Business Value
Vision & Strategy · Customers · Value & Outcomes · Economics
Business Value is what the whole system exists to produce. Too often a strategy behaves like a bucket that everything gets thrown into, rather than a filter that helps decide what not to do.
My work here covers vision and strategy, customers, value and outcomes, and economics: using tools like the Purpose Alignment Model to decide where to differentiate and where to aim for parity, product discovery that tests ideas with real customers before committing to them, and an honest look at the value lost both from delay and from shipping something that isn't good enough.
Sound familiar?
- Everything is a priority, so nothing really is
- Strategy that doesn't help anyone decide what not to do
- Features shipped on time that customers don't value
- Debates about cost and dates, but rarely about value
Articles
- The Purpose Alignment Model
Where should your product differentiate, and where is parity good enough? A simple 2x2 that helps teams align with market strategy.
- The Cost of Delay and the Cost of Crap
Cost of delay is really value lost from delay. But what about the value lost from shipping crap on time?
Featured talks
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Is your Strategy a Bucket or a Filter?
One of the biggest challenges for many organizations is that they have too many good ideas and are unable to fully staff all of them. A good strategy will act as a decision filter to help with portfolio prioritization. But too often strategies behave more like buckets than filters, and all new initiatives just get accumulated into the strategy bucket. This results in an overloaded portfolio that cannot be delivered…
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From Product Discovery to Product Delivery - a Real Life Example
In this talk called "From Product Discovery to Product Delivery - A Real-Life Example", Todd will dive into the product journey of creating a new training class product called "Scrum Better with Kanban", developed by Kanban University and how they took it from the initial market assessment to the final product release. The talk will discuss the various factors that went into the product development process,…
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Value Creation and Capture, a Model of the Software Development Process
Todd Little presents a model of the software development process that can help managers and project team members improve their understanding of software development dynamics. The model consists of a set of functions and parameters that can easily be applied in a spreadsheet. Utilizing this model provides guidance for the software development organization to maximize value delivery by exploring value creation and…
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Assessing the Cost of Outsourcing: Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Risk
Offshore outsourcing is a popular approach for companies looking to reduce software development costs. We have found that the full picture of cost and value requires looking at efficiency, effectiveness, and risk. We provide a financial model and explore the so called hidden costs and risks of offshore outsourcing.
Related talks from other topics
Real Options for Business Agility, Value Uncertainty Game, Stand Back and Deliver, Running a Kanban Company, Kanban Style, An Agile Simulation (Lego Game)
Key papers
- Determining IT's Strategic and Tactical RolesN. Nicholiasen, P. Pixton, and T. Little, Cutter IT Journal, July 2007, Vol. 20, No. 7
- Assessing the Cost of Outsourcing: Efficiency, Effectiveness and RiskT. Little, IEEE EQUITY 2007, March 2007, Amsterdam
- Value Creation and Capture, a Model of the Software Development ProcessT. Little, IEEE Software, June 2004, Vol. 21, No. 2