PPDV: Stop Building Features Nobody Uses
What You'll Learn
- Why most product teams fail by building the wrong things efficiently — and how discovery fixes it.
- How to reframe a solution demand into a Business Problem Statement that exposes the real WHY.
- How to use the Truth Curve to match experiment size to the evidence you actually have.
- How to run low-cost experiments with Test Cards and capture evidence with Learning Cards.
- Exactly what the official Scrum.org PPDV certification covers, who it's for, and how to enrol.
The Real Failure Mode: Building the Wrong Things Efficiently
Most product teams don't fail because they build things badly. They fail because they build the wrong things — quickly, cleanly, and Sprint after Sprint. Velocity charts look healthy. Burndowns hit zero. And still, feature after feature ships to indifference.
Think about the last thing your team shipped that nobody used. What did it cost — six weeks of an entire team? More? Now imagine you could have discovered it was the wrong bet in two days, with a simple experiment, before a single line of code was written. That is the exact capability Professional Product Discovery and Validation (PPDV) is designed to build.
"Delivery was never the hard part. Deciding what deserves to be delivered is where products are won or lost."
PPDV is a one-day, hands-on class created by Ken Schwaber and Scrum.org. It is not a lecture about discovery — it is a day spent doing discovery. You learn to formulate work as problems to solve rather than solutions to implement, to gather evidence instead of collecting opinions, and to invest your team's effort only where the signal justifies it.
You Will Live a Real Product Crisis (The Flappr Case)
From the first hour, you step into a running case study. You join Flappr — a social platform bleeding users — as its new Head of Product. The CEO is convinced she already knows the fix: add "verified" badges to premium accounts. The developers tell you it will take three Sprints of the entire team. The clock is ticking and the CEO is travelling.
Your job is the hardest job in product: decide whether to invest, using evidence instead of authority. Across the day you interview users, build proto-personas from raw feedback, map the real problem, design and run a validation experiment, and — the moment most product people never get to rehearse safely — tell a CEO that her favourite idea is invalidated, backed by data and a better alternative.
Why a Simulation Beats a Slide Deck
Discovery is a skill, not a concept. You can read every book on experimentation and still freeze the first time a senior stakeholder says "just build it." The Flappr simulation lets you practise the entire loop — framing, experimenting, deciding, and influencing — in a consequence-free environment, so that when the real stakeholder pushes back next quarter, your response is a rehearsed reflex, not a scramble.
The Discovery & Validation Skills You Will Practice
This is a working class. Every concept below is something you will use with your own hands during the day, not just watch on a slide:
- Business Problem Statements. Turn a vague "we should add X" into a crisp statement of the goal, the observed gap, and the measurable business impact — so the whole team can see the real WHY.
- The Truth Curve. Match the size of your experiment to the strength of the evidence you already hold. Stop over-investing in ideas you can't yet justify, and stop under-testing the risky ones.
- The right validation technique for the moment. Interviews, paper prototypes, landing pages, feature fakes, Wizard of Oz, Concierge MVP, pre-order pages — and knowing which to reach for.
- Test Cards & Learning Cards. Structure every experiment as a testable hypothesis and capture what you learned in a format your stakeholders trust (Strategyzer).
- Proto-Personas & Impact Maps. Convert messy customer feedback into a shared picture of who you serve and the outcomes worth pursuing.
- Fitting discovery into Scrum. Phrase Product Goals, Sprint Goals, and Product Backlog Items as hypotheses — without creating a separate, siloed "discovery team."
Opinion-Driven vs. Evidence-Driven Product Work
The difference PPDV makes is not subtle. It changes where decisions come from. The table below contrasts the two ways of working you will feel the gap between during the class.
| Decision | Opinion-Driven Team | Evidence-Driven Team (PPDV) |
|---|---|---|
| What to build | Loudest voice / HiPPO wins | Problem framed, assumption tested first |
| Confidence to invest | Gut feel and optimism | Signal from a sized experiment |
| Cost of a wrong bet | Discovered after weeks of build | Discovered in days, before build |
| Stakeholder conversations | Opinion vs. opinion, seniority decides | Data-informed, decisions defensible |
| When you're "done" | Feature shipped | Outcome measured against a target |
Scrum.org built the PPDV curriculum to move teams from the left column to the right — deliberately, and with tools you can apply immediately.
Why Discovery Matters More in the AI Era
AI has made building cheap. Teams can now generate features, prototypes, and working code faster than ever — which means the cost of building the wrong thing is exploding, because you can build more wrong things per quarter than at any point in history. When delivery stops being the bottleneck, knowing what to build becomes the entire game.
As the trainer of Scrum.org's Professional Scrum Master – AI Essentials (PSM-AI) and Professional Scrum Product Owner – AI Essentials (PSPO-AI), I bring this lens directly into the PPDV class: where AI genuinely accelerates discovery — synthesizing interview transcripts, drafting hypotheses, simulating personas, clustering feedback at scale — and where real user evidence and human judgment remain absolutely non-negotiable. This is discovery and validation for the product world you actually work in now, not the one from five years ago.
