Value Clarity Principles

From © Tom Gilb, 2011, Chapter 5: How to Quantify: Scales of Measure:

1. Objectives should be explicitly related to specific stakeholders, and to real stakeholder values.
2. Objectives should not contain any hint of ‘perceived means’ to reach them.
3. Objectives should be quantified, no excuses.
4. Don’t define objectives which are ‘apparently easy to measure’. Define them because they are critical to your purposes, even if they seem difficult to measure. #Control the right stuff, not the easy stuff!
5. It is natural to have a hierarchy of objectives, the lower levels supporting the ones above: the presumed connection should be both estimated and measured numerically.
6. Rewards should be given for measured delivery of specified value, not for effort.
7. Sales proposals should be made in terms of potential and promised satisfaction of your quantified objectives.
8. Managers who deliver stakeholder value should be given more power and budget.
9. The delivery of stakeholder value should begin early in the project (second week, in my practice!) and form a continuous flow of results, on a value-to-cost prioritized basis.
10. Sub-optimization, caused by narrow focus on a few short term objectives, must be counteracted by having focus on a balanced set of objectives, some dealing with longer term results.

Source

• http://www.idi.ntnu.no/emner/tdt4240/Syllabus/GilbChapter5.pdf