Fundamentally, a value-driven approach in an agile environment involves directing work and making decisions based on the value to the customer. It is a rejection of the plan driven approach, which is a cornerstone of traditional project management. There is uncertainty – you cannot plan for and manage all risk. From my military experience, which has been further validated in the agile approach to business and technology, early plans are necessary but will change. Military planning assumes that no plan survives first contact, and understands that the enemy always has a vote. A value-driven agile approach requires customer centrism, and working to delight them. There is also a concerted focus on continuous learning and improvement, and innovation to create more value. Many people relate agile product development to sashimi, a type of sushi. The idea is that you iteratively and incrementally create products, each overlapping and building on the previous iteration, yet each a complete (functional) and beautiful product increment.
There are also concepts from agile that lead to a value-driven approach. The Agile manifesto promotes working software over comprehensive documentation. The goal is a functioning product, not a mountain of reports and paperwork. It also talks about responding to change over following a plan. This is important with customer engagement in order to deliver maximum value. You cannot plan for every customer requirement for the life of a project or product. Additionally, the agile principles are rich with value-driven concepts.
Working software is the primary measure of progress – this should drive development.
Customer satisfaction by early and continuous delivery of valuable software – create value for customers, continually.
Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months) – give customers something of value often, do not try to make the perfect thing too late.
Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design—a cornerstone of several agile practices is to do excellent work, and this begets value for customers.
Overall, a focus on value to the customer is a value-driven approach allows for prioritization and a discussion about tradeoffs, which can lay the foundation for future development work. This is an extremely critical concept in an agile approach.
Until the next iteration . . .
Jason