Is the PPDV Course Right for You?
Assess your readiness. Check all boxes where your answer is YES:
- Are you tired of shipping features that create no measurable outcome?
- Do you want to influence stakeholders with evidence instead of opinion?
- Do you want to validate risky ideas cheaply before your team commits weeks to them?
- Do you want to frame work as problems to solve, not tasks to execute?
- Do you want an industry-recognised Scrum.org discovery credential on your profile?
If you checked ANY box, you belong in our next PPDV cohort.
PPDV Course Overview
The Professional Product Discovery and Validation (PPDV) class is a one-day, hands-on learning experience created by Ken Schwaber and Scrum.org. Working through a single connected case study, you learn a toolkit of discovery and validation practices you can put to use immediately — the same day you return to work.
Who This Course Is Designed For
PPDV is built for Product Owners, Product Managers, Product Leaders, Business Analysts, and product teams — and for Scrum Masters and delivery professionals who are tired of building output that creates no outcome. No prior certification is required; a basic familiarity with Scrum is helpful. If you influence what gets built, this class is for you.
Quick Class Facts
Upcoming Options: Loading dates...
Duration: 1 Day (Live Virtual)
Delivery: Highly interactive Zoom class with collaboration boards
Trainer: Sanjay Saini, Professional Scrum Trainer (PST)
What You Will Master
- Analyze the problem your stakeholder wants solved — and examine problems to solve, not solutions to implement.
- Identify satisfaction gaps by analyzing real customer and user feedback.
- Order and prioritize assumptions so you validate the riskiest one first.
- Customize and test hypotheses using the right technique and the right data.
- Analyze experiment results and demonstrate an evidence-based mindset to teams and stakeholders.
- Fit discovery and validation into Scrum end-to-end, connecting it to empiricism, transparency, and your Product Goal.
Training Investment
| Participant Location | Investment Fee |
|---|---|
| Indian Participants | INR [ADD PRICE] + 18% GST |
| International Participants | $[ADD PRICE] USD |
What's Included in Your Registration?
- Certification: Password to attempt the official Scrum.org PPDV assessment — plus a FREE second attempt if you attempt within 14 days and score below 85%.
- Toolkit: The exact templates used in class — Business Problem Statement, Test Card, Learning Card, Proto-Persona, and Impact Map — ready to use with your team the next morning.
- Resources: A curated discovery reading path (The Mom Test, Testing Business Ideas, Continuous Discovery Habits, Lean UX, and more).
- Networking: Access to the Product Leaders Day India community and post-class support for your real discovery questions.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
No. There are no certification prerequisites. A basic familiarity with Scrum is helpful, but the class is open to Product Owners, Product Managers, Business Analysts, Product Leaders, Scrum Masters, and anyone who influences what gets built.
It is almost entirely hands-on. You spend the day working through a realistic product case study (Flappr) in small groups, designing and running an actual experiment, and defending your decisions with evidence. You leave having done discovery, not just heard about it.
PSPO courses focus on the accountabilities and stances of the Product Owner within Scrum. PPDV focuses specifically on the discovery and validation skills — problem framing, experimentation, and evidence gathering — that help you decide what is worth building in the first place. It complements the PSPO path rather than replacing it.
Yes. All participants receive a password to attempt the official Scrum.org PPDV assessment. If you attempt it within 14 days of the class and do not score at least 85%, you receive a second attempt at no additional cost.
AI has made building cheap, which raises the cost of building the wrong thing. The class shows where AI can accelerate discovery work — synthesizing interviews, drafting hypotheses, simulating personas — and where real user evidence and human judgment remain non-negotiable. As the trainer of Scrum.org's PSM-AI and PSPO-AI courses, Sanjay brings this lens directly into PPDV.
You will be able to reframe a solution demand into a Business Problem Statement, size an experiment using the Truth Curve, run a low-cost validation with a Test Card, and capture what you learned with a Learning Card. These are reusable tools you can apply to your very next roadmap decision.
Own the backlog too?
PPDV pairs naturally with AI-augmented product ownership. If you also shape the backlog and want to layer GenAI fluency onto your discovery skills, explore our Professional Scrum Product Owner – AI Essentials (PSPO-AI) workshop.
Continue Your Product Learning
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Final Takeaway: Evidence Is a Competitive Advantage
The teams pulling ahead in 2026 aren't the ones building the most — they're the ones building the right things, because they learned to test cheaply before committing expensively. Discovery and validation are learnable, structured skills, and one focused day is enough to start using them on your very next roadmap decision.
Ask yourself one honest question: in the last six months, did your team pour weeks of effort into something a two-day experiment could have invalidated? If the answer is "yes" — or even "probably" — this class will pay for itself the next time you're asked to just build it.