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Howard Podeswa - Essence of Story Mapping: How to Use Story Mapping in Agile Planning to Drive Value Delivery and Validated Learning - April 17, 2025

Apr 17, 2025 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time

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In this session, subject-matter expert Howard Podeswa reveals the transformative potential of Story Mapping in Agile planning. Whether you’re a Business Analyst, Product Owner, or part of an Agile team, you'll gain a practical understanding of how this powerful tool can revolutionize your approach to agile release planning, enabling you to consistently and frequently deliver valuable features. Based on his work helping agile organizations across a broad spectrum of industries and his recent collaboration with Ivar Jacobson International on The Story Mapping Gameboard (a new resource hosted on Essence Workbench), Podeswa outlines the steps of the approach and provides concrete examples illustrating how to apply it in different contexts. Over the course of the talk, you’ll learn how to use Story Maps to ensure that every sprint/iteration delivers market-ready value, plan MVPs to test hypotheses, visualize dependencies, identify workflow gaps and break down complex projects into manageable, actionable stories.

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. 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, LabCorp and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA. Mawer Investment Management Ltd., Bell Nexia and REI Corp. He is currently collaborating with Ivar Jacobson, Michael Flynn and others at Ivar Jacobson International on The Story Mapping Gameboard - a new resource hosted on a free version of Essence Workbench. He has been an adviser to professional-association initiatives, including PMI’s Guide to Business Analysis, the BABOK and IIBA’s Nimble program and was the creator of Boston University CEC-certified program in Business Analysis . Podeswa is also a professional artist, based in Toronto where he graduated from OCADU (Eric Freifeld Award for Figure Draughtsmanship). He has been involved in many solo and group exhibitions in Canada, the U.S., South Africa and Europe including at Birch Contemporary, Mira Godard Gallery (Toronto), Waddington-Gorce Gallery (Montreal), Association for Visual Arts (Capetown) and ARC Gallery (Chicago). Recent exhibitions include Dépaysement | Studio (Birch Contemporary, Toronto), Imago Mundi, (Venice, Italy), and A Brief History (Koffler Gallery and Kelowna Art Gallery). Podeswa’s paintings are held in numerous private and public collections including BMO Financial Group Corporate Art Collection (Canada), Luciano Benetton Collection (Italy), Ciba-Geigy AG (Basel), and the Agnes Etherington Gallery (Queen’s University, Kingston).

His work has been widely reviewed in art journals including Art Forum (2023), MOMUS, International Architecture and Design, Canadian Art Magazine, and Border Crossings Magazine. Links to Howard’s BA/PO work:

Company site: www.nobleinc.ca Email: howardpodeswa@nobleinc.ca

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/howard-podeswa-5003111/?originalSubdomain=ca

Essence Story-Mapping Gameboard: https://workbench.ivarjacobson.com/signup/storymapping-hpodeswa

Avion story mapping app: https://www.avion.io/

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/Exhibitions/Gallery/Online-Publications/Howard-Podeswa-A-Brief-History

 
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IIBA Tampa Bay Chapter
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