TL; DR: David Pereira, Cliff Berg, and Jonathan Odo speaking at Hands-on Agile 2025
The second batch of videos of Hands-On Agile 2025 is in, and you don’t want to miss them: David Pereira reveals why product discovery often fails—and how teams can avoid common pitfalls to rapidly validate ideas and deliver real value. Also, Cliff Berg shares surprising insights from Agile 2 Academy’s study of highly agile companies like SpaceX, highlighting leadership behaviors rather than traditional Agile practices as key agility drivers, while Jonathan Odo explores timeless engineering principles shaping the future of high-performing, adaptive organizations.
These industry veterans bring decades of enterprise transformation experience, providing actionable insights you can implement immediately. Watch the session recordings to transform how you approach agility.
📺 Watch the videos from the first batch: Change Questions, The Agile Way, Humans Robots Agents: Dr. Lynn Kelley, Peter Merel, and Jurgen Appelo speaking at Hands-on Agile 2025.
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Hands-On Agile 2025: Product Discovery Mistakes, Agile Leadership, Taylorism to Product Mindset
David Pereira: How to Overcome Common Mistakes with Product Discovery
Summary
Product teams often build features nobody needs. That’s not why they exist. Yet, often, they face a trap. The question is how fast they can drop bad ideas.
Product discovery helps teams quickly de-risk ideas, separating signals from noise and ultimately enabling them to drive value sooner. Sadly, many teams misunderstand discovery and fall prey to predictable and often avoidable traps.
Key Takeaways:
- What’s not product discovery: Clarity on what is often defined as product discovery, but it’s actually a lie.
- Most Dangerous product discovery mistakes: Understanding how to overcome costly mistakes product teams often make.
- The mindful product discovery: A brief overview of what product discovery is and its core elements.
Who is David Pereira?
I grew up in a small Brazilian town where curiosity was my ticket to the world. My journey has always been about making a meaningful impact, from coding my first applications to helping global teams solve complex problems. Titles don’t drive me—responsibility and results do. I’m also a failed rock star who traded guitar riffs for building products, but I never stopped believing in the power of creativity to shape what’s next.
Connect with David Pereira
David Pereira’s new book: Untrapping Product Teams.
Cliff Berg: Leadership Behaviors That Lead to Actual Agility
Summary
We at Agile 2 Academy studied five companies that had demonstrated extreme agility at scale in terms of their ability to pivot strategically, quickly, and effectively.
We did not find any Agile practices that were common among them. In fact, the most agile of them is probably SpaceX, and their head of application software told us that they never use the word “Agile.”
What we did find common was behaviors – specifically, behaviors among their leaders.
I will explain what some of those behaviors are. Then, I will apply what is known from leadership research and behavioral psychology to why those behaviors are so effective.
Learning Outcomes
The participant will understand and be able to explain:
- What the true sources of agility are.
- What behaviors generate agility in an organization.
- Why those behaviors are so effective.
Meet Cliff Berg
Cliff is a Managing Partner of Agile 2 Academy.
As a successful tech entrepreneur, he was co-founder and CTO of Digital Focus, a startup that grew from 2 to 200 people in five years and was known for its success in rapidly building high-reliability Internet-facing business critical systems for companies like FedEx, McKesson, United Overseas Bank, and many others. It was acquired in 2006.
Cliff’s 2006 textbook High-Assurance Design documents many of the engineering and agility lessons learned at Digital Focus. Since then, Cliff has helped with more than ten Agile or DevOps transformations and is a DevOps trainer and subject matter expert.
In 2020, Cliff assembled the global Agile 2 team to reimagine “Agile” and was the lead author of the Agile 2 book. Cliff is now on the Agile Alliance team to “reimagine Agile.”
Cliff is certified in the Human Synergistics Organizational Culture Inventory® and Organizational Effectiveness Inventory® assessment tools. He has certificates in machine learning from Stanford. He has degrees from Cornell University in Operations Research, Nuclear Engineering, and Physics.
To contact me about consulting, please message Agile 2 Academy at [email protected].
Recommended Reading
The Agile 2 Academy newsletter.
Jonathan Odo: Taylorism-Lean-Agile-Product Mindset
Summary
For over 100 years, we’ve sought the best ways to apply the scientific method and engineering principles to make products better. Our approaches have evolved as our technology has evolved – better precision and observability have allowed faster, more complex products to be built. And while the tools and approaches may seem radically different, there are several throughlines to explore. Those tell us what’s coming next and, importantly, how we can contribute to better-functioning organizations in our brave new world.
Meet Jonathan Odo
With extensive experience in over a dozen organizations, from startups to Fortune 100s, I believe agility is about praxis – the methodological, considered application of theory. My unique breadth of experience spanning many industries and roles has helped me foster novel insights and solutions to truly wicked problems.
My latest, and so far favorite, role has been as Product Operations Leader. Empowering product, technology, and business leaders and whole organizations to accelerate delivery through coaching, mentoring, and the synthesis of complex data.
What I love about it: the scaling of product operations, the development of high-performing teams, and the creation of operating models, all pointed at unblocking people from doing their best work. Designing enabling constraints is the most meaningful work I’ve been privileged to undertake.
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