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Data-Driven Agile Product Development

Published by Pearson

Intermediate content levelIntermediate

Create innovative, high-impact products that deliver value to customers

  • Drive high-impact product development decisions by leveraging user feedback and data.
  • Boost your effectiveness as a Product Owner with a proven, evidence-based approach to innovative product development.
  • Test critical business hypotheses iteratively with actionable metrics to ensure success.

Join industry expert Howard Podeswa in this transformative course designed to change the way you make decisions in innovative product development. Whether you're launching an innovative product or adding a novel feature to an existing product, traditional data analytical approaches to decision-making don’t apply because there is no historical data to rely on. This course teaches you how to create and leverage your own data by engaging customers early through Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) and iterative testing. By using real-world case studies, hands-on workshops, and insights from Howard's acclaimed book The Agile Guide to Business Analysis and Planning, you’ll learn how to test critical business hypotheses, track user behavior, and make data-driven decisions that maximize value for customers.

This course goes beyond theory, equipping you with practical tools for planning MVP experiments, defining actionable metrics, and applying the right MVP types for your product’s lifecycle. As you build your skills, you’ll develop a critical competency in Product Ownership that helps you guide teams toward products and features that truly resonate with customers. Whether you’re a new or experienced Product Owner, this course will help you drive innovation, validate assumptions, and ensure your products deliver real value to customers.

What you’ll learn and how you can apply it

  • Understand and apply Lean Startup’s evidence-based approach to decision-making in innovative product development.
  • Prioritize high-value features by leveraging customer feedback and data-driven insights to guide decision-making.
  • Gain expertise specifying Minimum Viable Product (MVP) experiments using the 7 MVP types from The Agile Guide to Business Analysis and Planning and understand when and how to apply them through real-world examples.
  • Communicate and apply these techniques within your organization, fostering a culture of validated learning.

This live event is for you because...

  • This course is ideal for both new and experienced Product Owners, Product Managers, Proxy Product Owners, Business Analysts, and other team members—such developers, testers and as UX designers—involved in decision-making for innovative product development.
  • Additionally, Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, Project Managers, and practice leads will benefit from this training as it provides state-of-the-art skills that focus the team on products and features that deliver the highest value to stakeholders.

Prerequisites

  • A basic understanding of agile development, Scrum, and User Stories is helpful but not necessary.

Course Set-up

  • All exercises will be carried out on the O'Reilly Learning platform using Chat. No additional applications are required.

Recommended Preparation

Recommended Follow-up

Schedule

The time frames are only estimates and may vary according to how the class is progressing.

Segment 1: Overview of Data-Driven Decision-Making in Agile Development (50 minutes)

  • What is data-driven decision-making and what are its benefits?
  • What makes it challenging in a VUCA world (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous)
  • What is the Lean Startup Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach?
  • MVP vs. Minimum Marketable Product (MMP) vs. Minimum Marketable Feature (MMF)
  • Where to run MVP experiments
  • MVP process steps
  • Exercise: Suggest an innovative product and an MVP to test its viability

Q&A (5 minutes)

Break (5 minutes)

Segment 2: Determining Leap of Faith Hypotheses and Metrics (50 minutes)

  • Establishing Actionable Metrics
  • Vanity vs. Actionable Metrics
  • Metrics to test value hypotheses
  • Metrics to test growth hypotheses
  • What is Split (A/B) Testing and why is it important?
  • Exercise: Determine assumptions and metrics for a case study

Q&A (5 minutes)

Break (5 minutes)

Segment 3: MVP Types Part A (50 minutes)

  • Type 1: Preorders MVP
  • Type 2: Concierge MVP
  • Type 3: Smoke-and-Mirrors MVP
  • Type 4: Differentiator MVP
  • Exercise: Select and apply an MVP type from types 1-4 that you feel would be most effective for testing critical hypothesis about a case study.

Q&A (5 minutes)

Break (5 minutes)

Segment 4: MVP Types Part B; Post-Rollout Data Analytics (50 minutes)

  • Type 5: Walking Skeleton (Spanning Application)
  • Type 6: Value Stream Skeleton
  • Type 7: Operational MVP
  • Exercise: Select and apply an MVP type from Types 5-7 that you feel would be most effective for testing critical hypothesis about a case study.
  • Role of data-driven decision-making after rollout
  • Post-implementation metrics

Q&A (5 minutes)

Course wrap-up and next steps (5 minutes)

Your Instructor

  • Howard Podeswa

    Howard Podeswa is a thought leader in the intersection of agile and business analysis. For over twenty years, he has been helping large organizations adapt and optimize their business analysis and planning practices for agile software development approaches. He is the author of the popular book on agile analysis The Agile Guide to Business Analysis and Planning: From Strategic Plan to Continuous Value Delivery (2021, Pearson). Previous publications include UML for the IT Business Analyst, 2nd Ed. (2009) and The Business Analyst’s Handbook (2008). At Noble Inc., he has provided agile and business analysis services to clients worldwide, including the International Standards Organization (ISO), Moody’s, the Mayo Clinic, TELUS, TD Bank, LabCorp, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Mawer Investment Management Ltd., Bell Nexia, and REI Coop.

    Howard is a widely requested speaker at international BA and agile events, including Festival of Business Analysis (IIBA Australia, 2023), International BA Istanbul (2021), European BA Day (Frankfurt, 2020), the Toronto Agile Community Conference (2015), the BBC Conference (2016, 2014), the agile Norway Developers Conference (NDC 2013), the BA Forum (Poland) and BA World conferences across North America. He is also a professional artist whose works have been shown extensively in commercial and public galleries. His exhibitions include Dépaysement | Studio (Birch Contemporary, 2022) and “A Brief History” (Kelowna Art Gallery 2017, Koffler 2016).

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Skill covered

Agile