Agile Principles and the often cited business value are a myth to many agile practitioners. In this talk I take a look at four different aspects, starting with the epic fail of the theft of the Swedish Crown Jewels in 2018. Little text, many pictures, good luck making sense of this one ;)

1. Business Value
Stephan Hochhaus
Agiler Stammtisch Ruhr 17.03.2022

2. Estimated value
6,3 Mio €

3. Johann Dalman
Bishop of Strängnäs – not the customer
Trash Can
Contains increment

4. We need to talk! How can we utilize business value to prevent our work
from ending up in the trash can?

5. But first…
The principles behind the agile manifesto state:
• Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer
through early and continuous delivery
of valuable software.
• Business people and developers must work
together daily throughout the project.
• Working software is the primary measure of
progress.

7. Our agenda
• In order to measure progress, you
must expand the development
team’s horizon!
• Agile teams are business teams!
• Business value should not be
assessed in every detail but be
always present!
• Value changes over time, it depends
on context and lifecycle phase!

8. Products benefit from a guiding North Star Metric
The only metric everybody talks about, are story points.

9. Measuring
Progress
Produce output,
aim for impact
Source:
https://blog.crisp.se/2019/10/16/christopheachouia
ntz/output-vs-outcome-vs-impact

10. “The Business”
Self-organizing teams cannot succeed,
if they are disconnected from the business.
Development
Who’s “the business” anyway?

11. Translate
business
value to
something
meaningful
• Increased revenue
• Increased sales
• Increased customer retention
• Increased active users/time spent on product
• Reduced operating cost
• Reduced churn
• Reduced time-to-market
• Reduced cycle-times

12. Business value on a story-level is near impossible due to shared cost.

13. The Kano-Model may be good enough
for identifying business value.
Don’t estimate basics, discover reverse
and indifferent, focus on performance
and excitement
Kano-Model

14. Context determines value.

15. Don’t let your backlog hold you back!
• Translate business value
according to your lifecycle
phase
• Check that market
demands still exist
• Re-assess value

16. Dankeschön!
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