Session: Reconciling what "they" want with what "we" want

Thursday, 16:40 - 17:30
Track: Realizing business ideas

Collaboration is too often considered in the small: collaboration between individuals, or within a team. The reality is that collaboration is at the heart of delivering value and achieving success.

In this session, we'll consider the work of authors including James Surowiecki ("The Wisdom of Crowds"), and Keith Sawyer ("Group Genius").  We'll explore techniques such as deep listening, the Margolis Wheel, Open Space Technology, and various means of making decisions and reaching consensus.  Further, we'll discover concepts including the Dreyfus learning model, the Tuckman group formation model, and the four stages of competence and dig into how they affect various forms and levels of collaboration. It's about the business and the world in which it exists.  Of course, that world is composed of people.

We'll look at questions such as:

• Where does interaction design play?
• When should we engage with our customers?
• How do we reconcile the customer's/business's desire for things NOW and CHEAP and GREAT with technologists' desire to do things ELEGANT and FUN and EXTENSIBLE and...?
• Who is really in charge?
• Where is the line between getting our way, effective compromise, and giving in?
  

Expectations

Understanding the commitments we must make to succeed; putting our work in context - business, customer, technology, team