The Revenue/Utilization Index answers the question “How does this sprint contribute to the bottom line?”

It’s a mechanism to forecast and monitor the potential impact a sprint’s work has on the product and company, considering ROI and customer usage, so that business objectives can be tracked and evaluated more granularly and repeatedly, sprint by sprint.

Teams vary, companies and cultures vary, however, it’s not uncommon for a backlog to be prioritized by nearest term needs first. That sensible. Yet, examining those needs through the lens of direct benefit to company financials, DAUs or MAUs, and specific feature engagement can be neglected. It’s more typical to strive to get a chunk of work complete or a feature out the door and not particularly consider implications to near-term upsides and/or to wait and see if there’s an expected benefit.

The Revenue/Utilization Index is a significant evolution to that basic thinking, where an expected sprint outcome is intended to be directly impactful and quantifiable. In that way, the business value at the conclusion of a sprint is anticipated and carefully planned for, during sprint planning.

The benefits include:

• Business outcome sprint planning from the lens of a near-term value-ad
• Reduction in variability of the selection of stories included in a sprint
• Close adherence to what can be described as a micro-roadmap
• Holding all involved to a mindset of outcome based delivery
• Closer engagement of engineering teams in product customer value
• A mechanism to limit the preventable accrual of technical debt
• Better tracking/reporting of the evolution and business impact of features and the product