Name
Harry Potter & The Quest for Business Value
Stuart Mann
Description

Harry and Ron combine forces to highlight just how badly our knowledge, intuition, and expert opinion suck when chasing value. 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 spellbook to help you on your own quest for business value.

Learning Objectives
• 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
Learning Level
Intermediate
Track
Process
Session Type
Talk
Keywords
value, Process, mvp, Outcomes;, Kohavi’s Law, Hypotheses, ABTesting