You are not the Beholder

How is the work you're doing right now valuable to The Business?

Oh sorry, I wasn't asking you, I was asking your boss.

You see, to determine the value of your work, the person perceiving the value is rolling the perception check. Not you.

In other words, your value is in the eyes of the Beholder.

For example, if your current project is to migrate an AngularJS app to React, you might believe the value is:

• Cleaner state management with React and Redux
• Maintainable architecture using a Backend-for-the-Frontend pattern
• Faster network calls with GraphQL

But you are not the Beholder. Your product owner is.

The value you're delivering to them is:

• Managing the metadata of 200 products instead of 10 with a fast interface
• Ensuring the master-data product source stops being filled with invalid data
• Stopping complaints from vendors that the app is slow and unstable

If you can clearly articulate the value you help deliver for your projects in terms of business results, you'll have plenty of value-dipped arrows to shoot bulls-eyes at those annual performance targets.