Harry Potter and the Quest for Business Value - Stuart Mann [Online Event]

Never fear, amidst all the doom and gloom, a hero emerges in the form of an 8-year-old girl called Alice.

Alice? Who is Alice and how does she save the day? Listen to this talk to find out!

The story begins with a feature that was the agile pilot on a large transactional banking system. It was delivered in 6 weeks (instead of 2-3 years with waterfall), success was declared and big party with pizza and beer was had.

Sadly, 18 months later no one was using the feature. We'd delivered an output but no one had bothered to check whether we'd achieved an outcome.

To the backdrop of a cast of characters and intriguing scenarios that JK Rowling would be proud of, the talk will provide additional examples of just how bad humans are at using experience, intuition & expert opinion to predict value. AB Testing pioneer, Ron Kohavi, enters the fray to highlight that organisations that track outcomes find that just 1 in 3 features result in a benefit. After Alice saves the day, we'll conclude the story with some magic from the Harry Potter spell book to help you on your own quest for business value.

Learning Outcomes:
The presentation covers why chasing outcomes is much better than
delivering outputs and uses analogy, storytelling and real-life examples
to illustrate all concepts covered.
• An appreciation for how useless humans are at predicting value
• Reframing how we chase value.
• A fresh approach to achieving value in your organisation.
• The best way to uncover your own "Harry Potter" features.
• Techniques to help you on your own quest for business value.

Facilitator:

Stuart Mann
Agile Coach at Vitality Group

Stuart Mann is a reformed waterfall guy who is now a passionate Agile Coach. He is a father (two girls), husband (one wife) and a trainee feminist. In his spare time, Stuart is a compulsive marathon runner having run over 250 marathons and ultra marathons. He is a prolific writer with a popular blog (http://runningmann.co.za/), monthly column in South Africa’s largest running publication (Modern Athlete) and a regular contributor of athletics articles to News24.com. Stuart’s lifetime ambition is to secure a beer sponsor.

Stuart is a frequent presenter at local and international conferences where he typically provides a different perspective on traditional topics. If you’d like to connect with Stuart you can do so on LinkedIn or Twitter (work profile @StuartDMann & running profile @runningmann100).