E87: Deliver Value Part-1 – Definition of Value (Dov)

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The Deliver Value series is a set of topics that will be included in my upcoming book called Deliver Value: Happing contributing people, satisfied customers, and thriving business.  As an author our creative juices are not as fluid, and we hit the proverbial writer’s wall.  Since the COVID-19 pandemic, I have been struggling to finish this book, so I decided to use a lean-agile approach.  Each month a topic from the book will be released as one of my podcast episodes to create the Deliver Value series.

 

Let's begin with the Definition of Value (DoV)

The Definition of Value (DoV)

 

If you ask several people what the definition of value is, you will likely receive varying responses.  Let's begin with the dictionary and see what is written about the definition of value in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.  This dictionary was established in 1828.  Value is identified as a noun, verb, and adjective. The following are the three (3) definitions as a noun that I selected:

* The monetary worth of something, like market price

* A fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged

* Relative worth, utility, or importance

 

I spoke to four people who may have an influential opinion in business and the agile community.

 

Marty Nelson, Alchemy Code Lab founder:

Value has a positive exchange, positive emotion, and experience. Value is generative - money, friends, and social connections, working ecosystems.  Value is something that satisfies true wants.

 

Diana Larsen, author of Agile Retrospective and co-found of Agile Fluency Model:

I think there are different kinds of value. It's too bad we only have one word to talk about several definitions.

One context is value to the customer. Businesses are sensitive to their customers' needs. They want to give the customer what they want so that customers will pay for services and products. So, there's the value around the value stream going to the customer.  Are we getting closer and closer as time goes by to build what the customer wants and will accept and pay for?  Product management helps the organization focus on the items with the highest priority over others, which gives a sense of, "this is more valuable than that, at least at this moment in time."

To better understand priority, we can add methods like the cost of delay, and it begins to get us closer to understanding value as well.

Then there's also business value, which is the investments enabling the business to thrive, be resilient, and sustain over time.  Value, I think in the business sense, is very much tied to strategic direction. Is this strategic position providing us value because it's moving us more toward our strategic goals, like targets in the Improvement Kata? Is this moving us in the direction that we need to go to give greater value to the business? In the Agile Fluency model community, we tend to talk about value as business benefits. The value is the benefits that the business wants to gain from supporting and investing in their teams to help achieve the maximum value from the products in the market.

 

 

Dave West, CEO, Scrum.org:

Value is a subjective measure.  Therefore, it is not how I define it that matters, but ultimately the person and organization that I wish to bring value to that are relevant.

For example,