The Remote Team Space has 3 components
The first is web conferencing with screen share, audio, chat. Many providers here, and your company likely has one they've standardized on. All team members get invited.
The second is a multi-user electronic whiteboard with VSM icons that the team can use. A whiteboard is integrated into many web conferencing solutions today. Again all team members invited.
The third is the eVSM Mix software for rapid lean analytics and visuals. Only one or two team members need this.
The web conferencing solution is widely available and almost all would work for our purpose. Any electronic whiteboard will work also. We can paste VSM templates from eVSM into the whiteboard and then enter data values with text fields on the top of the shapes. Finally we would take an image of the whiteboard for further work in eVSM. The eVSM Mix software is available from this site and we will support its deployment for value streams within a site. ee pricing details at https://www.evsm.com/evsm-mix
We have expedited the solution a little if Google Drawing is used for the whiteboard component.
- We have pre-populated Google drawing VSM templates for each value stream type (links below)
- The obvious grunt work in entering the data twice (on the whiteboard and then again in eVSM while tracing over the image) can be mitigated via a data transfer integration between the whiteboard and eVSM. We have a prototype of this using Google Slides as a whiteboard and have applied to Google to release the corresponding code as an add-on. This is typically a 4-8 week approval process. Please check back with us (support@evsm.com) if you elect to use Google Slides/Drawing as your whiteboard.
Google Drawings is a free service which allows you to collaborate on a value stream map as a team. A Google account is required for saving your work (you can set up an account using your current email address), and keeps your data private. Google Drive has robust sharing and permission settings, so it's possible to allow external collaborators, but it's advisable to only share your data with specific email addresses.
You can access the Google drawing VSM templates for each value stream type below. Be sure to first make a copy of the template ahead of usage and then share with your team.
