The no-spin zone: applying AI to your context

We’re at the top of the hype curve for AI: from investors demanding startups to be centred around AI offerings, to managers embracing GenAI (ahem ChatGPT) to help their team on a daily basis.

But are we intentionally, responsibly, using AI in our organisations?

In this immersive workshop, we’ll apply strategic thinking to business problems, and identify valuable, feasible and viable solutions using AI.

Using a range of strategic planning and prioritisation techniques, you’ll walk away with a good understanding of where to adopt AI technologies across your organisation. You’ll also be able to stress test the approach that your leadership team (and those consultants!) have to AI.

We need to talk about AI! - How to to adopt ‘AI’ successfully

‘AI’ has become the latest "big thing" in tech—the new holy grail or a passing fad, depending on whom you ask. Regardless, most organisations want a piece of the "AI" action. But what does that mean, and, more importantly, how do you enable innovation while staying in control of the challenges and risks that come with this new technology?
Drawing from my experiences in AI adoption across various clients, I’ll provide context on how to think about AI, share real-world examples of success (and failures) for insight, and offer actionable guidelines to support effective and responsible AI adoption.

Product management dark patterns

It’s 2024. You work in a product company. Focusing on outcomes and customer needs isn’t good enough anymore.

Sure: product development has matured and we have a rich foundation of powerful practices focused on meeting outcomes and customer needs.

However from blitzscaling to hyper-personalisation, these “good” practices have also created unsustainable businesses and entrenched systemic biases.

We’ll challenge the definition of “good” product practices and show you how to address the dark patterns that emerge. to build ethical, sustainable, inclusive products.

It is, after all, 2024.

How the world ends

Join me in this dark but also inspirational exploration of existential risks and what they mean for us working in technology.
Come explore how, for the first time, humanity — armed with unprecedented capabilities to both create and avert existential risks — finds itself at a unique turning point that may decide on the future - or not - of humanity and in fact all life on earth.
Understand the implications of the Fermi Paradox - or ‘why no one is out there’ - and the relevance of the ‘Great Filter’. We'll explore the specific threats posed by run-away greenhouse effect, nuclear destruction, alien invasion or super-intelligent AI. And the potential extinction of not only humanity, but all life.
As contributors to the tech landscape, we all play a crucial role, and collectively must become the architects of a future marked by resilience and ethical foresight, and guide humanity towards a secure tomorrow, transcending the challenges of the Great Filter.

How I Started Worrying and Stopped Loving DevOps

summary
In this cautionary tale, I’ll share three real-world product-building experiences, mapping my journey as a product manager from a DevOps enthusiast to a wary cynic. I’ll share examples of how infrastructure can drift into ‘purgatory’: pipelines that are ‘never done,’ painfully complex to maintain, or beautifully engineered yet devoid of applications to support. My goal is to highlight the missteps I encountered, so future teams might avoid these traps and sidestep the costly pursuit of infrastructure perfection that can derail real progress.

how the talk will unfold
Introduction: The Allure of DevOps
To bring us onto the same page - and this should not be controversial - I’ll share my attitude towards DevOps, where I see it being valuable and beneficial when building products and services.

Pitfalls: When Reality meets Ideology
Drawing on my personal experience I will share a number of examples, where despite best intentions, our DevOps endeavours, descended into, at best waste and pain, at worst total dysfunction. I will touch on aspects such as technology ‘greed’, over-engineering, gold-plating, premature optimisation, strategic misalignment and others, and show how, from excitement and enthusiasm about DevOps users, stakeholders and ‘the business’ can easily become disillusioned, cynical and frustrated.

Conclusion: The moral of the tale, advice for the real world
I will conclude with guiding principles to avoid falling into the same traps.

