Currently, I am doing research on “value creation in software development process”.

From my point view, “the success of any business can be achieved by focusing on the success-critical stakeholders being satisfied”. In software development, there are two groups of success-critical stakeholders their roles are crucial: developers and customers since developer is the producer of value and customer is the user of value..

Developer define value in terms of the satisfaction of him/her-self, management, customer. On the other hand, customer define value in terms of the benefits that he/she will get against cost he/she will give.

Even they have different perceptions of value, but they share some understanding.

I think if we align their values through finding the intersections between their values, then both of them will be highly satisfied and as a result other stakeholders will be satisfied.

You can find thoughts on your question here:
http://www.bridging-the-gap.com/thoughts-on-quality-vs-speed-to-market/

Laura

My take is that ‘value’ is determined by the consumer and ‘quality’ is determined by the provider. The relation is that, for what ever reason, the consumer may value quality as an attribute of the product. Car doors that fit and close with a satisfying clunk, for example.

For software it can be argued that the relation between quality and value is more tenuous. Business consumers value lower cost and ‘do what i want’ functionality. The well high quality, engineered inter-module communication scheme (equivalent of good door fit, balance, and dynamics) is a bore because it isn’t well connected to a consumer value proposition.

Lore admonishes avoidance of over engineering and focus on ‘good enough’. This lore may contribute to rate of project failure and excessive focus on governance over engineering leading to lack of consumer value beyond satisfaction of the immediate requirement scope, reinforcing the gap between quality and value.

I, for one, think a shift to a customer value down view of quality similar to what the Japanese car manufacturers adopted in the late 70′s is a available, obvious, and extremely challenging cultural change.

Net net, I’d agree with Pat that value is a function of the stakeholder, and with Laura that it is part of the BA role to clarify how value is embodied in particular situations.

There are clearly situations when being clear who your customer is, what your role is, and letting them fight their own battles is appropriate. Personal or turf battles aren’t helped by analysis.

It is equally clear that the BA role as liaison requires providing effective communications among stakeholders. Even in the case of upper-level squabbles it may be possible to advise your customer on the differences in perceived value and suggest win-win strategies. I have seen a few multi-year battles reach very positive conclusions in this way. I have also seen big projects die when the root cause of the conflict was exposed. (I hold the capital, you get the revenue. No.)

The key, I think, is to dig under the surface and understand the linguistic framing and analytical reality of the conflict.

The linguistic framing involves identifying the ‘big animals’ in the participants world. For example, executives may think in terms of responsible organizations and the flow of investments and revenue while operational managers may think in terms of individual people and flow of work. This provides a path to communication. In some cases simply re-framing the discussion may provide resolution.

One analytical framework that works well is a definition of ‘value’ as an external resources (liberally interpreted) each stake holder needs to be successful. If everyone gets what they need with out having their autonomy or their potential for value delivery impinged upon, resolution is much easier. It’s astonishing how quickly deep, long standing conflicts can be resolved with this approach. Even more astonishing is how highly collaborative, mutually cooperative interactions that consume large amounts of time and effort can be eliminated with the same approach.