Economic Frameworks for Portfolio and Product Management

This class presents the idea of using economic frameworks for portfolio and project management. We’ll begin with an overview of the three horizons model, and discuss the economic models that are suitable in each horizon. We’ll then discuss and experiment with economic tools that can be applied in each horizon, including the Value of Information, Monte Carlo and Cost of Delay.

Transcript

1. i290 lean/agile product management unit 5: economic frameworks @jezhumble https://leanagile.pm/ humble@berkeley.edu This work © 2015-20 Jez Humble Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
2. grasp the principles of cost of delay understand the principles of decision theory calculate the value of information make product decisions in an economic framework know how to apply optionality learning outcomes
4. MoSCoW Must have Should have Could have Won’t have
5. kano model
6. “you may ignore economics, but economics won’t ignore you” — Don Reinertsen “The measure of execution in product development is our ability to constantly align our plans to whatever is, at the moment, the best economic choice.” — Don Reinertsen
7. decision theory The analysis of complex decisions with significant uncertainty can be confusing because 1) the consequence that will result from selecting any specified decision alternative cannot be predicted with certainty, 2) there are often a large number of different factors that must be taken into account when making the decision, 3) it may be useful to consider the possibility of reducing the uncertainty in the decision by collecting additional information, and 4) a decision maker's attitude toward risk taking can impact the relative desirability of different alternatives. Craig W Kirkwood, Decision Tree Primer, p1
8. risk matrix probability (0-1) impact ($) low probability low impact high probability low impact low probability high impact high probability high impact
9. decision tree temperature sensor: • development cost: $100k, revenue $1m • probability of success: 0.5 pressure sensor: • development cost: $10k, revenue $400k • probability of success: 0.8
10. decision trees Craig W Kirkwood, Decision Tree Primer, p4 EV=$400,000 EV=$400,000 EV=$310,000 EV=$0
11. decision tree
12. value of information • information reduces uncertainty about decisions that have economic consequences • information affects the behavior of others, which has economic consequences • information sometimes has its own market value Douglas Hubbard, How to Measure Anything (3rd edn), p145
13. measurement A quantitively expressed reduction of uncertainty based on one or more observations Douglas Hubbard, How to Measure Anything (3rd ed.), p31
14. perfect information Value of perfect information = EV after - EV before = $100k
15. not normally binary decisions — a continuum humans are risk averse when the stakes are high use utility functions; reduce stakes don’t capture time dependence use calculus monte carlo analysis problems with decision trees
16. opportunity cost In microeconomic theory, the opportunity cost of a choice is the value of the best alternative foregone, where a choice needs to be made between several mutually exclusive alternatives given limited resources. Assuming the best choice is made, it is the "cost" incurred by not enjoying the benefit that would be had by taking the second best choice available. Wikipedia
17. cost of delay Task A: upgrade package to support credit card encryption CoD: fine of $50,000 per day we’re not in compliance. Duration: 2 weeks Task B: Complete a feature for a key customer CoD: we’ll close $100,000 per week with this feature Duration: 1 week
18. cost of delay Task A: 2 weeks, CoD $250k / week Task B: 1 week, CoD $100k / week
19. urgency profiles
20. exercise Should I wait for the feature? We have completed sufficient features for 85% of our target customers. We can: a) Launch what we have, add last 15% in next release, 6 months from now b) Take 2 more months to finish last 15% Cost of delay for project: $200,000 / month
21. batching up work “Black Swan Farming using Cost of Delay” | Joshua J. Arnold and Özlem Yüce | bit.ly/black-swan-farming
22. technology adoption lifecycle Geoffrey Moore, Crossing the Chasm
23. three horizons Baghai, M., Coley, S. and White, D., The Alchemy of Growth
24. Intuit horizons and metrics
25. optionality Nassim Taleb, Antifragile