Value Streams
Value streams are strategic business capability groupings that organize your projects into meaningful investment categories. They answer the question: "Where are we investing our engineering capacity?"
Examples of value streams include "Platform", "Growth", "Security", "Customer Experience", "Data & Analytics", and "Developer Productivity". Each project in Flowstate is assigned to one value stream, giving you a portfolio-level view of how your workforce is distributed across strategic priorities.
Why Value Streams Matter
Individual projects tell you what your teams are building. Value streams tell you why. When your VP of Engineering asks "How much of our capacity is going toward platform reliability versus new product features?", value streams provide the answer.
Without value streams, you are left manually tagging and re-tagging projects in spreadsheets to produce strategic investment reports. With them, this reporting is automatic and always up to date.
Configuring Value Streams
- Navigate to Settings > Value Streams
- Click Add Value Stream to create a new grouping
- Fill in the required fields (see data model below)
- Click Save
You can edit, reorder, or deactivate value streams at any time. Projects assigned to a deactivated value stream retain their assignment for historical reporting, but the value stream will not appear in dropdown menus for new assignments.
Data Model
| Field | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
name | string | Yes | Display name for the value stream (e.g., "Platform") |
description | string | No | Longer description of the business capability this stream represents |
isActive | boolean | No | Whether the value stream can be assigned to new projects (default: true) |
sortOrder | integer | No | Controls display ordering in dropdowns and reports (default: 0) |
How Value Streams Are Used
Project Assignment
Each project can be assigned to one value stream via the LiveProject.valueStreamId field. This assignment is made when creating or editing a project in the UI or through the API.
Portfolio Reporting
Once projects are tagged with value streams, Flowstate aggregates data across them to produce portfolio-level views:
- Investment analysis -- See total headcount and cost allocated to each value stream
- Capacity distribution -- Understand what percentage of your workforce is dedicated to each strategic capability
- Trend tracking -- Monitor how investment in each value stream shifts over time as your strategy evolves
Scenario Planning
Value streams carry through into scenarios. When you model a what-if plan (e.g., "What if we double down on Security?"), the value stream groupings let you see how proposed changes affect the overall investment mix.
Best Practices
- Align with strategic pillars. Your value streams should mirror the strategic priorities your leadership team uses. If your annual plan has five pillars, those are your value streams.
- Keep the list manageable. Aim for 5-15 value streams. Too few and they lose analytical value. Too many and teams struggle to classify projects correctly.
- Use descriptions. Write a clear one-sentence description for each value stream so that project owners can self-serve when assigning their projects.
- Review annually. Strategy changes. Review your value streams at least once a year and retire any that no longer reflect where the organization is heading.
- Use
sortOrderfor priority. Order value streams by strategic importance so the most critical ones appear first in reports and dropdowns.
TIP
If you are unsure how to structure your value streams, start with the headings from your most recent strategic planning document or OKR framework. These naturally reflect how your organization thinks about investment categories.
WARNING
Deleting a value stream that has projects assigned to it is not allowed. You must first reassign or remove those projects. If a value stream is no longer relevant, deactivate it instead of deleting it to preserve historical data.
Required Permissions
Managing value streams requires the settings_entity_config_* permission group. Users without this permission can view value streams but cannot create, edit, or delete them.
Related Pages
- Value Streams API Reference -- REST API endpoints for programmatic management
- Getting Started: Projects -- How projects use value streams for strategic categorization
- Configuration Overview -- All configuration entities
- Cost Centres -- Financial categorization that complements strategic categorization
- Work Types -- Employment classifications that affect project cost projections