This was not what I asked for?!

Getting down to bare tacks, what is it that your customer is asking for? Use story telling to understand, analyze and conceptualize what problems you are solving. It’s a forum to start ideation on user experience, gap analysis, potential technical and design solutions to the problem.

The best way to resolve a software problem for your customer is through understanding and analysis of the customer’s experience of the their journey. You begin by asking questions like “how, why, what, when” of the problem. Exchanging details allows collaboration and trust to emerge between the end user and your development team. The next step is storytelling through white boarding with the end user / customer; this is where ideation begins. When you can formulate a story around an problem - you identify details, steps, integration points, impacts and analysis to solve the problem. Your team begins to grasp the customer’s journey along with solution options to solve the problem.

Let me show you how to break down the hardest issues with story telling. This is a way to make sure your customer can tell the story of the problem you are solving, it forces you to be able to replicate the same story the customer is telling. It aids in identifying gaps, prototyping and allows the team to think quickly to present options for solutions to the problem you are solving. It creates a forum, that adapts quickly and allows validation of what you know and what you need to analyze further, through discovery with the end user. Successful product adoptions do not start with product use, it will come from learning how to collaborate, communicate and ideate quickly with the customer on the solutions you develop with you team.

With experience in business analysis, product management and customer experience, IT transformation has been part of the my journey. Business practices and cultures that encourage employees to innovate and invest in thought leadership is where successful and dynamic products can be made. I have had the privilege of working with great development teams and I achieved success in these roles, in part due, to my development teams’ speed to learn and communicate, and be open to adapt quickly to thought processes. Solutions in IT will resolve issues around moving faster, automating and discovery of doing things better, easier.

This talk presents my best practices on the importance of understanding how to use story telling to bring the customer’s journey to life. Encourage the development team to focus on problem resolution, solution analysis and impact analysis of the issues and problems your software will solve. The focus is keeping your team and yourself empowered to lead the change where you can have the most influence, but to gain the trust of the customer to adopt your software and practices with engagement early and often.

This talk can presented in two formats: 1. A presentation of how to do story telling 2. A workshop with participants engaged in learning how to solve problems using story telling.

If this is a workshop: need markers and tripods with access to white boards or large paper pads for sketching.