Agile Analysis and Planning
Published by Pearson
Fundamental Principles and Best Practices for POs and Team Analysts
Join Howard Podeswa and get actionable guidance for improving your agile analysis and planning. Learn key tools and techniques to apply across your organization, including how to choose the best agile framework, prepare features to maximize value delivery, increase team productivity, reduce rework and delays, use hypothesis-testing and MVPs to direct investment, and use story maps to plan release cycles. If you are a Product Owner, Product Manager, or Team/Business Analyst this course is for you. No prior experience necessary. Download PDFs of the templates and artifacts from this session to use in your organization.
What you’ll learn and how you can apply it
- How popular agile frameworks and practices, including Kanban, Scrum, XP, DevOps, SAFe, and ATDD, impact the PO and BA roles
- How to prepare features effectively to maximize value delivery, increase team productivity, and reduce rework and delays
- How to use hypothesis-testing and MVPs to direct investment to the highest-value features
- How to use Story Maps to plan the iterations of a release cycle or PI
This live event is for you because...
- You are new to the Product Owner or Team Analyst role. This training is a crash course in the key practices you’ll need to hit the ground running.
- You are a seasoned business analyst, product manager, project manager, or other IT professional transitioning to agile. This course helps you upskill for your new environment.
Prerequisites
- A basic understanding of agile development, Scrum, and Kanban is helpful but not necessary.
- The Agile Manifesto
Recommended Preparation
- Read the 2020 Scrum Guide by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland (Scrum.org)
- Watch Lesson 1 History of Agile, Lesson 2 Agile Concepts, and Lesson 3 Scrum Overview from Scrum Fundamentals LiveLessons (Video) by Tommy Norman
- Watch Basics and Mindset sub-lessons of Starting Kanban (Video) by Brendan Wovchko
Recommended Follow-up
- Read The Agile Guide to Business Analysis and Planning: From Strategic Plan to Continuous Value Delivery (Book) by Howard Podeswa
- Read Accelerate: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations (Book) by Nicole J. Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim
Schedule
The time frames are only estimates and may vary according to how the class is progressing.
Introduction (10 minutes)
Segment 1: Writing Effective Acceptance Criteria (60-65 minutes)
- Acceptance Test-Driven Development/Behavior-Driven Development (ATDD/BDD) Practices
- Specifying Acceptance Criteria (AC) Using Gherkin
- Minimum Marketable Feature (MMF) Approach
- Q&A
- Break (10 minutes)
Segment 2: Refining the Product Backlog (60-65 minutes)
- How and When to Refine Backlog Items
- Definition of Ready (DoR)
- Patterns for Splitting Stories
- Q&A
- Break (10 minutes)
Segment 3: Preparing for a New Release Cycle (60-65 minutes)
- Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and Hypothesis-Testing
- Release Planning with Story Mapping
- Q&A
Course wrap-up and next steps (15 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).