Trying to anticipate the future of an industry or market is hard. Scenario planning offers a structured way for strategists to look into the key dynamics that will impact an industry in the future. During this lecture, we use two examples (finance and media) to illustrate how scenario planning works. Secondly, we introduce tooling to help facilitate the participants in their own scenario planning for the future.

This lecture reveals learnings, practical tips and tricks about UI. Things we wish we knew before we started, and will help you to create better UI from the moment you leave the lecture. We will focus on

• how to get the best out of every UI design;
• how to use typography and colours;
• how to mature a design;
• how to get every stakeholder involved and on board.

We believe CX should not be the goal, but the mindset in every organisation. Join this lecture to find out how design can unlock the full potential of customer-centricity within an organisation, and support you in facing innovation challenges with relevant business impact in mind.

When building a product roadmap, one of the hardest parts is to determine what to build first, and most of all: what not to build (and maybe never). This presentation highlights how November Five develops roadmaps for digital products rooted in the day-to-day reality of ongoing businesses while continuously evolving the product to its full potential.

The concept of Restful APIs is nearing the age of 20. In the last few years, new kid on the block GraphQL rapidly gained popularity. How to choose? And what are the pitfalls of each flavor? This presentation highlights some design principles, including how to structure and document your API, how to handle exceptions and how to properly leverage caching.

Thousands of software professionals have the necessary technical qualifications to become architects, but far fewer have the crucial non-technical skills needed to get hired and succeed in their role. For many developers, these skills don’t come naturally – and they’re rarely addressed in formal training. This lecture helps you fill this gap by focusing on the specific relationship, business and personal skills that are essential to become a full-fledged software architect. 

Digital transformation and digitalisation are often confused, and most of the time by business leaders who assume that transformation occurs when existing business processes are digitised and automated. True digital transformation however requires organisational and cultural change, and the understanding to embrace customer centricity and technology as a competitive advantage. This lecture will clarify for once and for all what digital transformation means, and maybe more importantly: what it doesn’t.

Software architecture diagrams are a fantastic way to communicate how you are planning to build a software system, or to visualise how an existing software system works. It is very likely, however, that the majority of the diagrams you have seen are a confused mess of boxes and lines. How to bring order to the chaos? This lecture deep-dives into the C4 model: a way to create maps of your code, at various levels of detail, enabling you to zoom in and out of an area of interest. 

Automated testing comes with many approaches and many tools. This presentation doesn’t discuss unit tests, or by extension any other tests written by the developer. Instead, we approach test automation from the software tester’s point of view. We’ll dive into the workflow and tools being used by our testers to automate their - otherwise manual - work, which includes both frontend application testing, as well as the APIs that drive the data.

Jetpack Compose is the new state-of-the-art when it comes to building native user interfaces for any Android app. In this talk we give an overview of Jetpack Compose, why we love it and why you need to consider to start using it. We also share the right strategies on how to start using JC in an existing codebase without the need for a full UI refactor.

This workshop is a first introduction to what ‘serverless’ – or Functions as a Service – really means. We take a look at a number of problems that are traditionally solved with a standard client-server architecture - and fix them by using a serverless setup. Additionally we’ll explore some newly introduced serverless challenges, and how to mitigate them.

When building scalable, future proof serverless applications, choreography and orchestration are essential concepts. In this talk we explain these concepts and how to apply them in your own application.

In this presentation we’ll explore two concepts that have the web evolving to the next level. WebAssembly allows developers to create high-performing web applications in virtually any programming language. Not only with the opportunity for many existing desktop apps to move to the web; it also allows you to build new compute-intensive apps and games straight for the web. Progressive Web Apps, on the other hand, are next-level in terms of browser applications - both for mobile and desktop. We’ll talk about a PWA’s essential building blocks - such as service workers and (silent) push notifications.

SwiftUI is the new state-of-the-art when it comes to building native user interfaces for any Apple platform, including iOS. In this talk we give an overview of SwiftUI, why we love it and why you need to consider to start using it. We also share the right strategies on how to start using SwiftUI in an existing codebase without the need for a full UI refactor.

Google is increasingly taking web performance into account when calculating a website’s search results scores. For content-driven web apps, there is an important performance gain to be made by skipping page rendering each time they are requested by the user. This topic discusses the different options to avoid on-the-fly rendering, including how and when to use them. 

Now that a decentralised workplace is here to stay, connecting team members is more relevant than ever - to each other, across teams and to your (company) culture. Here’s a first insight: building a strong foundation for a connected workforce doesn’t start on a new employee’s first day, but plenty of time before. With a very pragmatic approach, we dive into practical tips that make an essential difference when onboarding new team members in a work environment that mixes digital and physical interaction, and requires a new approach towards building relationships in the workplace.

The post-pandemic silver lining in the workplace is definitely to be found in a more people-centered approach to productivity, outcome and result. But how do you engage with the new ‘work from home’ mindset, while at the same time protecting the physical interactions that are at the heart of working as a team? In this lecture we’ll guide you through November Five’s ‘work from anywhere’ take on hybrid work, and how we developed an approach that focuses on people and outcomes, rather than policies and control.

November Five lives and breathes digital, and we prefer working smart over working hard. That’s why we digitised and automated our accounting processes to the fullest. How do you create an accurate and scalable system that saves time, money and energy, and eliminates the risk of human errors? This presentation showcases a bunch of tangible examples, including:

• automating the processing of sales & purchase invoices;
• creating SEPA payments & CODA reconciliation of bank transactions;
• importing and exporting data to the accounting system by excel files;
• automated approval flow;
• introducing a spend management tool with virtual Mastercards;
• automated management reporting;
• a mindset to explore continuous optimisation.

These automations hand you the extra time to be a true strategic and proactive partner to the business, instead of a team of administrators accounting for the past. A great presentation if you’re curious about the insights we gained on our digital journey, as well as the bumps along the way.

With a leading digital business agency and three fast-growing ventures under the hood, we transformed our finance function into a proactive management and decision-making unit - leading to insights that contribute much sharper and faster strategic decisions. After introducing far-stretching automation in our processes, we became a true strategic partner to the business, with the aim of getting the right insight and foresight to make our companies more manageable, agile, and predictable. This presentation demonstrates that, in a rapidly growing environment like digital and ventures, being able to meticulously predict what the next quarter (or beyond) will look like is of much bigger value than last month's numbers.