PD

Value and Work Not Done

Module
Node
Skill
[Time/Project Management]
Minutes
60

Learning Objectives

  • Categorise measures as either outputs, outcomes or impacts
  • Identify whether tasks are valuable or not, and if so what kind of value is delivered

Preparation

Do the prep.

Introduction

Building a product that has value is crucial. It’s relatively easy to just create something, but doing it well is a different story. It’s important to understand what and why you are building something and for whom. If not, you are just wasting your and your client’s time.

Exercises

Value Measurement Chain (25 minutes)

Goal: To practice identifying the stages of the value measurement chain.

Work in teams of 3-4 people.

Assign which stage of the value measurement chain (Input - Effort - Output - Outcome - Impact) relates to each of the following measures:

  • Number of product releases to the customers every month.
  • Count of person-days spent on a task.
  •  Lines of code in a pull request.
  •  Response to a marketing vision for a feature from social media.
  • Venture capital investment in the company, based on a product vision.
  • Family and social connections are enhanced because a communication feature is used well.
  • Refactoring because a feature was badly implemented.
  • Persuading other people to finish their tasks enables you to begin yours.
  •  The system can display calories burned during activity logged.
  •  Reduced medical interventions due to healthier lifestyles encouraged by the exercise app.
  • A user knows an estimate of calories burned by exercise.
  • Release to market of location tracking software version with calorie counter feature. 
  • Opportunity cost / future value of food intake forecasting for diabetic users of that location tracking software.

Tip for timing: Use the first 10 minutes to assign items in your group, then during the last 15 minutes discuss each item in the class.

Work Not Done (35 minutes)

Goal: To practice identifying which tasks should/shouldn’t be done and why.

Work in teams of 3-4 people.

Take 25 min to complete this part of the exercise:

  1. Suggest which of the following items should not be done. 
  2. Define what would change the decision.
  3. What would make it more valuable?
  4. What would make it less valuable?
  • Fixing a security vulnerability in the latest version of the product, where any user could impersonate any other in a REST call.
  • Fixing a security vulnerability in an old version, which is at “end of life”, but the customers have to pay to upgrade.
  • Refactoring technical debt affects a few possible enhancements to a rarely used feature.
  • Fixing a spelling mistake on the website in a prominent place.
  • Adding a major new feature, which some users think would be great, but most users don’t care about.
  • Adding a new feature when the next item on the backlog is to fix a common bug.
  • Writing a definition of done with the team so everyone shares expectations of documentation, testing, etc.
  • Redesigning the UI workflow to present questions in the same order a person would think about them.
  • Re-implementing an existing feature that works but looks a bit dated.
  • Holding meetings with several customers to clarify the impact of a certain bug on them.
  • Refining and estimating items on the backlog will probably be in the sprint after next.
  •  Add and remove database table columns to comply with the architect’s new policy.
  •  Fixing bugs in an experimental prototype feature for which we are already collecting A/B test analytics.

Go through each task in the class and ask the questions listed at the beginning. It’s alright if you don’t have time to cover all tasks.

Tips for timing: 15 minutes to work on the exercise in groups, 20 minutes to discuss.