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Refactoring Measuring Business Value talk

Posted by: Ryan Shriver on 08/07/2008
I had about 20 people attend my Measuring Business Value with Agile talk yesterday. This was the second time I’ve given this talk and in some respects it was harder the second time. I added some material the night before and likely tried to pack a bit too much into the talk.

I had a handful of people come up afterwards to tell me talk was exactly what they were looking for, so that made me feel good. During the talk I discovered the first part (defining business value) was a bit boring and I know I lost some people. The second part (exercise) was more engaging and when we got to the Impact Estimation part I think people really got was I was trying to convey. So that went better and it ended on a good note.

Afterwards Robin Diamond gave me some really good feedback on the style and approach, so I’m going to revamp this talk before the ICSPI talk in October. Among the changes:

Create a Hook - I really need to get a hook at the beginning, in the first 5 minutes, so I can capture people’s attention. Robyn suggested pulling the exercise forward and using it as the hook and I think I’m going to do that.
Dropping Content - I’m going to drop my background and how I got to where I am, most people don’t really care about this.
More Pictures / Less Words - Some of my slides are too busy with words and I need to get more pictures and less words on each one.
More Entertaining - Robyn reminded me we’re partially in the entertainment business and presentations need to be more engaging, this is certainly something I can work on in my presentations instead of presenting lots of information.
More Details for Exercise - Some folks were a bit confused on the exercise because a lack of background information. This is what happens when you’re so close to the content, you forget that everyone else is new and assumptions you have they don’t hold. I got some complaints about this and I can see why. Also, I don’t need to present all the info at once, I can spread it out and introduce just-in-time.

So overall pretty good, but could be better. I’m motivated to make improvements now for ICSPI in October.

After sitting in on three talks about Business Value, I know I’ve got some original (to the community) ideas, I just need to work on my presentation style, format and materials. I think this will help convey the concepts better.
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Ryan Shriver's complete blog can be found at: http://www.theagileengineer.com

About Ryan Shriver

Ryan Shriver is a Managing Consultant with Dominion Digital, a Virginia-based Business & Technology Consulting firm where he's a leader in their Agile practice (dominiondigital.com/agile). He helps organizations and teams transition to Agile ways of thinking about solving problems, ranging from new product lines to operational performance improvements. Ryan's solutions typically use some combination of people, process and technology to deliver measurable results.

With a deep background in software architecture and enterprise Java, Ryan understands the challenges and issues facing development teams to deliver predictable results. His approach to getting senior leaders to define measurable objectives and priorities for their organizations, projects and development teams helps bring focus to the highest priority initiatives. Using agile methods like Scrum, Ryan helps teams iteratively deliver value quickly to the business...often in a matter of weeks.

Ryan's experiences with diverse companies and teams are the basis for his presentations on Agile subjects.

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