The following article is part of the self-preparation for the modern BVOP® Project Management Certification program.
The definition of Business Value refers to the well-being of organizations, customers, and products. Real examples are presented below.
- What is Business Value in the BVOP context?
- Why do we need business value?
- Kaizen, Lean and MVP principles
- Major examples of added business value
- Waste
What is Business Value in the BVOP context?
Business Value is a core term throughout BVOP teaching and all project, product, and people management principles rely on the idea of delivering business value in all organizational activities.
Why do we need business value?
Each product or service has the potential to become a successful initiative. At the same time, the organization can save resources and shorten its production cycles. End-users and customers can feel the effort put into the product or service. This, in turn, increases the business value for the entire organization.
Kaizen, Lean and MVP principles
The old Kaizen, Lean, and MVP principles in product manufacturing have long sought to push the idea of optimizing and increasing the business value of products. Even today, however, many organizations do not expose the necessary attention to the topic.
The following article presents the concept of business value and proposes it in any modern Agile-oriented product organization. This chapter is part of the preparation for BVOP management certification programs.
About this chapter
This chapter is an excerpt from the training materials for BVOP™ management certification.
Business Value is a common and widely used term covering many topics related to the general well-being of organizations, economic factors, products, customers, projects, and management models.
The business value in the context of Business Value-Oriented Principles (BVOP) refers to adding positive effort to:
- Organizational culture
- Human Relations
- Relationships between business and people
- Employee attitude, skills, and maturity
- Human Resources
- Work processes
- Contributing
- Time-to-market
- Reducing waste
- Shortened production processes
- Usability, utility, and value of products
- The satisfaction of users and clients
- Innovation
The BVOP states that adding an effort to any of the topics listed may positively affect others, therefore increasing the overall value of the organization and its products.
Business value can be added by anyone involved in organizations, their products, and projects.
Major examples of added business value
- Organizational culture provokes people to be proactive, contribute, share, and be aware of the business goals of the organization.
- Modernization and innovation.
- People in the organization respect each other and work productively.
- The high turnover rate is limited to a minimum
- Conflicts and negative environments are minimized.
- The organizational brand image grows.
- Everyone in the organization continually improves their personal and professional qualities.
- Team members seek and eliminate impediments without waiting for management to do so.
- Management and team members work together in optimizing processes and speed up development time.
- Costs are managed and carefully planned.
- Tools and environments are improved continuously.
- Unnecessary documentation, processes and communications are avoided.
- Root causes of issues, defects, and impediments are analyzed, tracked, and eliminated.
- Quality standards are followed and met without a significant waste of time and resources.
- Overwork is managed, and teams do not spend too much time on trivial tasks.
- Documentation and requirements are created and maintained in an easy and comfortable style, so everyone understands them with ease and saves time from unnecessary discussions and misunderstandings.
- Meetings and discussions do not lead to a waste of time and always lead to desired results.
- Product development focuses on the most important goals and needs.
- All outcomes, concepts, and product versions are validated with real users, and the risk of an undesired product is limited.
- Customers' and users' satisfaction continuously grows.
Waste
The BVOP focuses on eliminating waste in all offices, products, projects, and processes within the organizations.
The following issues related to chapter "Business Value" are included in the certification exam. The sequence of questions is presented in the table.
The data is current as of December 1, 2024, 10:52 pm
| ID | Issue | Time | Category |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Waste | 60 sec | All programs |
| 1 | What is Business Value in the BVOP context? | 60 sec | All programs |
| 2 | About this chapter | 60 sec | All programs |
| 3 | Kaizen, Lean and MVP principles | 60 sec | All programs |
| 4 | Why do we need business value? | 60 sec | All programs |
| 5 | Major examples of added business value | 60 sec | All programs |
Comments from the BVOP™ community on “Business Value”
Barbara J. Cooper
The business value topic is usually omitted when talking about managing organizations, projects, or products. BVOP, in addition to emphasizing business value, expands the topic, adds a lot of new knowledge and involves people in organizations as a major source of value.
Profit is not the only thing that business organizations need to focus on. This is an outdated ideology of the previous generation of revenue-focused activities, where nothing else matters. We have all witnessed over the last few decades how far this has happened.
Contemporary organizations, projects, products, teams, and users have a new vision of the world, defend causes, communicate daily online, share and fight for a better world.
In the context of people involved in companies, any modern organization must take care of the attitude, well-being, and development of its staff.
Marta Williams
Business value is the opposite of waste. Waste elimination and constant attention to non-waste is also a major manifestation of business value-adding in the organization, product development, project management, and human resources.
BVOP supports the idea that waste and losses for the organization are often hidden, and middle and senior management is often unaware of how much the organization loses when its key roles are unaware of this matter, and procedures are not put in place to eliminate waste and losses.
Summary
Business Value is a crucial concept in BVOP teaching, where all management principles aim to deliver it in all organizational activities. It helps organizations save resources, shorten production cycles, and increase the value for end-users and customers. The Kaizen, Lean, and MVP principles have long focused on optimizing and increasing the business value of products. However, many organizations still do not pay enough attention to this topic. The article proposes the concept of business value in any modern Agile-oriented product organization and is part of the preparation for BVOP management certification programs.
Business Value is a term used to describe the overall well-being of organizations, products, customers, projects, and management models. In the context of BVOP, it refers to adding positive effort to various aspects such as organizational culture, human relations, work processes, time-to-market, reducing waste, and innovation. The BVOP suggests that improving any of these areas can positively impact others, leading to an increase in overall value. Anyone involved in organizations, products, and projects can contribute to adding business value.
Ways to add business value include promoting a proactive and productive organizational culture, limiting turnover rates and negative environments, improving personal and professional qualities, optimizing processes and development time, managing costs and tools, avoiding unnecessary documentation and communications, analyzing and eliminating root causes of issues, following quality standards, managing overwork, creating easy-to-understand documentation and requirements, and validating outcomes with real users to increase customer satisfaction.
- Previous article About the Business Value-Oriented Principles
In my view, business value can be gained from many practices and processes. The problem, however, is whether the company recognizes the "cost" of business value. If we try to increase the business value of development processes, but at the same time the company's bosses do not realize the motivation of the teams, for example, or the working environment, all this effort is in vain. Focusing on a goal, but ignoring the whole state of your business is the biggest enemy of any organization. Few are the big managers who can deal with such situations.
Amazing publication. I rarely meet such valuable resources, but the Business Value Oriented Principles is already my favorite one. Sources of a business value can be found everywhere and multiple approaches may be helpful in increasing it. The examples above are great and not very mature organizations can benefit from this list.
I would very much like to emphasize my idea that actually business value is the opposite of waste, and waste is the opposite of business value. If we eliminate waste in our work processes, resources, and products, we are, in fact, again delivering business value to our products and our organization at a high level.
Let us also add to the topics the investment in vocational training and qualifications. Everyone in the team will gain even more skills, the work will be done faster and the end results will see the light of day faster.