====== How Do We Assign Business Value to PI Objectives? ======

There seems to be a lot of question the use of "business value" with PI Objectives, around the process of setting the value of PI Objectives, and how they are worked during the Program Increment. Let's look into this in more detail.


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====== How Do We Assign Business Values to PI Objectives? ======

How do we make the process smoother and more useful? One thing to note in the above "why" discussion is that the Business Value associated with a PI Objective is a team level discussion. The purpose is:

  * Ensure common understanding of the commitment being made.
  * Enable local decision making for the team.
  * Allow us to create and track a metric which shows a team's ability to make and meet commitments.

What does this mean? It means we don’t really have to try to establish a Train / Program concept of Business Value but simply use a team-by-team approach. The approach I've found to work well is:

  - Business Owner reviews a specific Team's PI Objectives
  - Business Owner selects the most valuable of those PI Objectives and assigns it a value of 10.
  - Business Owner selects the next most valuable PI Objective and determines "in comparison with that 10 valued PI Objective, this PI Objective is an X".
  - Repeat 3 until done.

This process allows us to have the discussions we need, while reducing the "arbitrariness" of the process, at the same time providing the data to use in the Program Increment:

  * Teams can use the relative values to improve their (local) decision making processes.
  * Teams can create the metric to show how they are making and meeting commitments. This is called the "predictability metric" and is percentage calculated by comparing the sum of the Business Values planned by the team in comparison to the sum of the Business Values actually delivered by the team.

Probably the biggest problem with the assignment of Business Value is when the PI Objectives do not clearly articulate the value, or is written in such a way that the business is not able to understand what is being done. It is therefore important that PI Objectives are “good” - see references below for more information.

Another problem that we sometimes see is when people confuse what they are providing. For example some people start to think “if I have PI Objective 1 as a 10, and PI Objective 2 as an 8, then this means that the 10 item will be worked first.” Business Value is a value, not a priority. It might be used to make prioritization decisions but it is not showing the priority of the work.

Note that as a side benefit, the train / program level metric for predictability percentage calculated by comparing the sum of the Business Values planned by the teams on the train in comparison to the sum of the Business Values actually delivered by the teams on the train. At both the team and program level the metric is presented as “are we making and meeting commitments to deliver value?”

>> In summary, "How do we assign Business Value?" Team by Team, where every Team has at least one PI Objective with Business Value of 10, and Business Values are relative to that for the team.

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====== Want to Know More? ======

  * [[How Do We Write Good PI Objectives?]]
  * [[what_is_the_purpose_of_iteration_or_sprint_goals|What is the Purpose of Sprint or Iteration Goals?]]: While originally written from the perspective of Scrum Teams creating Sprint Goals, PI Objectives can be seen as Uber-Sprint Goals and so can provide additional background such as why we do PI Objectives at all and how these are different to features we are working as part of a PI Planning process.
  * https://www.scaledagileframework.com/pi-objectives : Original write-up from SAFe
  * http://www.yakyma.com/2013/02/the-17-truths-about-psi-objectives.html : Excellent write-up by Alex Yakyma discussing concepts and thinking behind PI Objectives
  * I am indebted to Bernie Clarke who originally helped me think through the process.

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