Value-stream mapping is a useful tool that forces tech teams to focus on activities that add the most value for the customer, rather than those that are recommended in some textbook, or that employ a hot new technology a senior person happens to want to learn, or that use a development method that will look good when reporting to the CIO. However, too often advocates of this laudable technique have been operating on long-discredited ideas of which economic activities “add value” and which ones do not.