On the final day of the 2013 EPL season, as Liverpool and Manchester City battled for the title, millions of people logged in to watch the matches simultaneously. Sat in an incident room, a small group of tech leaders and engineers watched as their streaming platform crashed and burned under the strain. Your presenter pressed the button to shut people out of the streaming service until we recovered. Cue a lot of angry football fans and (after a stiff drink) a lot of reflection on how this had happened.
In this short talk I’ll share how, even with seemingly the right ingredients, things can still go horribly wrong. I’ll leave you with the lessons I’ve taken from this to go on to achieve success with agile service management around the world. Disclaimer: you don’t need to be a sports fan to enjoy this talk!