Need to create value quickly – then get rid of half of your features

A recent industry evaluation found that the majority of features delivered in software releases produce little or no value to the end-users – 45% of features never being used, and 19% being rarely used, the remaining 36% being used in varying amounts.

This clearly suggests that a good way to increase the rate of delivered value is to take a ruthless look at all the parts of the backlog of the projects we work on with a view of stripping out 40 – 60% of the items. This is underscored by the first agile principle “Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.” where we must keep the emphasis on valuable.

A key flaw in many scrum projects it that stories do not clearly define value, either it is left out or framed in ambiguous terms, no wonder then that so many features are left unused. A simple first step might be to relegate any story without a clear and enumerated value to the end of the backlog.

References: 1 What Next? Advances in Software Driven Industries Christof Ebert, Gerd Hoefner and Mani V.S. IEEE Software, vol 32, no. 1, 2015