps: Promote culture and practices.
  • Identify constraints: Find bottlenecks.
  • Institutionalize quality: Make QA part of culture.
  • Minimize handoffs: Reduce ownership changes.
  • Optimize the whole: Improve the system, not local parts.
  • Orchestrate the pipeline: Manage automated flow.
  • Perform gap analysis: Compare current vs. future state.
  • Rationalize the portfolio: Align projects with strategy.
  • Reduce batch sizes: Break work into smaller chunks.
  • Refactor legacy: Improve old code structure.
  • Shorten feedback loops: Faster info to developers.
  • Throttle demand: Control work intake.
  • Visualize work: Make the invisible visible.