How do you show stakeholders the value of your product increment?

In my opinion, focusing on demonstrating how it meets their needs and business outcomes. Using clear metrics and examples, or demos that highlight key features and benefits. Explaining how the increment solves problems and tie it back to the goals you’ve discussed with them. Keeping it engaging and relevant, making sure they see how the work directly contributes to the overall success of the project.

The expected value of increments starts with a well-defined Definition of Ready (DoR) and a Definition of Done (DoD). Generally, these statements are agreed upon in a Ways of Working document. The DoR and DoD help us to set expectations on the same page. The Scrum team can focus on prioritized items and deliver the expected value to the stakeholders. The Sprint Review is the ceremony where the Scrum Team shows the delivered items (increments) to the stakeholders. Last but not least, a DevOps process is vital to set expectations of when the increment will be available to be validated and available in production.

To show stakeholders the value of your product increments effectively, consider the following: 1. **Define Clear Objectives:** . 2. **Metrics and KPIs:** 3. **Regular Updates:** 4. **User Feedback:** 5. **Business Impact:** 6. **Comparative Analysis:** 7. **Use Case Scenarios:** 8. **Visual Aids:** 9. **Open Communication:** 10. **Alignment with Strategy:** 11. **Iterate and Improve:** 12. **Transparency:** 13. **Documentation:**

The product vision serves as the guiding light for the development of a product increment in Agile methodologies. It provides a clear understanding of the desired outcome and purpose of the product, which informs the creation of the product backlog. The product backlog, in turn, consists of prioritized user stories, features and tasks that contribute to realizing the product vision. Each iteration or sprint focuses on delivering a product increment that moves the product closer to fulfilling the vision. By aligning each increment with the overarching product vision, development teams ensure that their efforts are consistently directed towards delivering value that aligns with the overall objectives of the product.

A good way to communicate the main themes in a backlog is through a tailored roadmap, ideally updated quarterly or monthly. Tailor how you present roadmap data for the users who will consume it. Sure, executives may just want to see milestones and features, but product management may want to see a goal oriented roadmap showing features, milestones, as well as outcomes and metrics. Others may prefer an impact roadmap showing what will be delivered, what feature it supports, who the users of that feature are, and what strategic objective this feature helps deliver.

Product backlog keeps on increasing and over a period of time it becomes next to impossible to figure out the most priority ones. Few quick ways to manage the product backlog are - identifying the stories which are connected to the current timeframes roadmap/OKRs - out of the above prioritizing the ones with the highest roi and least effort But an overall product backlog should be refined at least once in 6 months by removing the stories/tasks which are irrelevant based on the vision and roadmap.

Inviting stakeholders to participate in refining the product backlog is an excellent approach. However, it is equally essential to manage expectations, not all suggestions will be implemented, at least not immediately. Clear communications on the rationale behind prioritization decisions help manage stakeholders' expectations.

Scrum doesn't define a format for product backlog items, because a team is likely to do a variety of work. The story format can help, but sometimes a bug is just a bug. Feel free to capture potential work in a myriad of ways, and find out what works best. Remember that there is always a singular Product Goal that you're working towards in the near future. A concrete step on the journey towards realizing the product vision. This Product Goal helps in keeping the Product Backlog focused, because why would you have items on it that don't contribute to that Goal? A limit of the amount of items that the Product Backlog can contain is also very helpful. Space will open up as items are delivered, while the backlog remains transparant.

Regularly update and refine the product backlog based on feedback from stakeholders, team retrospectives, and changing priorities. Prioritize items in the backlog in a way that reflects the most valuable features and aligns with the product vision. Share the backlog openly with stakeholders, and involve them in discussions about priorities and trade-offs

The sprint backlog is crucial for aligning team objectives with broader ART goals, especially in SAFe. Utilize visual tools like Kanban boards to show stakeholders work progression and focus. Address impediments, risks, and dependencies promptly in daily stand-ups or Scrum of Scrums for cross-team issues. If needed, escalate to the program level using the Program Kanban. Also, consider utilizing a Program Board during PI Planning to identify and manage cross-team dependencies. Effective sprint backlog management ensures that not only are tasks completed, but they also align with the larger organizational objectives in a Lean-Agile context.

Use the sprint backlog as a tool for transparency and alignment. Clearly communicate the sprint goals and objectives to stakeholders at the beginning of each sprint. During the sprint, provide updates on progress and any adjustments made to the sprint backlog. Be proactive in addressing issues or delays that may impact the sprint's outcome.

