(Length: 2 pages)

Executive Summary (This is a document excerpt)

Traditional application development projects estimate the cost and duration of a project and then report on progress relative to the plan. This approach communicates how much work has been completed but does not address the value of the work. As IT organizations increasingly are accountable for delivering value to the business, it makes sense that they should report progress along that goal. Agile development teams have begun to use this approach (along with other development metrics), but there's no reason why the measure of business value delivered cannot be used by teams using more traditional development methodologies as well.