The hamburger

Teams often struggle to determine what is meant by value and how to break down a product to still deliver value. A useful exercise to explain this is the hamburger story.

• Draw a layered hamburger on the board: the top bun, lettuce and tomato layer, cheese layer, the hamburger, and the bottom bun.

• Present the following story: “Imagine ordering a hamburger at a burger joint. We are hungry and want to eat quickly. The employee says it takes 20 minutes for the whole hamburger to be ready but can deliver a part of it every 5 minutes. We can choose between a quarter of the hamburger or just the top bun. What do you choose?” Of course, we choose a quarter of the hamburger, not just the top bun. The latter has insufficient value, while a quarter of a hamburger still has value.

• Ask the team if they can view value this way. Given the product, how can they divide it into smaller pieces that each provide value to the customer? Avoid delivering parts that have no value by themselves.