The idea of value has always been used as an abstraction to justify an argument that can't stand on its own. When activities and relationships are claimed to be valuable, they don't need to be justified or proven from a commercial or logical point of view. Using words like valuable creates a circular argument that doesn't address purpose and therefore doesn't make anyone wiser.
The concept of value started in agriculture and farming, with sunshine, water and nutrition as necessary conditions for growing food. Adam Smith introduced the idea of growth of wealth and prosperity in The Wealth of Nations. Smith believed there were different types of values, depending on if the item was used or exchanged for something else. Other economists, including Karl Marx, argued that value was only created through labor. Marx even argued that automation and machinery didn’t create value, it was the labor that built the machines that created the value. In hindsight, they all failed to more precisely define the meaning with value. Today, financial economics talk about value chains and value-added work in manufacturing and distribution, but they are only interested in the financial aspects of it. Post-classical economy makes a strong connection between price and value, while other economists talk about purpose and objectives, to reach higher level goals in society, either they are health, education, convenience or living standards. We could substitute value with transaction but that will not solve much as we need to define different types of transactions – such as customer, internal, and supplier based transactions – where one type of transaction is not more important than the other, and one type of transaction can't replace another kind.
The software industry has copied the jargon and talks about value creation and value chains in their software creation cycle. To describe what is happening in product development this way is not entirely unproblematic. End users are not interested in paying extra for tools and methods that are used to build a product. Versioning tools, editors and libraries are a means to an end rather than something that users pay extra for. They pay for the very personal experience of using a piece of software and what it can achieve, not for how it was made. They can be interested in how a product can enable them to reach personal or organisational goals, for commercial or strategic purposes, but it usually boils down to problem solving; and organisational goals are not seldom interpreted in a more personal context, such as learning new skills and appreciating how a tool can enable users to succeed in everyday work. We thus talk about chains of objectives and goals rather than value, which is even more apparent in the usage of embedded software that solves more narrowly defined problems with limited resources. In a supply chain, you can sell a mine or a distribution network, but in software development you can’t sell or put a price on debugging and release management.
A software company has succeeded if customers feel they need to purchase the next version of a product. Success is therefore defined as having a lasting commercial relationship with a customer, to be able to sell the next version of a product or to sell additional offerings. Subscription based services create a relationship that forces customers to upgrade, and thereby a commercial relationship that is repeated monthly or yearly. Customers who cancel their subscription will lose the work they have created, which puts the concept of ownership in a new light. With the subscription model, users don't have the intellectual property rights to their own work anymore, a bit mind-boggling in a capitalistic world. Subscriptions were traditionally used to give customers the right to contents they didn't own and hadn't created. Subscriptions in software based services have made all benefits one-sided, customers are deprived of the choice to not upgrade, and to keep their work if they choose to not continue the subscription. Historically, the software industry licensed software, as customers only had the right to use it and not to own it. The licensing model in software is similar to car leasing: a customer has the right to use the car, not to own it or modify it. Licensing made it possible for small businesses and private customers to pass on upgrades, and still use an older version of the software.
If success is described as a lasting commercial relationship, value is a personal rather than universal experience no one can put a fair price on. It's up to the customer to decide if the experience justifies the price. There is no accident that the computer industry talks about user experience or human experience when it comes to software applications. Much of the work in software development is spent on optimising the experience for users. Working with an application should be intuitive and easy to learn, work should be enjoyable. Economists on their part use terms like productivity and quality, but without the human experience smartphones wouldn't have existed and computing would have been assigned to a single department in all companies.