For some reason the notion if value is a big mystery in the agile community. Many blogs, tweets, books are spent of speaking about Value as the priority in agile software development
We focus on Value over cost. We produce Value at the end of every Sprint Value is the most important aspect of Scrum based development.
Without units of measure of Value beyond time and money, there can be not basis of comparison between one value based choice and another.
In the Systems Engineering world where we work, there are four critical units of measure for all we done.
- Measures of Effectiveness - these are operational measures of success that are closely related to the achievements of the mission or operational objectives evaluated in the operational environment, under a specific set of conditions.
- MOE's are stated in units of measure meaningful to the buyer
- They focus on capabilities independent of any technical implementation
- They are connected with mission success
- MOP's belong to the End User
- Measure of Performance - characterize physical or functional attributes relating to the system operation, measured or estimated under specific conditions.
- MOP's are attributes that assure the systems to capability to perform
- They are an assessment of the system to assure it meets the design requirements to satisfy the Measures of Effectiveness
- MOP's belong to the project
- Technical Performance Measures - are attributes that determine how well a system or system element is satisfying or expected to satisfy a technical requirement or goal
- TPMs assess the design process
- They define compliance to performance requirements
- They identify technical risk
- They are limited to critical thresholds, and
- They include projected performance
- Key Performance Parameters - represent the capabilities and characteristics so significant that failure to meet them can be cause for reevaluation, reassessing, or termination of the program
- KPP's have a threshold or objective value
- They characterize the major drivers of performance
- The buyer defines the KPP's during the operational concept development process - KPP's say what DONE looks like
So when you read about value and don't hear about the units of measure of Effectiveness and Performance and their TPM's and KPP's, it's going to be hard to have any meaningful discussion about the return on investment for the cost needed to produce that value.
Here's how these are related...