QED 2016 retrospective: Experimenting and playing as the road to success

What is a failure in the business environment, how to adapt to the new everyday challenges brought to us by new trends and technologies, why there is no success without failures – are only a couple of the questions that were answered to the participants by eminent domestic and international lectures at QED 2016 conference.

The 10th conference Quality in Enterprise Development gathered around 200 participants in Zadar from May 8th until May 10th. The participants attended numerous lectures and workshop where they discussed about failure, and respectively how to deal with the failure and how to learn from it.

What is a failure in the business environment, how to adapt to the new everyday challenges brought to us by new trends and technologies, why there is no success without failures – are only a couple of the questions that were answered to the participants by eminent domestic and international lectures.

The biggest delight of this year QED was keynote speaker, IBM Fellow, scientist and owner of more than 70 patents – John Cohn. Serious Play – an Engineer’s Perspective on Success, Failure and Play at Work is a lecture title on which Cohn talked about that while working you should play and make errors, as in the errors there are usually solutions that we wouldn’t discover in any other way. Mistakes and failures should be observed as learning points that lead to success.

You should never lose the playfulness as it encourages you to be better at what you do and makes you creative – said John Cohn.

Peter Eeles, Executive IT Architect in DevOps Global Tiger Team of IBM, held a lecture and workshop where he conveyed many conveniences of DevOps concept to the participants and gave them guidelines for realization of their DevOps visions. Excellent presentation was held by closing keynote speaker Andrea Tomasini from agile42 company. How to create a company which is strong and resistant to the challenges of today’s market? The answer is hidden in the agile approach, or to be more precise in adopting new skills and practices.

Tina Pogačić, Head of Programs in Project Portfolio Management of Zagrebačka banka, presented the transformation of the organizational culture from the traditional one to the agile one. The transition of the internal processes toward the agile method, was stimulated by the results of the project success analysis of previous projects. This statistic was a turning point for creation of an own team for conducting experiments. After successful pilot projects, today more than 100 bank employees, divided into ten teams, is included in the joint team work toward the agile methodology.

The topic of this year’s panel discussion which was moderated by Vedrana Miholić, the sales manager of CROZ, was the digital transformation of banking business. On the panel there were Dijana Hrastović, board member of Zagrebačka banka responsible for retail business and Draženko Kopljar, board member of Privredna banka Zagreb, responsible for the IT department. Considering the experience of both banks, the key for success is in the changes of the organizational culture and in tendency to experiment.

Their life stories, which are today considered to be more than successful, despite the numerous challenges and failures, were shared with participants by Vladimir Miholjević, the director of the bicycle race Tour of Croatia, Toni Milun, professor of mathematics, and Marin Trošelj, the assistant of the informatics department for University of Rijeka, co-founder of Bure znanja and project team leader for STEMI.

The “sport” section of the QED 2016 conference included participation in the race Wings For Life World Run, and mixed team that consisted of CROZ employees, CROZ supporters and QED participants managed to finish 246th out of 2343 teams in the World As a part of the “fun” section of the conference there was a screening of a movie about Ivica and Janica Kostelić – the Gnothi SeautonUpoznaj samog sebe. This is the currency of an old Greek philosopher Socrates by which Gips was directing the careers of this amazing Croatian Olympic duo – from the cold tents on the ski resorts to the winner’ podiums.

This years’ Quality in Enterprise Development conference will be held from May 7th to May 9th and its’ focus will be harmony inside of the organization, respectively how to harmonize the power of the individuals.

We had great expectations from this 10th conference and it is almost unbelievable that the speakers managed to exceed them. Led by sensational John Cohn, who firstly “bought” us with his genuine approach and then taught us how to enjoy in our work, but also in our life. But also, all other speakers, on their own special and unique way, they gave the contribution to the conference theme and I believe that they encouraged us to set up higher goals and to strive for the same. It will be a challenge to repeat this amazing conference, but we believe that the new theme for the next year will bring a completely new dimension – commented Vedrana Miholić.

Photo gallery from the 10th QED conference can be viewed on the official Facebook page.

Published 18.10.2016.
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