Renato SouzaBusiness Analyst| PRODAMManaus, Amazonas, Brazil
Business Value is a important point in Business Agility, but not much explored in the literature. So how can we measure business value of our products. Saving Changes...
Senior Projects Manager | Field & Marten AssociatesNew Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Business value is different from product to another and is not a one-size-fit-all. It all depends how vlue is preceived by the stakeholders and organization. For some, its all about revenue generation, and ROI while for others it can be about cost reduction, customer satisfaction, market share and others so its important to establish how value is preceived by the organization and establish your KPIs accordingly. Saving Changes...
This is a fundamental decision which should be made as part of a project's business case. Trying to figure out what value is or how to measure it after a project is underway is closing the barn door after the horse has left.
While I don't disagree with Kiron Bondale, it should be noted that for many project managers working in corporate environments, there can be a lot of decisions that don't get made before the horse escapes the barn. It can be difficult, and bad for your career, to shut down a project with undefined value when it's somebody's baby in a highly politicized environment. As a former boss once told me, nobody likes to be told their baby is ugly. This raises the question of why a person would want to work in an environment like that, but a poor work environment can be better than no work environment when there are bills to pay. That's a whole different conversation.
To Rami Kaibni's point, looking at this from a project management perspective, it very much varies by project. If your company is out of compliance and at risk of severe penalties, the value may be getting compliant and NOT paying fines. The desired outcome may be a better user experience that results in an increase in sales - you can measure an increase in sales. If a business case wasn't completed before the project was approved (it happens), work with accounting to come up with ROI for the project - there is a lot of information available on how to calculate project ROI.
The original question, however, was "how can we measure business value of our products?" The answer is a little more involved, but similar (products have ROI, too). Are people using/buying your product? Does it directly increase revenue or cost savings? Does it enable critical business functionality? Does the product improve company brand awareness? Does it cost less to operate, maintain, or produce than the value it generates?
I think a more important question is, once you have this information, what do you do with it? Saving Changes...
Business value is no different in agile organization than in any other. It can be measured in revenues generated or cost savings. Agility makes easier a third category traditionally run businesses have a hard time measuring, which is customer satisfaction. Agile principles call for the organization to be in direct, daily contact with its customers. At the team level, designate an official customer (whether a real customer, or a representative of real customers like a product manager), and let that person tell you what is valuable through rank-ordering of the work. Saving Changes...
Community Champion
