From Conversation to Software
summary
A practical method for avoiding wasted features: turn assumptions into questions, map user journeys and offer large / medium / small solutions rather than building what’s asked. Concrete tools used include user story mapping and a point-in-polygon geolocation trick (used to match addresses to 21 water-board polygons after copying StackOverflow code), Trello for sprints, and doubled upfront discovery for the first five of ten sprints. Results: about 10–20% of features change drastically when explored, and stronger discovery noticeably raises project success.
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chapters (20)
- 0:00Introduction and car crash story
- 1:09What is a story?
- 2:35Dismantling stories through conversation
- 3:40First big project and battery hopper feature
- 8:16Learning from the water board feature
- 9:20User stories and the 'why' chain
- 13:39Agile manifesto and user stories
- 16:31Not getting wet in projects
- 18:47Solutions over tasks
- 20:42Agile myths debunked
- 21:31User story mapping technique
- 24:54Two difficult clients in parallel
- 27:04Large medium small solutions
- 28:50Current approach and customer happiness
- 30:16Agile as ongoing conversation
- 31:30Q&A introduction
- 31:51Business value and impact mapping
- 35:04Developers avoiding conversations
- 36:09Initiating stakeholder conversations
- 37:41Closing remarks
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