No Story - No Glory!

In this energising keynote, Eric Nikkelen - founder of ReqVision and creator of the Expectation Engineering framework - shares how even the most promising products, services, and programmes fail when the underlying narrative is unclear, incomplete, or invisible.

Eric draws on hard-won experience from the high-stakes world of medical software at Philips, where the cost of a misaligned product narrative is measured in regulatory delays and patient outcomes. But the lesson he took from there applies far beyond medical: any team that builds something for stakeholders - software, hardware, services, education programmes, social initiatives, AI-driven products - faces the same gap between what is expected and what is delivered.

The talk walks through the five pains that plague software, product, and service teams alike: low perceived value, scattered documentation, unsynchronised tools, misaligned roles, and an unwanted job no one wants to own. Then comes the turning point: a structured roadmap to turn stakeholder expectations into a lean, traceable, and value-driven product definition - whatever you build.

This session is not about theory. It is about transformation. Eric takes you behind the scenes of Expectationeering, a practical method to build the right product, in the right way, for the right performance - while reducing friction and restoring team energy.