What participants will take away
An awareness of the important to adopt a critical view on
- DevOps (and other) technical decisions
- A list of potential pitfalls and challenges
- Actionable guidance and suggestions on how to manage these tensions, risks and challenges to avoid falling into the same traps
- An understanding that infrastructure is an important - but nevertheless - means to an end, that needs to serve a greater purpose

Ethical Startup and Product Management: A Practical Guides for Product Teams

SUMMARY
As we design and deliver products or services we make choices that will impact individuals or society at large, in positive but easily also in negative ways.
Some choices seem obvious: like not enabling arms development. Some less clear: like working on that algorithm assessing the likelihood of an offender to reoffend. Some easy: working on big data driven integrative healthcare, or, say working for a startup that offers rental bike services. But in reality none of these choices are straightforward and without tension.
From seemingly straightforward choices to intricate conundrums, this talk discovers why our decisions matter and proposes a framework for making ethically sound choices in our daily work. This talk aims to inspire IT professionals to be more mindful and deliberate in their actions, fostering a culture of better, more ethical decisions and choices.
DESCRIPTION
First I will share a series of moral conundrums drawn from real-world experiences in diverse sectors such as FinTech, Crypto, Defence, MedTech, EdTech, and Retail. Through examples ranging from Amazon to rental bikes, FTX to Defense Distributed, I'll delve into the tensions and problems inherent in product and service design and implementation, spanning both high-level existential (business- or value-proposition-level) dilemmas as well as low-level (feature or UX/CX-level) challenges.
As we delve deeper, I'll scrutinise widely accepted product best practices such as automation, personalization, big data, application of AI, and behaviour-shifting—unveiling both their benefits and potential pitfalls. Through a series of practical examples, I'll demonstrate how these practices, while powerful, can lead to unintended negative consequences and propose strategies to harness their strengths without compromising ethics
The talk will conclude with the presentation of a pragmatic framework designed to guide decision-making. Drawing from successful experiences with teams and organisations, I'll showcase how ethics can be seamlessly integrated into the design and delivery processes. This isn't just a theoretical exploration; it's a blueprint for IT professionals to adopt a more considered, mindful, and ethical approach to product management.
TAKEAWAY
Participants in my talk will
Gain an awareness of ethical product design and delivery considerations
Explore concrete examples illustrating both exemplary and flawed product design
Understand the potential pitfalls of widely accepted product management best practices and learn how to navigate them successfully
Acquire a tangible framework that enables teams to work towards a more considered, mindful and ethical approach to product management

Decoding the Algorithm: Why Explainability and Transparency Matter when Building AI-Driven Systems

SUMMARY
Imagine a law enforcement officer deciding whether to deploy a SWAT team or an oncologist relying on an algorithm to shape a cancer treatment plan. The stakes are high, and the need for informed decisions, corrections, and human intervention is paramount.
In a world increasingly shaped by AI, this talk delves into the pivotal significance of transparency, explainability, and human involvement in algorithmic decision-making.

Drawing from a diverse set of case studies, both from my own experiences and the industry, I'll illustrate why these aspects matter and explore practical solutions to ensuring that the design of AI-driven delivers all the benefits we expect but remains conscientious and minimises the risk of detrimental consequences.

DESCRIPTION
I start my talk with a range of examples in law enforcement, FinTec, EdTech and healthcare (some from my own experience, others based on industry case studies) to demonstrate the problems that can arise when we apply algorithms (AI or not) without consideration of their impact and context, when we just apply black box algorithms and ignore the need for transparency, explainability and human involvement.
I'll then argue for the ethical and legal imperative of incorporating transparency, explainability, and human intervention in AI driven systems. Highlighting evolving legal requirements, I'll underscore that these considerations are not just ethical obligations but increasingly becoming legal mandates across jurisdictions. We'll explore key compliance requirements that creators and designers of algorithmically powered systems need to navigate.

Beyond the hype around AI, I'll stress that these considerations extend even to seemingly mundane algorithms like a 'boring' regression.
Concluding the talk, I'll provide actionable recommendations on integrating transparency, explainability, and human intervention into the core of these systems and the system development lifecycle. I'll touch on best practices, challenges, and strategies to overcome hurdles on the path to responsible AI implementation.

TAKEAWAY
Participants of my talk will come away with
An understanding of why transparency, explainability, and human involvement are critical in AI applications
Strategies for embedding these values into team and organisational culture
Practical strategies for designing systems that not only comply with legal standards but contribute to a more responsible, humane and ethical future.

Compliance by design | Continuous Compliance

Compliance by design | Continuous Compliance

Just hearing the word ‘compliance’ creates fear and loathing with many project teams. And true, the traditional way of assuring compliance, with big up front requirements gathering, waterfall stage gates, and verification / certification at the end is a bad one: neither does it satisfy the demands of fast paced, value focused product or service delivery, nor does it satisfy the demands of an increasingly strict and complex regulatory landscape.

