The following article is part of the self-preparation for the modern BVOP® Project Management Certification program.
Business Value-Oriented Principles (BVOP) is a modern extension for managing organizations, projects, products, and people.
Business Value-Oriented Principles (BVOP) can be followed directly or modified according to the needs and general awareness of the management roles of organizations. BVOP enhances organizational practices and human culture, and trains people on productivity and responsibility.
BVOP's primary goals are to add business value to products, services, or processes, to optimize waste and to improve and develop people’s skills and organizations continuously.
Introduction
People, processes, priorities, and products are valued equally, and no subject matters more than the others. Adding, modifying, adapting, removing processes, roles, or practices is accepted, but the main focus on people, processes, priorities, and product equality remains. Focus on people and products, for example, should not be sacrificed for profit, priorities, and processes. People, in turn, need to follow organizational priorities, understand all the risks, and develop responsibility and proactiveness.
How can BVOP help organizations, people, products, and projects?
Following BVOP can produce the following benefits:
- Increased productivity
- Increased levels of customer satisfaction
- Increased motivation and satisfaction of employees
- Respect between roles and people
- Transparency of organization and processes
- Sharing knowledge
- Improved skills
- Improved organizational image
- Improved internal culture of the organization
- Shorter time-to-market cycles
The four dimensions of the Business Value-Oriented Principles
BVOP’s four dimensions are people, processes, priorities, and products.
People
People are a major resource for organizations. They are the fuel for the business engine and affect the image of organizations. They have needs, lives, emotions, and beliefs that can fluctuate.
BVOP states that people need to be open and responsible and understand what they do very well in detail.
Regarding the employees, there are certain personal and work matters that need to be satisfied. In order to do so, the organization provides the necessary resources to ensure motivation and productivity rates.
People need to have self-awareness and constantly develop their personality and skills. They embrace guidance, training, teaching and respect time, resources, plans, and strategies.
People are collaborators. They value organizational support and, at the same time, are ready to contribute with their skills and knowledge to process improvement, product quality, skills, or information sharing. They have answers to the following questions:
How can I help the others around me?
How can I support the whole organization?
Processes
All processes (within an organization) can be considered as formal events that follow predefined and planned steps.
Processes can be beneficial and, at the same time, can endamage the organization if they are not optimized enough or their performance is poor. Damage may be invisible for the organization if key roles in the departments and teams aren’t sufficiently aware of potential losses in matter of productivity, efficiency, financial resources, or quality.
An organization may waste time, financial resources, or suffer from high turnover rate. Processes can cause damage if not analyzed, optimized, and appropriated for the business model, production line, culture, internal and external environmental factors, customers, products, contracts. If employees disagree with certain processes this could cause them to quit. Overwhelmed or poorly executed processes can even push clients away.
Organizations following the BVOP should periodically inspect their processes and modify them if the need for change is identified.
People at all levels within the organization may need to monitor and evaluate ongoing processes in which they participate and identify gaps so that corrective actions are implemented promptly.
Excessive process overload can lead to wasted time, resources and general stress, while failure to control processes can lead to chaos and productivity deflation.
Priorities
Priorities are essential for every organization. Organizations following the Business Value-Oriented Principles define their priorities carefully considering the other dimensions.
Everyone in the organization may need to understand its priorities.
Some of the priorities of the organizations may include:
- Market expansion
- Territorial expansion
- Band image improvement
- Employee satisfaction
- Customer satisfaction
- Third-party satisfaction
- Increase in profit
- Products usage increase
- Social impact
- Political impact
Products
The classic understanding of a company's products is public services or products promoted, and internally acquired or developed assets not released to the market or intended for internal usage.
Products are usually the main source of income for many organizations and are major assets that require investment.
Product development can be a complex and time-consuming process that involves many experts and skills, and requires efforts in areas such as markets and customers (users) research, testing, development, marketing, sales, procurement, supply, legal, financial operations.
The process of developing a product usually meets the needs of the business, the resources, the time available, the customer’s needs, the technological constraints and the high-quality standards. There is a need for trade-offs in terms of investment, constraints, quality, and customer expectations.
The product must generate enough revenue for the organization. The time and resources for its development are planned and limited, but at the same time, it must meet the expectations of the users.
BVOP advises products’ development to meet the most important consumer needs before investing in additional features. This approach aims to deliver products quickly to real users so that early result analysis can be done, and future planning is more realistic. Parts of products that are of no value to customers should not be developed.
BVOP extends the understanding of organizational products to include valuable resources, possessions, or tools used by the organization. Software, databases, tools, or anything that brings business value to the organization can also be considered products.
Organization-owned products that add business value may have been intentionally or unintentionally created by third-party organizations or may have been developed by employees for their own use.
Examples of internal organizational products may include:
- Automated software or tools that speed up the process, production, or development.
- Databases used by the organization for administrative or other business purposes.
- Documentation used by employees or other related parties.
- Open-source software created by employees.
- Other acquired products or services used by the organization that add value.
Products that produce business value for each dimension may need additional support if they are beneficial for long-term use, or if the products can add more value in terms of efficiency, productivity, cost, and quality.
Products and Projects
Products and projects have a common understanding in the context of BVOP. The result of continuous efforts on a project is the actual development of a product that is intended to be used by an audience.
A project consists of all the initiatives and activities necessary to develop, improve, or adapt a product or multiple related products that have a common goal.
Product management in the context of BVOP is all the effort, all the activities, and processes required to create a product intended for use by an audience.
The main objectives of product management roles in the context of BVOP are:
- Establishing research, design, development, and test practices tailored to available resources, people, materials, time.
- Collect realistic data for the intended audience of the product.
- Validate all collected data, test prototypes and products for the needs of the audience.
- Creating the most valuable product features in the early stages and then focus on less important features if the audience or other parties need them.
Understanding project management in the context of BVOP is the overall related effort, all the activities and processes required to create a product and deliver it to the intended parties.
The main objectives of project management roles in the context of BVOP are:
- Completing the workload in the given time frame.
- Finishing work and product delivery with estimated financial and material resources and available workforce.
- Meeting quality expectations upon product delivery.
- Supporting products and delivery teams.
- Optimizing processes and practices and eliminating waste.
- Delivering potential business value to all project activities.
- Prevention of project risks.
The following issues related to chapter "About the Business Value-Oriented Principles" are included in the certification exam. The sequence of questions is presented in the table.
The data is current as of September 7, 2024, 2:58 pm
| ID | Issue | Time | Category |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | The four dimensions of the Business Value-Oriented Principles | 60 sec | All programs |
| 1 | Processes | 60 sec | All programs |
| 2 | People | 60 sec | All programs |
| 3 | Products | 60 sec | All programs |
| 4 | Priorities | 60 sec | All programs |
| 5 | How can BVOP help organizations, people, products, and projects? | 60 sec | All programs |
