Category Archives: business value

The Team is primary

There has been a lot of discussion in the community lately about scaling.  With specific discussion of the SAFe and LeSS frameworks. I don’t have a strong opinion on many of the issues. I do think each scaling situation is different.  I do think the music (the values and principles inside the players) is at […]

CBA: new Maserati vs. used Lexus??

Ladies, Please forgive me. I have to make an obvious point with some guys. And you know how guys can be. Sometimes you have to make it really obvious to them. *** We need to know the BVPs (business value points) and the SPs (Story points) of each story, so that we can do CBA […]

Question: How to order Stories in the PB

Question from a Class Attendee: A question, about ranking user stories. In the recent Scrum Master course, you indicated we should rank stories in the PB (Product Backlog) by Business Value and do them from the top down. In the Product Owner course back in 2011, you had us calculate R = BVP / SP […]

Two Levels of (Agile) Planning

Almost all firms that I work with have at least two levels of planning.  I call them “high level” and “team level.”  High Level At the high level, project or product ideas come in.  Someone has to prioritize these opportunities initially, to see which ones make the cut.  Often this is formally done once a […]

Release Planning: Risks, Dependencies, Learning, MMFS and Other

[This is a continuation of a series on Release Planning that starts here.] Now we come to the point of (re)ordering the Product Backlog (PB). Note: After calculating the R Factor, I like to order the PB by R.  Not that I would expect the Team to do the work in that order, but to […]

Killing Babies or Sizzling Steak?

I thought I would share this story, with one or two key metaphors.  Perhaps useful to you.  I use the story in classes quite a bit. *** OK, the PO is trying to optimize on the Pareto idea (80-20, the vital few). (More about the Pareto idea elsewhere.) It is Feb 1.  At the beginning […]

Defining Business Value // #2 Customer Smile

Imagine that you make a new camera, and after all that work — does it make the customer smile? Imagine that it is not Scarlett Johansson. Just a girl or young woman. Or maybe any customer who buys your new camera. You don’t make any profit on that camera, just she smiles. How do we […]

Business Value is a dream

There is a famous Taoist story about a person dreaming that he is a butterfly and awakens and can’t decide: Am I person who dreamt I was a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming I am now a person? This is not the kind of dream I meant, when I used that word in […]

Tell Her No

Once upon a time, a long long time ago, there was a song called “Tell Her No” by the Zombies. I like to play it sometimes in the courses. Here is the song: A simple and stylish song with quite a message. I like to let the music tell the message. I think it reaches […]

Understanding the customer

In my view, one of the key things about Agile is bringing the customer and the team (the implementers) MUCH closer together. So that, for example, the team starts to understand many (most?) of the marketing issues and activities in effect.  (Note: I am using the word “marketing” in the broad MBA sense of the […]