Agile: Customer Value is not the only variable to consider in delivery

From the early stages of Agile, almost 20 years ago, we have talked about Customer Value and its importance in prioritizing work.

Nevertheless, Customer Value is one of the most neglected topics in Agile and there is very little to go with.

Some have mentioned using ROI and Cost of Delay as a way to prioritize work. However, this is the myopic and sort-term perspective that will favor burning the rain forest to keep cattle ranchers profitable while killing the world in the process.

Fortunately, there is enough momentum to more holistic view of value that is taking hold all over the world through activism and awareness.

We strongly believe that unless we take on a realistic perspective to help businesses prioritize the type of work they need to deliver, the ghost of Taylorism and greed will continue to exist for the benefit of Wall Street, the short term gain and against sustainability.

This is our model:

Investors provide Funding for our Talent to receive appreciation, not only in the form of salary, and in turn they deliver value that Customers buy; the Company uses the Revenue to appreciate the Talent and deliver Returns to its investors. Through all the process it is the Communities that benefit from the Sustainable Development generated by the Company and compensates the Company with additional Investors, Talent and Customers.

Although the model is common sense, too many companies tend to ignore one or more of the participants for the sake of money.

Our Model states that any work and/or service a company delivers needs to be validated against all the different stakeholders to determine if it is worth pursuing while at the same time use the grading to determine its priority.

Measuring Investor return is easy and it is the most covered topic that relates to companies. Talent Appreciation is a bit more challenging to measure, but Talent surveys should be able to at least determine what is working and what is not. However, the Voice of Talent (VoT) must be used to resolve issues before the Talent has already left the company. Drive, by Daniel Pink, is a great framework to use for this goal.

In a future blog we will cover Customer value, lowercase v, since it is a bit more complex and requires its own blog.

The interaction between the Company and the Community is perhaps the most complex. It has to measure the appeal to Investors, Talent and Customers. Nevertheless, this is the most important of all relationships in the long term and determines the sustainable development of the organization.

Our model to determine Value, with uppercase V, is a more complete way to establish a metric for intent of delivery as well as to prioritize work. Not taking all these variables into account will most certainly skew the intent of the delivery and, at the very least, provide a less than ideal Value proxy.