Howard Podeswa
CEO, Noble Inc.
Toronto, Canada
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Howard Podeswa is a thought leader in the intersection of agile and business analysis, and a widely requested speaker at international BA and agile events, including BA Istanbul 2021 (Keynote), BA & Beyond (2025, 2023), BA World Boston 2024, PMI Silicon Valley 2023, European BA World (Frankfurt) and Norway Developers Conference (NDC). For over twenty years, he has been helping large organizations optimize their BA and product ownership practices for agile software development. He has authored a number of books that have become staple references, most recently: The Agile Guide to Business Analysis and Planning From Strategic Plan to Continuous Value Delivery (Addison-Wesley, 2021). Other works include UML for the IT Business Analyst, and The Business Analyst’s Handbook.
Through his company, Noble Inc., he has served clients worldwide, including ISO, Moody’s, the Mayo Clinic, TELUS, REI, LabCorp and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). He has been an adviser to professional-association initiatives, including PMI’s Guide to Business Analysis, the BABOK and IIBA’s Nimble program, and has recently been collaborating with Ivar Jacobson International on The Story Mapping Gameboard - a new resource hosted on a free version of Essence Workbench.
Alongside his work in software development, Podeswa is also a practicing, professional artist whose work has been shown extensively in commercial and public galleries, and featured in leading art journals including Art Forum, MOMUS and International Architecture and Design. Podeswa’s work often begins with personal history as a catalyst for meditations on art historical legacy, physics, theories of perception and the state of the world. His paintings are held in numerous private and public collections including BMO Financial Group (Canada), Luciano Benetton Collection (Italy) and Ciba-Geigy AG (Basel).
Contacts/Links
• To contact Howard for speaking engagements, training and coaching services, please email howardpodeswa@nobleinc.ca or message him on LinkedIn @howardpodeswa
• Courses and Webinars: www.nobleinc.ca
• Art and BA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mvBLDeHnSw
Art links:
• Art home page: https://www.howardpodeswa.com
• Art Forum review: https://www.artforum.com/events/howard-podeswa-251083/
• Public exhibition - A Brief History: https://www.kofflerarts.org/whatson/exhibitions/exhibition/a-brief-history
Links
Area of Expertise
Topics
[Keynote] Why Your Organization Needs a High-Performing Agile Analysis and Planning Competency
This keynote explores why agile analysis and planning is critical to innovative product development at scale, despite being an often overlooked aspect of agile development. Through this talk you'll learn how effective agile analysis and planning helps organizations improve performance by focusing teams on work of the highest value to customers, reduces errors and delays, improves forecasting and estimation and leads to more effective prioritization decisions. Attendees will also learn practical guidelines for effective agile analysis and planning based on the speaker's experiences working with organizations and his recently published book on the topic.
Past deliveries includes BA Istanbul Keynote, 7th Annual Conference. Preferred duration: 1 hour. Target audience: Product Owner, Product Manager, Business Analyst
[Keynote] From Canvas to Kanban: A Creative Take on Art, Agile, Analysis, and Innovation
What does painting a canvas have in common with building great software? More than you'd think.
This keynote illuminates surprising connections between the creative processes of the studio and the iterative, collaborative world of agile product development based on the speaker’s rare dual-track career as an agile analysis consultant/thought leader and internationally exhibited visual artist. Through engaging storytelling, powerful visuals, and real-world case studies from both art and agile development, this keynote explores how artistic practices can help agile teams think more creatively, embrace ambiguity, and deliver innovative products. The talk also explores how agile concepts like iterative delivery, feedback loops, and lean thinking have transformed the speaker’s personal approach to art-making.
Whether you're a business analyst, product owner, or agile coach, this talk offers fresh insight into the human side of building valuable products—and reminds us that the most powerful tools we have are vision, curiosity, and the courage to explore.
Keynote address. Based on BA Insights podcast: Business Analysis and the Arts. First public delivery in this format. Preferred Duration 1 hr. Target audience: product owners, product managers, business analysts, agile developers, project managers
[Workshop] The Product Owner (PO) Crash Course Workshop: Principles and Best Practices for POs&BAs
Take this workshop to gain actionable guidance for improving your agile analysis and planning as a product owner or team analyst. Learn key tools and techniques to apply across your organization and gain experience applying them in hands-on workshops. You'll learn how to prepare features to maximize value delivery and reduce rework and delays; use hypothesis-testing and MVPs to direct investment and use story maps for release planning. If you are a Product Owner, Product Manager, or Business Analyst this course is for you.
Learning Objectives
o Plan Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) to test Leap-of-Faith Hypotheses and direct team effort towards the highest-value features.
o Understand Product Ownership (PO), its benefits and how it maps to an agile organization.
o Be able to prepare features effectively to focus the team on work of the highest value, and reduce rework and delays using techniques including ATDD/BDD, Minimum Marketable Feature (MMF), WSJF prioritization (Weighted Shortest Job First) and story-splitting patterns.
Workshop. Preferred duration: 3-4 hours. Previous IRL public deliveries include: PSBA Boston 2024, BA World 2022, IT Works (2022, 2023). Also delivered online through O'Reilly Online Learning. Target audience: Product Owner, Product Manager, Business Analyst
[Workshop] The Story Mapping Workshop: Unlocking the Power of Story Maps for Agile Release Planning
Join an industry expert for a hands-on workshop that reveals how Story Maps can transform your effectiveness in agile release planning. Whether you're a Business Analyst or Product Owner, you'll learn to use the map to plan the frequent delivery of valuable features, break work into manageable stories, and visualize dependencies to avoid delays. Using real-world case studies, you’ll walk away with practical techniques to ensure consistent, frequent value delivery in agile release planning.
Key Takeaways:
• Hands-on experience creating and applying Story Maps in agile planning.
• Practical strategies for delivering cohesive, market-ready value in every sprint.
• Case studies showcasing the impact of Story Mapping across industries and teams.
Workshop. Presented IRL at BA & Beyond 2025; Toronto Agile Community (2025); online for O'Reilly online (2024, 2025) and IIBA Tampa, Florida (2025). Requirements: Pod seating (groups of 5-6); 1 flipchart and set of post-it notes for each group of 5-6. Target audience: Product Owner, Product Manager, Business Analyst
[Workshop] Story Splitting Patterns Applied: Decompose backlog items into valuable stories
Join an industry expert in this workshop designed to transform how you approach one of the most challenging aspects of agile business analysis and backlog refinement: story-splitting. Story-splitting is the decomposition of large work items into small, valuable User Stories. This process is critical to agile development, enabling faster time to market, frequent product improvements and accelerated learning. Mastering this skill, however, can be challenging, as it requires creating work items that are impactful, yet small enough to be completed in a short period (e.g., 1 sprint or iteration).
In this hands-on workshop, you'll learn practical guidelines for excelling in this skill, using 13 story-splitting patterns from the author’s acclaimed book on agile analysis, which incorporates the Lawrence and SAFe contributions. You'll gain valuable insights into when and how to apply each pattern and explore real-world scenarios that illustrate their application. You’ll engage in hands-on workshops that reinforce learning and develop actionable story-splitting skills you can apply immediately on the job to enable the frequent delivery of value to stakeholders.
Workshop, IRL . Preferred delivery time: 3 hours. Has been previously delivered online for O'Reilly Learning platform (Dec. 2024) and as part of larger workshop for IT Works, Belgium (2022-2023). Target audience: Product Owner, Product Manager, Business Analyst
Howard Podeswa
CEO, Noble Inc.
Toronto, Canada
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