What is the definition of Business Value in Agile? — The Uncommon League

When you see this term, you might think this refers to an organization’s overall financial value and products. The context for answering this question is defining the value of a specific set of requirements, capability, feature, or user story for a product.

Business value has tangible and intangible benefits a business can get from the capabilities of a product. While mostly considered financial, other aspects can’t be measured in terms of dollars but are equally important to determining business value.

Tangible Business Value

These are items you can physically see, touch, and measure. Often we measure the tangible in dollars, but other measurements are used. Here are some examples:

Revenue Growth
Lost Revenue
Expense Reduction
Increased Expenses
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
Return on Investment (ROI)
Cycle Time Reduction
Service Level Agreement (SLA) Penalties
Service Level Agreement (SLA) Bonuses
Outage Penalties
Percentage of Market Share
Decreased Work Effort
Sprint Velocity (Speed of Product Feature Deployment)
And more

Intangible Business Value

These are items that you can’t physically see or touch. Often they are difficult to measure in terms of dollars, and determining the measurements for intangible benefits can be difficult. Here are some examples: