Users Are From Mars, Developers Are From Klingon

Join us as Derek Lane from Thomson-Reuters walks us through some exercises that help drive home Agile concepts. It is not only fun to participate, but perhaps garner some ideas that you can take back to your organization and apply the game concepts there as well.

Users Are From Mars, Developers Are From Klingon

You know it's true. Trying to understand what your users want is sometimes like talking to the wall. Have you ever delivered what you were sure a group of users asked for, only to have them reject it as not even close? Have you ever asked your development team to build you something you thought was clear only to get something that didn't meet half of your needs. This session will leverage some Agile Games to explore techniques designed to help technologists identify with what their users are asking for, and provide some techniques product teams can use to help close the communication gap between users and developers.

Note: This session is hands-on and highly interactive. This session is for any skill set or role that is involved in product development. Due to the format of this session, it will be limited to the first 50 participants who register. The session will last from 6:30 - 8:30 pm.

About Derek

Derek Lane is an Enterprise Architect at Thomson Reuters. He has worn various hats in his career including mentor, coach, architect, manager, developer, trainer, methodologist and all around cool guy. Derek is a contributor to various projects as author, presenter, committer, and technical reviewer.

Derek is the Founder of both the Oklahoma City Java User Group (OKCJUG) and the Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas MicroJava User Group; and has been active as a member, presenter, and mentor for over two decades at various technology user groups across the Midwest and Southern US.

Derek can on occasion be found utilizing his background in engineering, Virtual Reality and 3D graphics to think in four or more dimensions - some of which have yet to be independently verified. When not exploring the mind numbing edge of technology, he can be found listening to Bluegrass music and watching old Kung Fu movies - a dangerous combination from any point of view.