How do I ask a stakeholder about their valuation of improvement amount curve?

Question

On a daily basis I have the urge to ask someone, about a measurable (usually intermediate) target I can work towards or otherwise allocate resources towards, how much (Y) would value to them getting how close (X) [to infinitely-well].

• « What is the curve of the function of "when" vs "how much for you"? »
• « What is the curve of "when we will deliver half" to ditto? »
• « What is the curve of "how much by March" to ditto? »
• « What is the function curve of "how much improvement in quality KPI ‘XYZ’ benefits you how much"? »

How do I ask that? My friends/stakeholders often get annoyed when I ask them about "the curve", "definition of such a function", "points of matters-value alterations".

At my job I get trainings on Lean and such. Although I am mostly trying to manage personal, flatmates-landlord, or otherwise playground-grade tinyorg leadership obligations when I am thinking of asking that.

Answer 1

State that you can deliver the whole "thing" in a given time, but you may be able to get some value for the customer earlier, if they can prioritise what they would like first. If they agree, ask what they would like, and what that is worth to them. If they wonder why you want that level of detail, explain that you want to understand how you can help them to add value and to do that effectively you need to understand where the value comes from.

Having done that, you may be able to ask for other intermediate milestones that you could deliver. But do be aware that delivering a series of intermediate milestones may take longer than delivering everything at one time, and so you should only do this if you believe that the added value of getting some "stuff" early will exceed the extra cost of these intermediate deliveries.

Or go fully Agile, and get the customer to act as Product Manager, defining deliverables for the next sprint. He / you may ever discover that you don't need the full scope as originally specified, or that new things come along that add more value than was previously expected.

Answer 2

TL;DR

You are optimizing for mathematics, not outcomes. Unless you're dealing with mathematicians, that is likely not a useful approach. Focus on defining what a successful outcome looks like to your stakeholders, and treat abstract mental models (as opposed to demonstrable usefulness) to a minimum.

Value is Generally Qualitative

On a daily basis I have the urge to ask someone, about a measurable (usually intermediate) target I can work towards or otherwise allocate resources towards[.]

From the rest of your question, it's not clear to me why you want to measure value on a curve, or why you think half of anything has intrinsic value. From an agile framework perspective:

1. Things are generally binary: they are either done or not-done, and it doesn't matter if "76% of everything is 52% done."
2. Frameworks like Scrum have clearly-defined Product Goals, and you make progress towards one Product Goal at a time by having Sprint Goals that are potentially-shippable slices of value along the path to the Product Goal.
3. Replace how you think about "quality" with fitness-for-purpose, since quality in the abstract rarely has value but usability, maintainability, and product/market fit are often measurable.
4. Iterative or incremental approaches can be declared done anytime they're "good enough" for some purpose. Likewise, they can be killed off early to avoid chasing sunk costs.

There are certainly other frameworks such as Earned Value Management (EVM) that take a different approach, where each "chunk" of completed work is defined as having some monetary value. If that's how you think about your projects, then maybe that's a good framework for you, but defining value (and especially partial value) is going to remain a very complicated problem that EVM probably won't spoon-feed you. In most cases, no matter how many formulae you apply, "value" is largely a qualitative assessment and will likely remain a judgment call no matter what framework you select.

Alignment or Consensus Often Requires Agreement on Subjective Metrics

If you decide to pursue the value-based approach anyway, you essentially need to get stakeholders to agree on:

1. What "value" means to each of them.

2. How value will be measured.

3. How to compare and contrast value propositions from multiple points of view.

   Note: There are techniques for this such as relative weighting, theme scoring, or success sliders, but ultimately you still have to get stakeholders to agree on a set of metrics to create alignment.

Ultimately, you need to take a step back and figure out what you're actually trying to solve for with your questions. While it's certainly possible to extract value from a project or process without 100% completion, your goal really ought to be helping people think about what's "good enough" rather than focusing on algorithmically optimizing for budget vs. schedule or quality vs. scope. The whole profession of project management is ultimately about producing useful outcomes, not about idealized mathematics, despite the fact that many frameworks use various metrics to monitor progress towards those outcomes.