Thinking about value

“Value” is one of the most repeated words in our context and industry. “Delivering value” is a classic mantra.

I would like to go beyond the most traditional and simplistic way of thinking about how to bring “value” to the table… and explore the “value” concept from every possible perspective.

Transcript

1. Thinking about value by Isidro López
3. What is value? “Value is not about the number of things we produce, but the outcomes we want to create for the business and customers.” 3 “Escaping the build trap (how effective product management creates real value)” by Melissa Perri
4. Thinking about value… Increase revenue Protect revenue Avoid costs Reduce costs 4
5. 5 https://blackswanfarming.com/understanding-value/ (Joshua Arnold) Four possible outcomes from delivering an idea
6. We need to think about “value” from every perspective, not only direct and short-term “revenue” • Users, customers and business • Engineering and technology 6
7. Some examples of ideas related to “Increase…” • Increase sales to new or existing customer • Usual proxies (are they? 🤔) ◦ Get more customers or users ◦ Add new features ◦ Add more options to an existing feature ◦ Start using a new tool ◦ Write more code ◦ Add a new dependency 7
8. Some examples of ideas related to “Protect…” • Improvements to at least keep up with competitors and maintain existing market share (defensive) • Protect your data with back-ups • Solving bugs (protect the value already delivered) • Security analysis • Update dependencies and frameworks • Tooling to optimize the Support • Continuous and opportunistic refactoring to keep the cost of change low (protect the future value) 8
9. Some examples of ideas related to “Reduce…” • Remove features (unfortunately, it’s something extremely seldom done) • Reduce the cost of maintainability and evolution ◦ Remove code (Basal cost concept) ◦ Paying back “technical debt” ◦ Continuous and opportunistic refactoring ◦ Scout rule (“leave your campsite better than you found it”) • Reduce defects and rework with automated testing and TDD • Automate recurring actions (especially if those more human error-prone) • Improvements in performance/scalability/efficiency that lowers infrastructure costs 9
10. Some examples of ideas related to “Avoid…” • Legal requirements, avoid fines, etc. ◦ E.g. GDPR • Lean principles and practices, e.g. Decide as late as possible, aka “defer commitment” ◦ Keep options open unless there is a clear and obvious advantage on one of them. ◦ Code: ports and adapters, decoupling from infrastructure, etc. • Follow iterative and incremental development in order to minimize the output needed for getting the expected outcome. • Real options ◦ Timing of decision making is crucial: also see “Cost of Delay”, CD3, and “Opportunity Cost” • YAGNI ("You Ain't Gonna Need It") ◦ Only do things that answer to REAL and CURRENT needs backed up by something else than HiPPo or abstract guesses. Both from the business and from the technical perspectives. ◦ Avoid premature optimizations ◦ Code is a liability (it is output, not outcome) 10
11. Systems thinking for the win! • Going beyond the traditional vision of value (only “adding value”) depends on the company and product engineering culture in place ◦ You get more of what you reinforce or make easy or give public praise. ◦ You get less of what you punish or make difficult or don’t recognize. • Unfortunately, most companies mostly reinforce (explicitly or implicitly) a traditional vision of “increments of value”: ◦ Aka “shipping massive quantities of features” 11
12. What about your company? Questions for self-reflection • What do we explicitly reinforce/recognize/praise? ◦ do we make explicit any work beyond “adding/increasing”? ◦ do we recognize any work related with protecting, reducing or avoiding cost? • In your specific team/area, ◦ do you make explicit any work beyond “adding”? ◦ do you value any work related with protecting, reducing or avoiding cost? ◦ do you have explicit and visible work in your Kanban board for this? Can you think of ways for bringing value on the table besides “adding” things? 12
13. In summary • Let’s stop thinking about “value” only or mainly in terms of ADDING things (features, tools, code, etc.) ◦ On top of that, we wrongly associate “adding things” with “increasing the outcome”. • We get from a system/organization/team/people what we reinforce. • It’s always about trade-offs. • How can you think about bringing value within the “protect”, “reduce” or “avoid” perspectives? 13
14. Resources https://blackswanfarming.com/understanding-value/ https://blackswanfarming.com/value-a-framework-for-thinking/ The Basal Cost of Software (Edu Ferro) What is Value? by Jez Humble (video, 50 min.) “Escaping the build trap” by Melissa Perri • The book • A talk (video, 38 min.) Book “Thinking in systems” by Donella H. Meadows 14