Listening for Value: Business Analysis Across Systems, Sectors, and Surprising Places

Key Point: What happens when a technically sound solution enters a system where people understand value differently?

In this interactive session, Dr. Casey LaFrance returns to the IIBA Orange County Chapter to explore findings and applications from his book, Listening for Value. Building on business analysis practice and the relational value stream introduced in his earlier presentation, the session moves from theory into a series of real-world scenarios drawn from development work, infrastructure planning, consulting, AI governance, organizational change, and even faith-based communities. 

Participants will work through short cases where the visible problem and the actual problem are rarely the same thing. A wastewater project may appear to be about engineering but depend on public understanding and trust. An AI governance initiative may have policies, controls, and committees while still struggling to translate values into everyday decisions. A development project may deliver its planned outputs while missing signals from the community it intends to serve. A faith-based organization may have deep relational capital while struggling to convert shared purpose into clear requirements and sustainable action.

Through discussion, rapid scenario analysis, and practical exercises, participants will explore how business analysts can identify meaning loss, trace value across handoffs, recognize relational bottlenecks, surface informal signals before they become formal problems, and design better feedback loops. The session extends the presentation’s central idea that analysts are more than translators of requirements. They can serve as stewards of meaning across systems, particularly when value must survive boundaries between professions, organizations, technologies, and communities. 

The session is designed for business analysts, project professionals, consultants, change leaders, AI governance practitioners, and anyone working in complex environments where success depends on understanding what people value, how that value is interpreted, and what happens to it as it moves through a system.

Bio