What is Customer Value Analysis?
Customer Value Analysis is the name we came up with to describe the process we use to derive User Stories and Acceptance Criteria from project and company goals. It’s nothing new, it contains a lot of tried and tested Business and Functional Analysis techniques. It’s incremental and iterative, so that it’s a perfect frontend process to “feed” an Agile development team. It’s pull-driven, so you can keep your team fed with high value User Stories, just-in-time, when they need it and in the form they need it.
We’ve seen many projects where the Onsite Customer or Product Owner became the bottleneck, as the development team’s velocity improved. Customer Value Analysis contains the process and techniques we’ve used to exploit and elevate the analysis bottleneck and subordinate it to development again. Now the development team can continue to improve, because the Customer can keep up.
The companies where we’ve applied Customer Value Analysis are always suprised by how much value their teams can deliver. How do they do it? They
- Identify the high value needs
- Derive the leanest possible implementation that satisfies the needs, by taking small steps and really understanding the situation
- Challenge constraints and assumptions to find breakthrough solutions
- Describe the solutions with User Stories and Acceptance Criteria
- Do this efficiently, reliably and repeatably
Come and play with us!
Portia and I deliver a series of Customer Value Analysis training sessions, organised by emergn in London. You can expect a hands-on, fun-filled and very intensive session where you can learn and experiment with all the techniques on a real project.
The next training course is on the 3rd and 4th November 2009 in London. See you there!
If you’re interested in a session in Belgium or your country or company, let me know.
