Get off the Hamster Wheel and Start Adding Value!

This is a story about how you and your team can do your best work. But above all it is a story about hamsters! In this entertaining keynote, Alex and Huib going to take you on a (hamster) journey from running around in hamster wheel to deliver value.

We live in a changing world and the pace of innovation and disruption is accelerating. The way we work is changing and what the products we are building are changing too. People work in agile ways and try to work together differently. But mostly they focus on processes and methods. We try to be more effective and efficient by tweaking ways of working, making our documentation as lean as possible and fine tune our meetings.

The changes we do are shallow and we still talk about disciplines like programming, testing and business analysis. Why do we split these up? What are we trying to do? Who are we trying to do this for? We’re not productive and have trouble to recognize what is valuable. One thing we are intensely bad at is finding out what our customers actually need. 

We are in the knowledge work domain and that requires us to do our best thinking and learning. Alex and Huib are going to show you examples of hamsters: hard working creatures running around in circles. How can we recognize hamstering? And more important: what can we do to bring it back to value? This is a story about you. And about your teams, cooperation and skills. Don't be a hamster. Get off your hamster wheel and start adding value!