Let’s Start Measuring Value

When experimenting with delivering value sooner, a question soon creeps up: ‘How will we know if we deliver value?’ In this article, you will learn why it is important, and that it might not only be relevant for measuring feature value.

The Problem

Most teams I know of today are very good at establishing more hypotheses, but less so at proving the hypothesis. We are often convinced that the features on our product backlog create value in terms of reaching our goals, however we rarely develop the instruments that will allow us to know.

What is a Hypothesis?

A hypothesis is like a scientific hunch—it’s an educated guess or a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. Researchers use hypotheses to guide their experiments and investigations.

Translating this to the features on our product backlog; we identify a user need, a phenomenon, and our educated guess is that the feature will address the need, hoping it will create value for the user. So, the feature implementation works as an experiment to address the user need.

On a practical level, this is the reason we build products with thousands of features, of which only 20% are used. Additionally, as we are not measuring the value of our features, we end up never decommissioning features that are no longer used, making our product unnecessarily complex.

How to Get Started on Measuring Value

1. Define the hypothesis for addressing the identified user need in one or more product backlog items.
2. Establish a baseline for metrics that will allow you to prove that the feature is providing increased value.
3. Build the increment, including the minimum version of the feature (Customer delight should still be in focus).
4. Put the feature in the hands of customers and start proving the hypothesis by monitoring the metrics.
5. Continuously evaluate if the metrics you have defined are true measures of value. Otherwise, find new and better metrics.
6. Keep monitoring the value the feature provides, and if it declines towards zero value for the customers, consider decommissioning the feature, making your product easier to maintain.

Is it easy? Not at all. Does it bring value? It has for me, as it helps focus on the 20% of the features that bring value to customers and helps you deliver value sooner!

It’s Not Only Feature Value

It is not only feature value that is worth measuring – how about agility? “How do we actually know we are agile?” If we do not set up some metrics that make sense for us to determine if we are becoming more agile, then it is hard to say?!