Here's a simple idea. Try using the same sensibilities you use to calculate story points for user stories for estimating business value.
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Peter Says...
What really counts for IT organizations? In most cases, the business struggles to get the most value from IT. They do their best to develop requirements, road maps and strong relationships, but still, they struggle with missed expectations.
Last week, I was talking with a group of super-smart architects when the topic of design came up. As you might expect, this happens pretty frequently for me. But this time, I was struck by how different our ideas were about the nature of design.
Most dictionaries offer mundane, concrete definitions for design, emphasizing either the creation of a specification or the planning of something to be built. In some cases, they touch on aesthetics, but only with some unease. Wikipedia, on the other hand, offers a scholarly analysis of different types of design and the intended purpose of each. It's a pretty tough read if you ask me. John Maeda, author of "The Laws of Simplicity", shares his thoughts on the topic on his blog. This is a pretty good read for the initiated with lots of insight and implications, but it feels like most of the talk is about design, how to recognize good design or the role of simplicity in design, for example, rather than an attempt to define it.
At Navicet, here's how we think about it...
I spent most of my 13 years at Microsoft developing ways for IT teams to deliver business value more effectively.
It was a long road. It all started when I joined Microsoft Consulting Services in 2001. I was delighted to find myself a small fish in a big pond of smart, motivated fish on the cutting edge of technology. The biggest surprise, however, was that the systems and tools that supported our business processes didn’t do a very good job supporting the actual work we needed to accomplish. This seemed like an ironic problem for a big technology company like Microsoft to have, so I set off to find out how this could be...
Four weeks ago, I packed up my office at Microsoft for the last time. In the quiet calm of a clear calendar, I had a chance to survey the 13 years I spent at the company, looking for the most important tidbits that I’d take with me. I ended up posting them as parting thoughts for the coworkers I was leaving behind.
They turned out to be pretty popular, so I’m sharing them here again...
Personas and user scenarios play a big role in Design for Business Value. When we first introduce the methodology, one common question we hear is, “My project doesn’t have any users, so will this still work for us?”
We were puzzled as to what type of project won’t have some impact on users, so we dug a little deeper...
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