Talk: Successful project discovery
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Speaker:
Marcel Britsch
Talk description
Title:
Successful project discovery
Short synopsis:
One of the most important aspects of successful delivering a project are solid foundations. Foundations in the sense of understanding goals (what do we want to achieve) and constraints (what is the context we have to operate in). This session provides a very hands-on description of how to structure and run such a brief, focused, up-front discovery phase.
Max size: 500 chars
Long synopsis (optional):
*** To the organisers: please note that this session can be run as talk or as workshop. My colleague Neha Datt whom I have run such training sessions with for a number of years with clients and agencies would be very happy to co-speak / facilitate. *** While there are many things that can make a project succeed or fail, arguably one of the most important aspects is to get its foundations right. Ultimately it's about knowing the status quo, the expected goals and the context and constraints within which the project will have to operate. Or, in one sentence, it's all about risk reduction. The best way to achieve this, is with a focused, up-front discovery (sometimes also called inception) phase. While with many aspects of consulting and software delivery work the answer usually is 'it depends' such lightweigth up-front analysis phases can be run along a well defined, adaptable structure. This flexibility allows this to be used for large or small initiatives, as well as for more or less agile endeavours and will fit in well into any 'methodology' one might use to deliver the project or product. This session kicks off with a discussion around the benefits for such up-front analysis and how to 'sell' it to team mates and clients. We then touch on expected outcomes or deliverables as well as soft-factors and ways of working to successfully execute such a high-energy, multi-day exercise in (often) unknown territories with stakeholders whom we may not know. The session will then touch on the various 'questions' a discovery phase is expected to answer and the various aspects that it needs to touch on, and most importantly propose a number of tools and techniques that an be used to address each. This will cover aspects such as vision, goals and strategy, enterprise set up, stakeholders, value proposition, user and user needs, technological and process context, ways of working, requirements and feature mapping, dependency and risk analysis, project constraints, prioritisation, estimation and roadmapping. As such it touches on all aspects from organisational strategy to product to technology and people. The session will conclude with the presentation of an adaptable structure that can be used as a template outline for such discovery phases. At the end of this session Shu-level participants should have an appreciation of the values of discovery and should be able to successfully participate in one, while Ha-level participants should have found a framework to organise and conduct an inception, and Ri-levels will hopefully have found a source of inspiration.
Max size: 5000 chars
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