Agile and Beyond 2017

Useless    \ˈyüs-ləs\
use·less: not fulfilling or not expected to achieve the intended purpose or desired outcome.
[Synonyms: futile, to no avail, (in) vain, pointless, to no purpose, hopeless, ineffectual, ineffective, to no effect, fruitless, unprofitable, profitless, unproductive]

If you want to stop building useless software, then you have to start understanding your customers.  Unfortunately there’s no magic trick for reading their minds. But there is a simple technique that can help you gain insights and build empathy for them.

Empathy mapping is a simple activity for your team, stakeholders and anyone else who is responsible for delivering products and services. It allows you to collectively explore what your customers see, hear, say & do, as well as consider what they think and feel. This leads to insights about their pain and potential wants which are the keys to building more useful software.

In this session, Diane guides you through building an empathy map, showing you how to use silent brainstorming to encourage everyone to contribute. You will see, first-hand, how easy it is to work collaboratively to create a shared understanding of the customer. And that is the first step to start building software that customers find useful.