Full Session List

3 Strikes and You’re IN(novative): Engineering Innovation in the Idea Era

Rob Juncker

We have all used the “Three strikes and you’re out” saying many times in our lives, and career. With the world transitioning to an Idea Era, it’s more important than ever we fail our way to success. During this talk, I’ll be sharing 3 strikes that I’ve experienced that have led me to think about innovation differently in the new world – Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes. We’ll delve into the evolution of software development models, strategies for cloud adoption and deployment, challenging the way we dissect and execute against product stories, and even touch on harnessing the power of your people to create an innovation culture… Oh, I’ll also share one of my best Hussman stories just to liven the room up a bit.

Clarify the Problem through Stories

Jean Storlie

Facts offer the “what?” Stories get at the “so what?” This session will be an interactive experience that explores story-based techniques for creative collaboration.

“There are no right answers to wrong questions,” You will experience a variety of facilitation techniques and tools that incorporate stories into a key step in creative problem solving: defining the problem to solve. Join me to share stories while you learn techniques like: Crafting consumer empathy stories, Story listening, Campfire story circles, “Best of” stories,

Participants will use story-based activities to:

1) Enhance creative collaboration

2) Deepen insights and build empathy

May you fail…over and over again

Vivienne Whitfield

Often we wince at the thought of failure. We aim for nothing but perfection and the best experience ever. We don’t like hearing “No”. “No” is a bad word, but what if “No” was a good word?

What if instead of wincing when we heard “No,” we stood back, embraced it, and let it lead us to that best experience? Come join Viv as she discusses various experiences on being wrong and the outcomes that resulted in even better experiences (not only for the customer but for the team as well).

Designing decision support for breast cancer patients

Molly Fuller

Patients newly diagnosed with breast cancer have a lot of information and decisions to make thrown at them all at once. My team partnered with the breast cancer clinic at the Mayo Clinic to understand the patient experience and design better support tools.

Assume you are wrong. Now What?

Joe Ruekert

Is it possible to turn being wrong into a competitive advantage? Can you actually move forward by moving backwards with your product? It turns out, humans are not skilled at predicting the outcomes of our products. In this talk, we’ll review examples through history and in business, including real examples from Target, where succeeding is a matter of turning risk and failure into product and market domination. Learn the mindset, capabilities and tactics that will help turn your product’s failures into ultimate success.

Actionable Evaluation Approaches for Artists and Creative Supporting Organizations

Jasmine Russell

Evaluation is a primary measurement function for both artists and creative organizations, unfortunately creative economy members often find themselves under-prepared or unaware of foundation metrics to move their organization forward. Evaluation strategy occurs beyond annual check-ins. Attendees will walk through actionable evaluation approaches and evaluation learning cases.

Data-driven and Human-Centered: Learning to Connect the Dots for Maximum Impact

Sara Cowles

We’ve been going through a sort of reinvention over the past year at When I Work as we figure out how to work better together to achieve our audacious goals. As we do this, we’ve been exploring questions like;

• How can we validate our ideas earlier to avoid building the wrong things?
• How can we spend more time with our customers without slowing down?
• How can we make decisions based on qualitative feedback when it’s so difficult to quantify?
• How can we tap our data to better understand the humans it describes?

Practical Behavior Design You Can Use Today

Chris Shinkle

Much has been made lately about behavior design, but it’s not easy to know how or where it applies. In this hands on talk, Chris will share techniques he has successfully used with clients. He will walk you through a process and give you a chance to practice the ideas yourself. Come learn how these ideas can work for you!

Managing Up and Across

Kurt Schmidt

As Jason Shen once noted “Until you ship, communication is the deliverable”. Consequently, communication is the key component to productive work relationships. How do you effectively remove roadblocks introduced by your boss or peers? Become happier with your overall role? Or get on the path for the next big step in your career?

Leaders today are caught between the employees they manage and the managers who manage them. Being adept and managing up and managing across is an important skill for today’s Product Manager. Join Kurt in learning how to influence the people that are there to support you in order for everyone to have the chance for greater impact.

Roadmapping Your Way to Value

Anne Steiner

All of this experimenting, measuring impact, and “failing fast” is good and all, but we have a roadmap that we need to knock out like yesterday. Oh yeah, and there is already more work than we can possibly get done on it. How can we do all this cool product-thinking stuff with our hands tied by the sheer volume of work we must get done? This workshop addresses that question. Via two hands-on planning and roadmapping activities, we challenge you to shift your mindset from “getting stuff done” to “getting the right stuff done”.

Amazon’s Culture of Innovation

Mike Gillespie

Amazon demonstrates that innovation is not only for small companies. This session will break down how Amazon is able to accelerate its pace of innovation while it grows. It all starts with customer and works backwards. Amazon supports its leadership principles with mechanisms that reinforce the outcomes that keep Amazon in “day one” and drive continued growth. Expect to come away with a sense of what sets Amazon apart, but also ideas that can be incorporated into companies of any size.

Leveraging Atlassian to Craft the Best Products

Brandon Huff

How do you pick the right Product Management tool for your needs? This workshop compares Atlassian products, Atlassian add-ons, and stand-alone products that support Product strategy, planning, discovery, and delivery. We will contrast the pro’s and con’s of some of the most popular products in this space including Jira, Confluence, Aha, Roadmunk, Product Plan, AgileCraft, and more.