The Art of Business Value

By: Mark Schwartz

Narrated by: Eric Martin

Do you really understand what business value is? Information technology can and should deliver business value. But the Agile literature has paid scant attention to what business value means - and how to know whether or not you are delivering it. This problem becomes ever more critical as you push value delivery toward autonomous teams and away from requirements "tossed over the wall" by business stakeholders. An empowered team needs to understand its goal!

Playful and thought-provoking, The Art of Business Value explores what business value means, why it matters, and how it should affect your software development and delivery practices. More than any other IT delivery approach, DevOps (and Agile thinking in general) makes business value a central concern. This book examines the role of business value in software and makes a compelling case for why a clear understanding of business value will change the way you deliver software.

This book will make you think deeply about not only what it means to deliver value but also the relationship of the IT organization to the rest of the enterprise. It will give you the language to discuss value with the business, methods to cut through bureaucracy, and strategies for incorporating Agile teams and culture into the enterprise. Most of all, this book will startle you into new ways of thinking about the cutting-edge of Agile practice and where it may lead.

©2017 Mark Schwartz (P)2017 Mark Schwartz

Worth a couple of articles at best -- do not buy

This is probably one of the first negative reviews that I am writing on any book. Only in the last two chapters there is some discussions on what business value could be. That material there is probably worth only a couple of blog posts or articles - I felt disappointed in buying a book for it. Well, I could return the book and get a refund, but I did keep it as a memory of the lack of "value" - that is great teacher.

Mark Schwarz clearly from the book moans about Scrum and the role of the Product Owner. I get it, PO role is poorly constructed in most organizations. But his book is filled with confirming his misunderstandings of meta process frameworks. He expects Scrum and Large Scale Scrum to define what "value" is. "Value" is in the eyes of the beholder. Scrum/LeSS neither defines "value" nor defines "product management" nor defines "software development practices" not defines "release management practices" -- there are several models, frameworks and practices covering those. They neither make a claim that they are the answer to these practices.

For eg. Amazon values their customers but not their employees so much. SouthWest loves their customers, but their employees even more. And someone like Uber values neither its employees, its customers, its contracted drivers, but only focuses on itself - making money.

I would strongly suggest that Mark pull this book out from the store, go back to his basics and start learning "Scrum" again.

Great perspective on how to bring value

This book offers up a very sound perspective that can help you ensure you bring value to your organization.

Dense, tedious, not incorrect, humorous...

just not accessible to mere mortals. Slightly annoyed that the subject of the book is not defined until near the end. Counter-intuitive...

Interesting perspective, poses good questions

Got me to think about “business value” in a new light. Also has a very interesting stance on bureaucracy as a form of business value and institutional memory. As a millennial trained to hate bureaucracy in all its forms this matured my view on the issue I think. Anyway, good quick listen. Will likely need to listen to again later.
The book also made a useful distinction between customer value and business value. That while often overlapping these can be distinct things.

Critical Reading for anyone in Sales

Read this book while preparing for a job interview in technical sales management. The insights and thoughts in this book were helpful in getting a much better understanding about how buyers are now thinking and acting on business value.

Technology has changed, and is constantly changing, and our approach to selling has changed. This helped open my eyes about the determination of value in the eyes of a buyer, and how sellers must adapt.

This should be required reading.