Plans are afoot from product management to start adding subjective value to requests (release plan) and raised defects.

When a story closes the customer rates the value it delivered and updates the overal status of the value delivered as they see it i.e. (+/-/none). This (the theory goes) will allow us to plot value and stop developers concentrating on burn-down’s and prioritize valuable items over non-valuable. It will also allow us to schedule clumps of “minor” defects over stories, because the value of fixing the defects will exceed a given story (polishing in disguise and a replacement for team improvement?).

I look forward to seeing how this pans out, but feel people have missed the point about Agile and are taping even more stuff around a simple system which takes active communication and participation over “long distance” metrics. I do think developers should have an understanding of business/commercial value, but the Agile process has at its centre an active customer who physically drives the backlog, the next story is the next most valuable item (defects = stories)? This feels like a proxy for the customer and a means to see the distance between them and the development team. “This is of no value”, “why did you accept the story”, “I didn’t” – Hmm, stories have lost their value?

Don’t get me wrong, I encourage experimentation and I really hope this pans out. Worry its not really been thought through…