Software Value Map (SVM):

“The Product Owner is accountable for maximizing the value of the product.”, Simple, right? Yes but Ummm, what is value? How to quantify it? What are the metrics to be used for a quantity of value? Adding up more features to a product always increase value? May a feature devalue the product? One feature provides some value and devalues some other way, how to see that? How (and why) to prioritize one feature over another? And last but not least “What is the net benefit(impact) of a requirement/feature of a product”?

Aught, not that simple.

What if I introduce you to a magic wand that does all this in one place? No way!

Yes, there is one, “developed and refined by industrially applied researchers at Blekinge Institute of Technology in close collaboration with over a dozen companies over five years.” Hold on, before revealing the name and how to use it, let’s have a review of the basics of value.

Defining Value and metrics while selecting what to develop, the value is “what the customer tells you it is”. But hey, in big organizations there is no direct interaction with customers. Umm, OK “the value is what the stakeholders tell you it is”. The formally “subjective theory of value” tells that, the value of a product or good is not determined by any inherited property of the good, nor even the amount of effort required to produce the product/good. Instead, the value comes from the importance an individual places on a product for the achievement of his desired ends. There is a lot to say about value. Read the famous “The 30 Elements of value pyramid”, to understand the fundamentals of value kinds of needs: functional, emotional, life-changing, and social impact. All these four kinds of needs are offered by different elements.

These elements of the value pyramid provide insight into value from the end-user or customer perspective, irrespective of the type of product or good.

When we talk about the technical products we have different stakeholders and they map the elements of the value pyramid differently depending upon their roles, positions, and needs.

The magic wand (the tool that I am going to introduce) maps those values in four fundamental classes: Value for the customer; Financial perspective; Internal business perspective; Innovation, Market and Intellectual perspective. These four classes are further divided into subclasses and the tree goes on until we reach the basic value element. There are ~60 different value elements mapped. If not all most of the elements of value fall in this tree. Irrespective of the type of product, organization, roles, or levels of individuals, almost all the elements that one might think can be found on the map. What is left for you is choosing from the tool map and what value elements a feature or product might offer?

Quantifying benefits of a feature (requirement)

Now when the elements of value are chosen from the map (for specific requirements). The next step is to evaluate the net benefit of a feature. “Quantifying Benefits Can Be Difficult”. Read the complete total blog post for details, How to Effectively Quantify Product Value — A Guide for Product Managers.

In the SVM (yes that’s what the tool is called, “Software Value Map”) tool you create the vale aspect, for example, Functionality, Reliability, Usability. Give the measured score to each of the aspects of a value element or requirement. Based on this score, the tool automatically provides a visual graph and tells if one requirement or feature devalues one aspect and provides value to another. Sorting, visualization makes it easy to select, prioritize and drop a feature.

Finally

Magic, right?.

So dear product owners, and product managers. Here is the link to the Software Value Map Tool.

http://softwarevaluemap.org/

Register for free and play, get known to the tool, and enjoy.

Thank me later :).