Enablers
- Assess opportunities to deliver value incrementally. (ECO 2.1.1)
- Examine the business value throughout the project. (ECO 2.1.2)
- Support the team to subdivide tasks to find the minimum viable product. (ECO 2.1.3)
- Measure ongoing progress based on methodology. (ECO 2.6.4)
- Collect and analyze data to make informed project decisions. (ECO 2.9.4)
Deliverables, and Tools
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Creating a Culture of Urgency
- Ingrain a sense of urgency in the project environment and culture.
- Establishing and cultivating the appropriate project urgency culture is an ongoing task.
- The project manager can lead the way by articulating the project's importance and vision.
- Everyone involved can commit to and be accountable for striving towards that vision.
- Bringing in the voice of the customer can express the desires and personalize the value.
- The project team can promote the culture in their daily actions, responsiveness, and attentiveness.
Examination of Business Value
Business value*: The net quantifiable benefit derived from a business endeavor. The benefit may be tangible, intangible, or both.
- Determining what is of value requires examination, evaluation, and confirmation.
- Throughout a project, a variety of means for determining what is of value can be used.
- The business value can be:
- Financial
- Improvements
- New customers
- First to market
- Social
- Technological
Product Roadmaps
Product roadmap: serves as a high level visual summary of the product or products of the project.
- The roadmap can vary in appearance and presentation.
- The objective is to display the strategy and direction of the product being built and value to be delivered over time.
- Roadmaps start with the overarching vision of the product and any known time constraints or milestones.
- Over time, the roadmap is progressively elaborated as more information is known, work is being completed or not completed, and vision is refined.
- Themes, which equate to goals, emerge to provide structure and associations.
- The product roadmap provides short-term and long-term visualization of the product.
Incremental Delivery
- Provides the means to deliver value sooner rather than later.
- Early and regular incremental releases lead to higher customer value and an increased market share.
- Enables the customers to receive parts or elements of the product prior to the full product delivery.
- Allows users and the business to not only consume the targeted value—even if only partially—but also to provide feedback to the project team.
- Feedback enables adjustments to the direction, priorities, and quality of the product.
- Conversation and alignment with stakeholders are required to finding suitable increments.
- Stakeholders receive a usable product with the expectations that additional features and revisions will come.
Minimum Viable Product
MVP: The smallest collection of features that can be included in a product for customers to consider it functional. In Lean methodologies, it can be referred to as “bare bones” or “no frills” functionality.
- An MVP allows all stakeholders to see and experience some form of project outcomes.
- A tangible output channels targeted conversations, which generates feedback and ideas.
- MVP provides inspiration to the team and ignites shorter- termed urgency and a sense of accomplishment.
Minimum Business Increment
MBI: The smallest amount of value that can be added to a product or service that benefits the business.
- MBI is more viable when an MVP might be disruptive to the users and business, especially when a basic preliminary product to gauge interest is not necessary.
- MBI works best when:
- The product and functions are understood.
- An incremental increase of value can be pinpointed.
- The delivery of some of that value benefits the business.
- Advantages of MBIs:
- Enables project team to deliver bits of value sooner.
- Helps your team validate whether or not the team has captured.
- Enables team to incrementally build on that success or pivot as needed.
Cycles and Timeboxes
- Project teams can set up release cycles and working time blocks.
- Timeboxes are typically in the form of weeks or days for urgency sake.
- Cycling the project through similar timeboxes provides progress measurements from one timebox to the next and over many timeboxes.
- Over time and repeated cycles, the team begins to gain more predictable measurements that can communicate expectations of cycle times, throughput, and velocity.
Guidelines to Measure Ongoing Progress
- Define value from the customer’s, business, and/or user’s perspective.
- Determine value expectations.
- Set targets and baselines based on expectations.
- Determine metrics that communicate progress towards those value expectations.
- Select one or more means of collecting metric data that is not too cumbersome or time consuming for the project team.
- Collect data at a regular interval.
- Present the data of the progress.
- Compare the progress with the baselines and expectations.
- Improve on success or correct areas where progress is not meeting expectations.