Value Canvas in Projects

Developed by Sebastian Walther

Abstract

Everyday companies design products and services to make their customers’ lives easier. Due to the fast-moving world, technological progress and other aspects, most of nowadays markets are very competitive. On the one hand, this high competition provides a huge selection for customer to choose from, but on the other hand, companies need to figure out exactly what their customers want and need. The Value Proposition Canvas as part of the Business Model Canvas helps and supports companies to design the right products and services to meet their customer requirements. This approach was introduced for the first time by Alexander Osterwalder in the 2000s as part of his work on Business Model Ontology. Similar to the Business Model Canvas, a given template guides the project manager or other employees aligned to the project through the two “maps”, namely the “customer profile” and the “value map”. The customer profile is divided into three sub sections – jobs, pains and gains. The second part is the value map, including the company’s products and services, pain relievers and gain creators. In the following article the overall Value Canvas process is described with its roles, meetings and application. In addition, some helpful considerations regarding project management when using the Value Canvas in new projects are provided. Furthermore, the benefits as well as limitations of the Value Canvas methodology related to project management are discovered and critically analysed.

The Value Canvas Process

One of the main tasks of each company and hence, their project leaders, is to design and develop products and services to facilitate their customers’ lives. However, 72 percent of newly developed products fail. That means, customers do not care about 7 out of 10 products introduced to the market. Global players such as Nintendo experienced failure by launching its first gaming console, namely the Famicom console. Further gaming consoles, such as the Atari or Nintendo NES also did not convince the customers. Nintendo was not the only one who struggled to offer the right products to an emerging market, other big companies, such as Apple, launched a number of failures to the market.