Harmony in Innovation: Building Stronger Engineer-Product Relationships

Navigating the intricate relationship between product teams and engineers is crucial for the success of any project, especially in agile workflows where roles and responsibilities frequently intersect. This session, tailored for engineers, technical leads, and product managers, dives deep into the challenges and opportunities that arise from this partnership, shedding light on practices that promote shared ownership, satisfaction, and effective communication.

We will delve into the unique role that engineers play in fostering a productive relationship with product teams. Our discussion will cover strategies for facilitating open and constructive dialogue, empowering engineers to contribute their technical expertise to product discussions, and creating an environment where innovative thinking is valued and encouraged.

Specifically, attendees can expect to walk away with:

- Key Strategies for Enhanced Communication: Practical guidelines and examples from collaborative roadmapping and dual-track agile, aimed at strengthening the dialogue between product and engineering, ensuring technical insights are effectively communicated.
- Practices for Shared Ownership: Approaches, including effective backlog refinement techniques, to cultivate a sense of pride and accountability among engineers for the products they contribute to.
- A Product-Engineering Maturity Model: A straightforward roadmap to guide continuous improvement in collaboration, helping teams assess their current state and identify areas for growth, with examples from real-world applications.

The aim is to create a more harmonious and productive working environment, where engineers contribute not just code, but strategic value to their projects.

Vintage Design Sprint

Revisiting the design sprint a decade later, and navigating remote challenges while still innovating at high levels.

Theme: Product Innovation

Attendees will learn
1) WHY Design Sprints are such an effective tool for accelerating product innovation;
2) HOW to leverage Design Sprints as critical customer validation before touching code; and
3) WHAT you need to know to successfully facilitate your own Design Sprints, no matter your organizational role.

Level Up Delivery via Team Health

Team engagement health is a critical factor correlating to productivity.

Theme: Agile Coaching

Let's examine 25 ways a Product Owner or Team Lead can influence higher team performance by exploring the people, process & tools that impact delivery, and how you can influence it.

This will provide attendees with a post-pandemic checklist of real action items they can reflect on and start to implement right away to shape team engagement, and subsequently affect delivery.

Stakeholder Optimization in a Hybrid World

Learn to wield Slack like a boss, tame your Confluence and wrangle other tools like a pro that modernize your feedback loops to maximize output and get work done.

Theme(s): Product Management, Stakeholder Alignment, Agile Delivery, Governance

Engaging the right players at the right levels using today's bleeding edge best practices will maintain speed to market & keep development agile, but also compliant.

We'll rapid fire through +35 must tries to up your communication game and accelerate your delivery.

Data as a Product

This presentation will explore the idea of data as a product, and how for any organizations it may be the best approach to the challenges of data management. We will discuss the benefits of treating data as a product and how to go about it.

In recent years, the concept of treating data as a product has gained traction, especially as organizations strive to remain competitive by maximizing the value of their data assets. As part of this effort, many companies have turned to data mesh and data fabric strategies to better manage their data ecosystems.

This presentation will explore the idea of data as a product, and how for any organizations it may be the best approach to the challenges of data management. We will discuss the benefits of treating data as a product, organizing around it, and how these ideas can transform the partnership between centralized data teams and the business.

Furthermore, we will delve into the technical aspects of implementing data as a product within a data mesh or data fabric framework. This will include a discussion of data architecture and governance best practices, as well as tools and technologies that can be used to achieve these goals.

By the end of this presentation, attendees will have a solid understanding of how data as a product can help organizations to maximize the value of their data assets, and how this concept fits into the broader context of data mesh and data fabric. They will also gain practical insights and strategies for implementing these concepts within their own organizations from the success stories presented.

Quick Wins: A 30d Blueprint to Increase + Accelerate Product Innovation at Work

Caught in the relentless rhythm of product maintenance? Learn to foster innovation without breaking stride. This talk is your guide to generating and testing new ideas to show value in 30 days or less, rooted in proven consulting methodologies, workshops and frameworks you can implement tomorrow.

Audience Takeaways:
- A practical 30-day blueprint for infusing innovation into a mature product environment.
- Actionable strategies for daily ideation, rapid validation, and quick wins in product differentiation.
- Insights into maintaining a healthy balance between running the product engine and pursuing innovation.

Running the Engine vs. Innovation -- you don't have to choose. Learn practical exercises and frameworks you can implement around daily demands of running a mature product. Discover how to create a harmonious synergy that drives sustained growth. Our Practice Leads will highlight proven consulting exercises and how you can implement them to show value and gain stakeholder advocacy quickly:

1. Strategic Assessments for Differentiation: Learn how to strategically assess your maturing product, identifying untapped areas for differentiation. This step sets the groundwork for injecting innovation without disrupting daily operations.

2. Daily Workshops for Continuous Ideation: Explore the concept of daily workshops as a means of fostering continuous ideation. Discover how to create a culture that values and integrates small, innovative ideas into the daily workflow.

3. Hot Houses for Intensive Innovation: Dive into the concept of "Hot Houses" adapted for mature products. Understand how to create focused, intensive sessions that drive innovation and quickly yield new features or enhancements.

4. Design Sprints for Rapid Validation: Utilize design sprints for swift validation of new features and ideas. Learn how this approach can expedite decision-making and ensure that innovations align with market needs.

5. POCs and MVPs for Quick Wins: Explore the concept of 30-day Proof-of-Concept (POC) or Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and the difference between them, as a strategy for achieving quick wins & internal buy-in.