Creating and Delivering Value at Work

What is value creation? It is creating a service or product that fulfills a need and provides satisfaction to a client. In the organization I work for, one of the core values is Client Value Creation. It is frequently mentioned in corporate emails, project wide meetings and company town halls. Value creation ensures the sustainability of a business. Without it, the business would be just a worthless endeavor that would eventually burn down on its own flames.

To stay relevant, we need to continuously improve the services we give to our clients. The enterprise should continuously provide a valuable service or product so clients would keep coming back and ensure income for the business.

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In 2012, the test automation initiative was started in our team. The goal is to increase the automated regression test cases and execute them every time there is a release to check if the system still works correctly after changes were implemented. However due to several issues like the virtual machine environment, frequent changes in objects of the application and issues in the automation process, our client has raised a concern that they do not see the return of their investment for the test automation initiative.  Our team has failed to provide the value they are expecting since most of the automated regression test scripts are not useable since they always need an update due to the changes done to the system. We found it difficult to balance supporting maintenance and quarterly releases (where test planning and manual test execution is done) with the test automation tasks (automating the regression test scripts) due to the high number of release items that need to be tested and limited team resources, the test automation effort was not given enough attention. And when time came that the client asks for the report on the usage of these automated regression test scripts, we could not provide a sensible report. We failed to deliver the value that the client expected.

When I assumed one of the leadership positions for our team, one of the major challenges was improving the test automation effort since by that time, IT is shifting towards new perspectives such as focus on automation, cloud-based systems and DevOps. We have two main challenges: How to increase the number of test automated scripts, how to create scripts faster and how to meet the target of 75% automated regression scripts by the end of the year.

By that time, the threat of another vendor acquiring our work looms in the background. We really needed to solve the problem and deliver what the client expects. Eventually, we were able to optimize our process in developing automated test scripts. The result is a significant increase in the productivity of our automation engineers in creating scripts resulting to larger coverage of automated regression test. 

It is not enough just to create value

Creating value is not enough to keep your clients, what is the sense of our test automation effort if only few test scripts are automated thus covering only a small fraction of the application? By optimizing our process, we managed to create scripts faster within timelines thus there is an increase in the regression test suite coverage of the application under test.

Optimize the way you deliver value

The service/product you provide would decrease in perceived value if you fail to deliver it quickly. Imagine ordering for home delivery of a delicious combo of burger and spaghetti from Jollibee (a popular Philippine fast food chain) but the store fails to deliver at an acceptable length of time. In the long run, Jollibee will lose its customers to other competitors. Speed is essential in any enterprise.  Speed of delivery further increases the value of your product or service.

Increasing the value you provide as an employee

Now let us go to the perspective of being an employee. If you increase your contribution in your organization, you are also increasing your value to the company and thus become eligible for promotion. Show your desire to help your organization more. Have the initiative to spearhead critical tasks or projects. Let the management notice the value you are adding to the company and you will be rewarded at the right time. If not within your company, there is always an organization ready to compensate the value you are providing, you just have to sell yourself properly.

Whether you work for an organization or you are an entrepreneur, value creation and value delivery should always be at the core of your actions and plans. These are basic and essential qualities to jumpstart or sustain a business.

What ideas do you see to create more value to your work/enterprise?

What processes do you see to help your team/organization to deliver value in a faster way?