Structure and criteria defining business value in agile software development based on hierarchical analysis

In recent years, agile software development as the most popular development approach has been considered by software teams and companies. In this approach, the business value is one of the concepts that achieving it especially has been emphasized in the agile software project. Despite this emphasis, a formal and appropriate definition of this concept has not been provided. In this study, to solve this challenge, we present a formal structure including necessary values and criteria for defining business value. Using hierarchical analysis, these criteria were weighted. The results of the analysis show what is called business value is often from the customer's point of view that improving competitive position, operational income, and return on investment are the most important components. Data analysis also shows that the customer perspective, financial perspective, and user perspective have a great effect on the definition of business value.