Value
In Lean Software Development, “Value” is defined as any activity or feature that meets the end-user’s needs, delivers tangible benefits, and solves a customer’s problem or fulfills a requirement.
Value is created by understanding customer needs, focusing on features that provide a benefit, minimizing waste, ensuring high quality, and delivering functional software quickly.
The primary goal of Lean is to maximize value delivery while minimizing waste, ensuring that every activity directly contributes to solving customer problems or enabling the organization to do so more effectively.
Defining Value
To apply Lean principles, teams must share a common and practical understanding of value in the context of their product or organization.
A useful approach is to consider value in four categories:
Customer Value
How does this item increase the likelihood of acquiring new customers, retaining existing customers, or enhancing customer satisfaction?
Commercial Value
How does this item contribute to the organization’s financial health, such as increasing revenue, reducing costs, or improving profitability?
Operational Value
How does this item improve internal processes, enhance team productivity, or streamline workflows?
Risk Reduction Value
How does this item mitigate potential risks, such as security vulnerabilities, compliance issues, or system failures?
When defining value, consider the following:
- Improve revenue: Activities that directly contribute to increased sales or higher market share.
- Reduce costs: Activities that streamline operations, reduce maintenance overhead or provide cost efficiencies.
- Better organizational performance: Activities that enhance productivity, improve collaboration, or optimize workflows.
- Higher throughput: Features that enable faster delivery of products or services to customers.
- Better quality: Features that improve the reliability, performance, or usability of the product.
- Scalability/Concurrency: Features that allow the product to handle increased demand or growth without significant rework.
- Maintainability: Features that make the product easier to update, modify, or extend over time.
- Availability: Features that ensure the product is accessible and operational when needed by users.
- Innovation: Features that introduce new capabilities or differentiate the product in the market.
- Risk reduction: Features that identify, assess, and mitigate potential risks to the product or organization, such as security vulnerabilities or system failures.
- Regulatory compliance: Features that ensure the product meets legal or industry standards.
- Enhance customer satisfaction: Features that improve the user experience or address customer pain points.
- Intellectual property: Features that create unique assets or competitive advantages for the organization.