Delivering Value is First and Foremost a Personal Agenda

Make delivering value a part of your everyday approach to work, and you’ll begin to see the benefits everywhere.

Agile Thrives in a Value-Driven Environment

One of the first pillars of an Agile mindset is value-based delivery. In the world of business, this means delivering the right product to the right customer at the right time. 

Customers want what is valuable to them, not just what’s given to them. This is often what makes the difference between which products succeed and which once fade into obscurity.

If you’ve ever been part of an Agile team before, you know that the team dynamic depends on what each member brings as an individual.

Whether you’re a Product Owner, a Scrum Master, or a technical team member, you need to be value-driven. Continually ask yourself: what value am I adding to the final product? 

The Individual Power of Delivering Value

The importance of teams in the Agile approach doesn’t diminish the importance of individual contributions. In fact, it’s the opposite. Consistent, value-driven actions on the individual level help strengthen the team and make an Agile environment more possible.

The more you think about delivering value versus just completing tasks, the more you’ll start to see how you become more adaptable, flexible, and efficient. 

“Consistent, value-driven actions on the individual level help strengthen the team and make an Agile environment more possible.”

For example, say you’re a Quality Analyst in a team working on creating support for a new software product. The non-value-added approach would have you run your own tests and then take whatever bugs come up to the developer. This ends your involvement there and has you side-step the overall process of value delivery. 

A value-added approach would have you collaborate with the developer to run tests and make changes concurrently to build a final, high-quality product that serves end-users in the best possible way. A final product that delivers value to the end-user, above all else.

Everyone on the team has focused on value delivery throughout the process, on the individual level and the team level. 

Your Value-Driven Approach Can Inspire Others 

You might notice that your team feels both more stable and more limber. They may be able to handle just about anything that might come up in your daily Scrum meetings or while doing their work.

But the workplace isn’t the only setting where value delivery matters.  When you treat value delivery as a personal value, no matter what you’re doing, all of your actions have the potential to deliver value .

Say you’re cooking a meal with someone or helping your child with their homework. Go beyond your usual role and see how else you can contribute. What tips or tricks for focusing can you share with your child? Can you step in and stir something or prepare some bread to go with dinner?

In the end, it’s easy to see how thinking about how you can contribute to deliver value can lead to some good results. Like a happy kid with a completed homework assignment, or a delicious meal.

Once you focus on delivering value, you might be surprised as others follow your lead. But this is only natural. Whether at work or at home, the benefits of the flexibility and adaptability inherent in a value-driven mindset become clear.