The sprint backlog is key not only to delivery and communicate progress towards the product roadmap but also is a key tool to enable the upcoming iterations. It's very common that teams focus on fully load the sprints with new feature / enhancement and give little time for innovation or even for planning. A sprint backlog should have a clear goal and point to delivery at least 1 fully functional feature at the end of it that could be ready to deliver but it's important also to save time in your sprint backlog to explore technology and functionality that you may need to enable the upcoming sprints. This is why it's crucial to have PI planning or quarterly planning. Also save time for bug fixing as QA/UAT always will bring up bugs.

There are no tasks in Scrum and the team does not commit to the items in the Sprint Backlog. And Stakeholders should have zero interest in them. The Sprint Backlog comprises a Sprint Goal, selected Backlog Items, and a sufficient plan to complete them: - The Scrum Team commits only to the Sprint Goal and the contents of the Sprint Backlog will emerge over the Sprint as we discover more. - The Plan should be minimal but sufficient, just enough to get started. As we discover more this level of detail is the most changeable throughout the Sprint. The biggest mistake new Scrum Team's make is trying to plan the whole Sprint up front, and filling it. Since we discover more by doing, what happens as we discover that more?

The most important thing the Sprint Backlog contains is the singular Sprint Goal for that Sprint. The items the team has pulled and whatever other planning the team has done are a means to that end. The exact contents of the Sprint Backlog will evolve throughout the Sprint as the developers inspect their progress towards the Sprint Goal at the start of each day in their Daily Scrum, and adjust their Sprint Backlog accordingly. User stories remain an optional format. Tasking remains an optional practice.

When showcasing the product increment, focus on demonstrating how it aligns with the product vision and meets customer needs. Collect feedback from stakeholders, and actively incorporate their input into future iterations. Highlight the improvements and enhancements made in the product increment since the previous version. Emphasize not just the features delivered but also the value they bring to end-users

I agree that Product increment helps build trust when it adds value or addresses the stakeholders/end users pain points. This happens when the scrum teams get to listen to their perspective and prioritize accordingly.

It's important to understand that a Product Increment is not only the outcome of the Sprint. The sprint should deliver functional features "ready to deploy", however in order to put together a product increment to deliver to production you may need multiple sprints to complete a significant product increment. This is useful not only to ensure we have efficient QA but also UAT, it's very common that time from our key users to test is limited and organizing the product increments in a way that allow key users to test appropriately and have opportunity to review before release increase the trust and rapport with stakeholders.

Four artefacts? There are only three! Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, and the Increment. The Definition if Done is not an artifact, instead it is the commitment for the Increment.

The purpose of the Increment is to offer transparancy towards stakeholders (users being the most important of that group) so that future work can be adjusted. It's not needed to demonstrate each item realized to initiate that conversation.

The only way to realise value is to release. Everything before real users have access is an assumption that is still pending validation. Not the Product Owner, not the Stakeholders, and not the UX folks can truly validate value, only the users. Get your product as quickly as you can into the hands of your users, ideally every Sprint, and collect feedback and telemetry to inform future choices. Get to continuous delivery and you will be able to use the telemetry and feedback on the features you built and delivered in this Sprint at the Sprint Review to shorten the cycle time and get that feedback actions in the very next Sprint.

Think the other way round. How can the stakeholders show you what value they want in the product increment. If you need to convince stakeholders that there IS value in the increment, you've gone way, way off track. They should KNOW what value to expect, because they've communicated what they want, and negotiated agreement as to what will be IN the current increment, and been in conversations as to the detail, and giving feedback on the design. Take the stakeholders on the whole journey; they should not be surprised when they see what gets delivered. If they are, that's a BAD thing - you've lost contact with the people who can tell you what "value" is.

Stakeholders typically respond well to visualization so if you can demo a completed prodcut increment and share the business value added and/or problem solved, it helps the Stakeholder to see the value. :)

Focus on showcasing outcomes, not output. Too often presentations focus on new features and following a script of how a certain action will be accomplished, completely forgetting to focus on WHY you'd want to take those actions and use the feature in the first place. Explicitly state the benefits of the feature, and what new outcomes are available. In short, present the business value the new increment achieves (assuming alignment to business goals, transparency, and expectations have been maintained during development). Paul O. summarized it very well in comments below.

I've always considered showing incremental value and how it adds to the bigger picture. What problem the 3 user stories delivered in a sprint helped solving, why it was important to solve and where does it now fit us in the bigger picture aka vision of the ART or product. Another important element is the value for customers.