Last summer I got introduced to Ric Parkin, editor of Overload. He asked if I was interested in writing an article on Evo’s influence on Agile thinking...or at least that’s what I recall he asked about. After procrastinating, missing at least 4 deadlines and likely trying Ric’s patience, I finally got it done in January and it’s just been published in the February edition of Overload. Without further ado, here’s the world premier of:

Measurable Value with Agile

Are you solving the right problem or simply solving the problem right?

It’s a story about Nancy, VP of Marketing for a non-profit company, who is responsible for turning 2009 business strategy into a set of measurable objectives that improve funding decisions and identify the best opportunities for investment. The dev team is doing Scrum, but Nancy finds there’s a lot of gray area between the business strategy and the prioritized backlog the team expects.

The article helps Nancy and her team through this challenge by introducing Value Delivery, an approach that combines concepts from Evo and Scrum. I’d argue its a lightweight (dare I say Agile?) approach to ensure you’re both solving the right problem and solving the problem right.

After reading the article, leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts. Do the concepts make sense? Could these concepts be implemented on your Scrum team? If not, why not?

Note: If you’re planning to attend Agile 2009, I’ll hopefully be doing a session based on this article on the Customers & Business Value stage....that is if I can get some good reviews :-)