Time: Tuesday 09:30 - 10:30 / Location: Gold Coast Room

We spend a lot of time in product development trying to minimize uncertainty and its consequences. We push people to do careful estimates; we adopt Six Sigma programs to reduce variability; we cleverly hide uncertainty by padding estimates and using buffers. We strive to protect our carefully designed plans from the hostile assaults of a random and uncaring universe. We treasure robust solutions that remain impeturbable in the face of variability. But, this comes at a cost: it often makes our projects slower, less efficient, and less successful. What would happen if our goal was to thrive in the presence of uncertainty, instead of just trying to survive it? What would happen if we designed and operated development processes to give the best outcomes precisely when the uncertainty was highest? In this keynote, Don Reinertsen will present some new ideas on development process design.