Ahsan Rahi

Energy industry leader focused on delivery of technology and integrated capital projects in complex and novel environments through emphasis on systems thinking & flow-based execution.

Most recently served as Global Director of a Fortune 250 company for strategic projects in the Middle East / North Africa region; former Deputy Chairman of the Board for Oil & Gas Services with Naftogaz, the Ukrainian national energy company.

Principal inventor on U.S. patents for an enterprise project management system that has been successfully deployed on projects in the $50M – $1.2Bn range. Software & electrical engineering background with certifications in Lean Six Sigma, PMI, and Kanban.

Entrepreneur at heart – founder of heuristIQ LLC, a boutique firm advising start-up & scale-up clients on GTM & delivery at scale; proud co-founder of Let’s Build Ukraine Inc, a U.S non-profit formed in 2022 to support children in Ukraine (https://letsbuildukraine.co/).

Imperfect by Design: 14X Delivery Improvement After “Stop Starting” Stopped Working

Agile practices were being followed on a major ADNOC (Abu Dhabi National Oil Company) AI/ML initiative – a real-time production optimization deployment for autonomous operations across onshore and offshore oil wells, delivered by a multi-company team composed of engineers from Halliburton, AIQ, Honeywell, and Yokogawa. Stories closed. Ceremonies happened. The harder we applied "stop starting, start finishing," the slower we went. Then we did the opposite – deliberately designed for imperfect individual delivery to raise system throughput – and velocity jumped 14X, with improved quality, zero safety or regulatory compromise, and multi-millions in value generated. This talk is about when an Agile heuristic devolves into theatre, how to spot it, and what we did instead.