Pascal Van Cauwenberghe has written a great post on estimating business value, tying it into a feature-injection style template. I particularly like the idea of calculating business velocity, and showing value earned over cost on a visible chart.
Even though we know that cost accounting isn’t useful without looking at ROI, many companies still have this focus (how many people have had problems getting hold of sharpies because they’re "too expensive"? Coloured post-its? Free coffee?)
Perhaps by making the return on investment over time apparent to everyone, we can motivate the team, show the value we’re earning and gain the trust of the business at the same time.
As an aside, I remember one client where the deadline was very tight, but nobody wanted to work overtime or weekends. Our PM asked us if there was anything we’d like to have which would help us work more effectively. We asked for – and got – fresh fruit every day. The difference in our work – both the amount and quality – was noticeable! (We already felt very well respected, so I discount the placebo effect here).
It’s amazing how much difference a few pounds of expense can make.
On an aside, some people have asked me why I’ve chosen to set up my services site as a hard-coded website with server-side includes, instead of using another Wordpress blog or something similar. I did it because:
- It was the quickest way I could think of to get a website out with a reasonable amount of content
- I wanted to be able to get the style right (or at least usable) before I had to wrap it around Wordpress
- I had no idea what I was going to put in the website when I started.
Having said that, it’s now annoying me. There’s enough up there that the next stage is to, um, move it to a customised Wordpress site (it should look exactly the same, but be easier for me to administer).
I did learn a lot about CSS, Mercurial over SSH from Windows, and Apache SSI configuration while I was playing with this. It will be much easier for me to set up the Wordpress site, now I know what I don’t want on it and what I need for the styling to work. And I didn’t need a Wordpress site when I started. YAGNI wins again.
I’ve put up a page on lunivore.com which describes how I use the Dreyfus Model in coaching. This model was the one we adapted to mark the XP values in the Game of Life workshop at Screwfix, and I’ve also found it powerful when used in one-on-one coaching in combination with GROW and well-formed outcomes.
It’s taken me a fair bit of practice to get good at building Dreyfus models, using them appropriately and adapting them for different organisations; however, I’ve not encountered much downside to using them. If anything, the act of creating them has taught me a great deal (Dan North reckons there’s a Dreyfus Model for Dreyfus Modelling.)
lunivore.com has changed hugely since this post was written. For more about the Dreyfus model, see here.
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