And we can only expect the compliance landscape to become more complex: recent failures in banking, but also the emergency of technologies such as blockchain, machine learning, AI and autonomous systems are already having their impact on the compliance landscape.

So it is time for a new approach: ‘compliance by design’ or ‘continuous compliance’ takes the stance that involving compliance early and continuously through the full product lifecycle leads to better outcomes for our products but also compliance itself.

Based on experiences in FinTech, MedTech and EdTech this talk presents the reasons why the current approach to compliance must change, what a sustainable, valuable compliance approach must look like, and how we can transition from one to the other.

It then describes a framework for continuous compliance across the entire product lifecycle from analysis to design, development to release, and operation.

It demonstrates how the outcomes are far more pleasant working with (and for) compliance, better products that have higher degrees of compliance and improved compliance operations be this as part of BAU monitoring, ad hoc auditing, periodic certifications or incident management.

Bringing Product Thinking into DevOps

With the advent of the DevOps movement we have seen an immense improvement in software delivery by closely linking software engineering with deployment and infrastructure. We have also seen an increase in complexity of options: what is needed for one organisation is not what another organisation requires or can even stomach.

Experience from numerous DevOps transformation projects shows that we need to consider aspects of DevOps as strategic organisational assets, and in turn, must treat them as we would a product. By adding Product Thinking to DevOps we add the final missing piece to ensure that we meet not only technical needs but wider business expectations.

Drawing on a range of relevant case studies across various industries I will demonstrate that adding a product mindset to DevOps does lead to better outcomes and how this can be achieved in practice.

Agile beyond IT: your industry needs you!

Do you believe that agility can work in civil engineering, aerospace or [any industry here]? Do you think that as IT expert you should care? If your answer is no, you hesitate or cringe, then this talk is for you. I will demonstrate that agility is possible and imperative in all industries. And, that we, as IT professionals, not only can, but also have a responsibility to educate the organisations’ we work with on agility outside of our IT closet.
To help with this I will provide examples of agile adoption across a wide range of industries and will propose a framework on how to move non IT organisations towards agility.

Getting technology adoption right: finding that perfect fit

Getting technology adoption right: finding that perfect fit
Technology is undeniably a key driver of business success. However, we have seen far too many cases where technology was adopted badly. At best this is a wasted opportunity, a waste of time and money, where value could have been created instead. At worst it stifles organisational progress, forces aspects of the organisations into the wrong patterns, or becomes a liability.
With over 50 years of combined experience as technology consultants across diverse industries, we will guide participants through patterns of successful and unsuccessful technology adoption. Through hands-on exercises and real-world examples, this workshop will equip leadership and teams with practical strategies to adopt technologies more confidently and effectively.

**How the workshop unfolds**
We will begin by inviting participants to share their experiences—both positive and negative—with technology adoption.

Next, we’ll present real-world examples of technology adoption gone right and wrong. These examples will include case studies at the organisational level, departmental productivity level, and decisions made by engineering teams regarding tech stacks or infrastructure.
From there, we’ll workshop best practices, risks, and challenges for technology adoption along two key dimensions:

1. Doing the Right Thing
- Ensuring that right problem is being solved, in light of organisational needs, strategy, and goals.
- Discussing what ‘value’ means and the importance of keeping users at the core.
- This is to address the frequent problem of organisations being blinded by the glamour of technology and either not having a problem to solve or solving the wrong problem.

2. “Doing It Right”
- Finding a good fit between what the organisation needs, can afford, and can support, ensuring solutions are both valuable and sustainable.
- Addressing build vs. buy decisions and considering the total cost of ownership.
- Exploring agile and lean implementation approaches to balance pace and scope, flexibility and scalability vs. over-optimisation, gold-plating, and unmanageable complexity.
Finally, we’ll revisit the initial shared experiences to see how the discussed practices and insights can address or validate the challenges raised at the start of the workshop.

**What participants will take away**
* Awareness of the importance of mindful technology adoption
* Understanding of the challenges and risks of technology adoption
* Strategies for successful technology adoption
* Real-world examples of successful and failed tech adoption.

This is a workshop. It would be useful to have participants seated so they can workshop in groups, as well as having an ability for participants to take and share notes (post-its and or white-boards). But we are flexible and can work with all sorts of set ups :)
There isn't really a max number of participants...