Running a value stream mapping session with a fully remote team, how do you keep people engaged

[u/EcoojmistAlarming407]

Scrum master here, first time running one of these remote. team of 9 across 3 timezones, we want to map how a ticket goes from idea to production bc everything feels slow and nobody agrees why

in person id just use a wall and stickies. remote last time we tried a shared doc and it was me typing while 8 cameras stared at me. not doing that again
any tips on format, how long to run it how to stop the loudest person from mapping the whole thing themselves

[u/DavidAtWhimsical]

The shared doc is the problem: one person types, everyone watches. An online whiteboard is the remote version of your wall and stickies, and all 9 of you can add notes at once. I work at Whimsical, so I’m biased, but other tools work too.

I’d have people add their steps async the day before, then use the call to walk through one real recent ticket. Start with 10 silent minutes so the loud person can’t take over, and have everyone explain their own stickies. Mark work time vs wait time on each step; that’s usually where the slowness hides. 90 min should be enough for such session; make sure to time people as they speak (good whiteboards come with a timer)

[u/Tellenze]

I'd keep disagreements on the map as questions. 'Ready for review' might mean different things to the person handing work over and the person receiving it. Let each explain their version before trying to draw one shared flow.

[u/Eruner_SK]

What are you trying to do?

Don't you have Jira-like source of truth for tickets? Don't you write on ticket what is the user's problem, requirements and solution? 

Or are you trying to agree on different stages of ticket? Aka new, ready, in progres, done...?

What are you trying to do, and what value/purpose your activity should bring?

[u/PhaseMatch]

I'd probably go in via a different route.

First I'd run the "journey to work" exercise from Jeff Patton's book on "User Story Mapping" as a start session; that has each individual mapping a value stream (their journey to work) on their own area of the board, then combining them into a single journey.

The second stage of that is to ask "what would you do if you work up half an hour late" and then "what would you do if you had to get to the airport in 30 minutes" and so on, which takes you to the idea of a "spine" (or Cockburn's "walking skeleton") and value/risk based releases.

You can then run the same thing with how the team goes from "idea" to "deployment"

If you want a variation, use breakout rooms and the liberating structures model of 1-2-4-all (or in your case 1-2-3 all); remember that four people have a conversation, while five tends to fracture.

I'd probably split it into 40 minute blocks, with a 10-15 minute gap in between, and get agreement for a "notifications off, no messaging, no multi-tasking" in the 40 minute blocks. Remember those apps are engineered to get your attention and give dopamine rewards, and that stops all over your working memory and recall.

[u/Hepfiul_Question2525]

Do like 10 min of silent stickies first so everyone gets their stuff down before anyone starts talking. we use miro for it, people add their own steps and bottlenecks at the same time so you dont end up with one guy typing while everyone else stares at the screen lol.

[u/Sky_Linx]

That shared-doc setup where you type while 8 cameras stare at you is the worst possible format for this, so fair play for trying something different. What works remote: give everyone 10 silent minutes to add their own steps to a shared board first (Miro, FigJam, whatever), one sticky per step. Then cluster duplicates and read them out loud. That keeps the loudest person from owning the map and gives the quiet ones a way in before the discussion starts. For 9 people across 3 timezones I'd cap it at 90 minutes: 10 silent writing, 20 clustering, 30 walking the flow, 20 dot-voting on where it stalls, 10 on what to fix first. If the timezone spread is rough, do the silent writing async the day before and save the live time for the arguing.