It is easy to confuse producing deliverables with creating value. This principle insists on the difference: value is the outcome those deliverables enable, judged from the customer’s or organization’s perspective. Teams continually evaluate alignment to business objectives and adapt to maximize the value they expect to create.
Value can be financial, but it can also be social benefit, public good, or a customer’s perceived benefit — and it can be realized during the project, at its end, or only afterward. The practical discipline is to keep a live line of sight from each deliverable back to the benefit it is meant to produce, and to rework or drop scope that no longer serves that benefit.
Common misunderstanding. Hitting scope, schedule, and budget is not the same as delivering value. A project can finish on time and on budget and still create little value if the outcome no longer matters.