Embracing Value-Driven Delivery

Over 70% of companies indicate that they use Scrum or some derivative, which means a large majority of teams leverage story-pointing as their means of estimating. Though story points can provide a way to evaluate how a team is performing, predictability being a primary metric, it does nothing to convey if the team is delivering value. A team can be highly predictable and considered high-performing but if they aren’t delivering value that matters to customers and the organization, it’s a wasted investment in their time and their outcomes.

The QValue scoring model is designed to evaluate both the value and cost, of initiatives and features. The reason we need to evaluate both value and cost is that there is a point where cost can exceed the value delivered from initiatives and features. Teams and organizations are so focused on throughput as an outcome, they lose sight of the real reason for the investment in their teams, value delivery.

Story pointing is not inherently bad, but it is bad for most of the ways it is utilized today. Story points are a team-specific way of conveying the size of work and the amount of work they can fit into a sprint. This is throughput. We can leverage other means to quantify a team’s throughput, number of stories per sprint, or even cumulative flow. The point of measuring throughput is to help define how predictable a team is.

Predictability becomes important when you want to evaluate the value versus cost equation. If a team is predictable, then when they provide an estimate, we can have higher confidence that their estimates may be more within range of reality. If they aren’t then their cost estimates could be higher, so we want to make informed decisions regarding the investment costs we are making into feature delivery for our customers. And most importantly with respect to predictability measures, their true value is in helping us identify the organizational and process impediments that negatively impact their ability to become predictable.

QValue creates a matrix of value factors that are aligned with the organizations’ strategies. Value factors identify quantifiable outcomes that are being predicted by the team to deliver a specific amount of value. A key attribute of QValue is that because we can value score individual features, we can provide tracking of value delivered against the cost per sprint to deliver it.

Tracking value delivered over just the budget and date milestones fundamentally changes the conversation at the leadership level.

To enable your organization to focus on value and to learn more about QValue Product scoring model contact me at michael@soundagile.com or go to www.soundagile.com