A paper in the current edition of Systems Engineering, Vol 13, No, 4, 2010, has a paper titled "Value Creation in Program and System Engineering Processes." The abstract reads.
Almost every large system is initiated with an intention of building something, which has new value to its stakeholders. Yet, turning this simple statement into reality is often problematic since the concept of value is not always explicitly defined or structurally incorporated in the formal frameworks of program planning and systems engineering. Quite often, beyond traditional financial measures or technical and operational requirements, there is little agreement of what program value really means, and there are limited theoretical models that could help conceptualize and focus its essence. In this exploratory study, we investigated the components of program value in several major defense programs that were nominated for Aviation Week’s Program Excellence Award. Among other things, these programs had to declare what value their product created. Our findings resulted in an initial framework, which identifies program value according to three major groups: value to the customer, value to the performing organization, and value to the team. The specific value components identified in our data suggest that program value could be formally and explicitly integrated into program planning and systems engineering processes. It can also lead to further research and new applications that will be focused on value creation, rather than just meeting performance and technical specifications. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Eng 13: 340–352, 2010.
For any nontrivial project, the identification, management and production of "value" in projects is the domain of Systems Engineering and the programmatic controls groups, along with the engineers.
The measure of value must be in units meaningful to the decision maker. In most cases this means measuring value in dollars (or some currency).