As software continues to dominate the business landscape, there is a growing need for better digital products built with a feedback-based approach. While many organizations think they are agile, interviewing customers and preparing design mockups for weeks, followed by a backlog for the next six months, is still waterfall development. Most people involved in product development are unaware of how having a project or a product mindset influences the digital solution. They usually blame the developers when the software becomes slow, hard to maintain and error-prone, and the developers blame product managers and designers for continuously "changing the requirements".

This talk will show that it does not need to be like this. Product development is a very creative industry with significant challenges and great rewards. Instead of seeing only problems, stress and frustration, you will hear how, even in software companies working as contractors, it is possible to enjoy the work by focusing on the really important things. We have everything we need to create better products but we need to refocus on the original goal: enabling the users to solve their job.

During the talk, we will learn how can we use known methods, techniques and practices for adopting a feedback-based approach. We will delve into how to decide what to build next and how much of it, define milestones, and determine when they are reached, to name a few examples. You will leave the session better equipped to build digital products that are more responsive to customer needs, reduce the risk of failure, promote innovation and offer fulfilment to those building them.

Impact mapping is a lightweight, collaborative planning technique for teams that want to make a big impact with software products. It is based on user interaction design, outcome-driven planning and mind mapping. Impact maps help delivery teams and stakeholders visualise roadmaps, explain how deliverables connect to user needs and communicate how user outcomes relate to higher-level organisational goals. (source: https://www.impactmapping.org/)

Impact Mapping is a unique technique (described in a book by Gojko Adzic) which enables every organisation or team facing a new problem, a new challenge to not only find unexpected ideas but also to make sure that these ideas address those challenges instead of fulfilling other interests.
By following the steps, Impact Mapping helps find ways to experiment, innovate, and compare possible ideas by focusing on the outcome rather than the output. It gives the group the means to verify the progress the whole time - to fail fast or stop investing because they have reached their goal.

In this workshop, we will discuss and map a fictive problem. At the end of the workshop, you will know how the technique works and when to use it, how much fun such Impact Mapping can be and how creative people are when the only constraint is time :)

There are no prerequisites but curiosity and the willingness to collaborate.