Using Influence Diagrams
Isabel Evans
Independent Software Testing Consultant
Using Influence diagrams to analyse cause and effect during a change programme
At EuroSTAR 2014, Isabel spoke about what happens when change programmes go wrong. The keynote was based on an analysis of a real change programme, and she discussed what went well and what went wrong.
During the change programme, Isabel used influence diagrams to help her understand and isolate the unexpected causes and effects of change and improvement. In doing that analysis, she was able to look at what went wrong, and re-plan. Some of the findings from the influence diagrams were surprising, and radically changed what we did.
In this talk, Isabel will present why influence diagrams are useful, and provide examples of how to construct and use influence diagrams. This will show the “How to” behind the information which was presented at EuroSTAR.
Three key takeaways
- Influence diagrams and why they are useful
- How to construct an influence diagram
- Using influence diagrams to drive change stages
About Me!
Isabel has nearly thirty years of experience in the IT industry, mainly in quality management and testing in the financial, communications, and software sectors. Her areas of expertise are software quality management, software testing, teamwork, and training. Since the mid-1980s, her quality management work has focused on encouraging IT teams and customers to work together, delivering results via flexible, customer-focused, risk- and test-driven processes designed and tailored by the teams that will use them.
Her work for the BCS SIGiST Standards Working Party focused on quality attributes, especially usability.
Isabel is a popular speaker at software quality conferences worldwide and has been a member of several working groups for industry improvement. Her publications include the book “Achieving Software Quality Through Teamwork” and Chapters in “Agile Testing: How to Succeed in an eXtreme Testing Environment”; “The Testing Practitioner” and “Foundations of Software Testing”.
Isabel is a Chartered IT Professional and a Fellow of the British Computer Society.