SAFe Lean Portfolio Management For People Who Like To Color Outside The Lines

Lean Portfolio Management

I help portfolio leaders looking to improve their portfolio outcomes through lean/agile approaches, who are pragmatic, thoughtful, and want a guide who’s an expert on SAFe AND other lean/agile approaches, to help them make the right choices. My SAFe LPM workshops build on the SAFe curriculum and extend it with my expertise and experience, so I’m the #1 choice where agile experts such as Professional Scrum Trainers and Kanban experts learn about SAFe.

Let’s explore the options for starting our LPM journey with a SAFe LPM workshop

The purpose of this call is to understand your context and goals, explore some options, and see if we are a good fit. Whether we decide to proceed or not, you’ll probably get some valuable advice for your portfolio journey.

Are traditional portfolio-level processes and behaviors your most significant impediment to agility?

Your organization spent six or seven-figure amounts on an agile transformation. Still, you’re struggling to see the promised land of outsized value creation that was supposed to arrive with teams and teams of teams working in Agile (using Scrum, SAFe, etc.). Looking at the interactions at the organization level, agility is the last term that comes to mind (bureaucracy and large ship struggling to maneuver are more apt descriptions)

You envision finding an organizational operating system that orients around outcomes, where the right people collaborate closely with each other, where people naturally and easily integrate and experiment, and where there’s a goldilocks mix of alignment, autonomy, and guardrails.

The Promise of Agility at the Portfolio Level

My take on Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) focuses on the following interventions to address the problems of traditional portfolio approaches:

  • Strategize – To create focus – Identify the few strategic bets/choices and clarify them using Strategic Themes / OKRs
  • Organize – to enable effective collaboration – Reflect on how to effectively organize to make it easy to explore/deliver on these strategies by creating portfolios and development value streams organized around value.
  • Operate – Visualize, manage, and accelerate the flow of the most significant strategic initiatives using a Portfolio Kanban.
  • Outcome Orientation – Adopt an evidence-informed mindset and operating system where initiatives are aligned around outcomes and measured using results (again, using OKRs) and where investments are measured and efficient – using a continuous discovery mindset.

These principles at the portfolio level allow leaders to explore, understand, and apply a lean/agile mindset at their altitude and decision space, accelerating the cultural transformation needed for true business agility.

Learn how to implement SAFe Lean Portfolio Management

The SAFe Lean Portfolio Management course enables you to be a key player in implementing LPM. It empowers executives, transformation leaders, and program management officers (PMOs) to leverage these LPM interventions in practice using SAFe.

I help clients kick off their LPM journey by delivering this workshop in-house with a cross-functional group of leaders, including portfolio and transformation leaders, PMOs, and other parties interested in scaling agility to the portfolio level. The workshop includes an optional “Getting Started” workshop to go beyond the curriculum and get going on a blueprint for the actual LPM journey.

LPM Training is just part of the picture

LPM training aims to set you up for success in implementing LPM. Especially when applied in-house, the real value of the training is when it’s combined with mentoring/coaching on how to get started. Here are some options for you to consider if you’re interested in an in-house engagement for your portfolio team:
Learn
Pragmatic Training with a SAFe Fellow/SPCT
$15k

SAFe LPM Workshop
Includes SAFe LPM Exam
In-person or live virtual
Two days (option for four half days for live virtual)
10 Participants
$1k for each additional participant
Blueprint
Set for Success – Co-Create your LPM approach
$23k

Learn +

Getting Started Day
Blueprint for Portfolio Structure
Implementation Approach Outline
Get Started
Immersive mentoring/advisory for your initial steps
$35k

Learn + Blueprint +

Application Immersive Workshops (2 half days over 4-12 weeks)
Email and Phone availability for 12 weeks to support getting started
Let’s explore the options for starting our LPM journey with a SAFe LPM workshop

In this call we’ll aim to understand your context and goals, explore some options, and see if we are a good fit.
You’ll probably get some valuable advice for your portfolio journey whether we decide to proceed or not.

What if you want to learn about LPM in a public setting and drive this internally on your own?

Are you thinking about introducing LPM but not sure yet it’s the right approach? Are you looking to drive it internally on your own?

Yes, Sometimes it makes more sense to take a public class, maybe with a colleague or two, rather than go all in from the get go. You might have looked for a while, but am struggling to find a solid open enrollment LPM class. I’ll tell you the truth, for a while I’ve been trying to figure out the way to create an open enrollment registration, learning, and getting started experience that delivers the quality and impact of an inhouse engagement.

What I’ve landed on is an immersive LPM master class experience that won’t be for everyone, won’t happen very often, but will attract portfolio leaders who are interested in driving real portfolio agility.

Learn
Pragmatic Training with a SAFe Fellow/SPCT
$2k

SAFe LPM Workshop
Includes SAFe LPM Exam
live virtual
four half-day sessions
Community
Set for Success – Create your LPM approach
$3k

Learn + 3 Months of Yuval’s LPM Community Access

Participate in a Getting Started workshop
Create your Blueprint for Portfolio Structure
Create your Implementation Approach Outline
Access to Bi-weekly group coaching sessions
Access to coaching / feedback / support from Yuval and the community members

1:1
mentoring/advisory for your initial steps
$6k

Learn + Community + 3 Months of 1:1 VIP access to Yuval

4 1:1 mentoring sessions with Yuval
Direct message access to Yuval for mentoring/coaching
Apply for the next LPM Master Class Cohort

In this low-pressure call, we’ll aim to understand if the LPM Master Class is a good fit for you.

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FAQ

Here are some answers to frequent topics and questions that come up as people are thinking about how start their LPM journey

Do you use SAFe? Is it important to you to stay close to SAFe guidance? If so then the right choice is to use SAFe materials. An alternative that we can consider is to leverage SAFe LPM workshop materials which are not designed for training but can be used for spot introduction of key concepts as part of an implementation focused engagement. Happy to discuss this path further.

Well, it certainly can be. It really depends on the trainer. Experienced trainers with tons of experiences, case studies, and stories feel comfortable facilitating deeper conversations, coloring outside the lines, and drive a very different classroom experience, even if it is based on the same curriculum. Make sure you check out who your trainer for the class is…

It certainly helps when participants are already exposed to SAFe and ideally have taken a class such as Leading SAFe or SAFe Product Owner/Manager. Having said that, that’s not a strong pre-requisite and I’ve had many students that came in fresh. Sometimes these get it faster than others because they’ve had less exposure to SAFe theater in the past.

The portfolio level can be introduced after agile/SAFe practices are already in place or can be used as a starting point to shape the journey right from the get-go.

If you are using a different approach for scaling (Scrum@Scale, Nexus, LESS, Kanban Flight Levels) it often makes sense to learn a more generalized lean/agile portfolio approach and not worry too much about the SAFe curriculum. This is a common offering I provide to clients – an initial strategic workshop to explore needs and context and figure out a blueprint for the journey. I’m happy to learn about your context and have a deeper conversation about which elements of portfolio you would like to explore and figure out what workshop/training makes sense.

It can be either. The training and blueprint workshops are prime opportunities to leverage an in-person setup to maximize the impact of the experience. The optional getting started immersive workshops might be easier logistically as a remote experience, depending on the context. In any case, the costs are for live virtual. Any travel expenses needed for in-person workshops will be added on top.

Yes, every participant will have access to SAFe LPM certification exam.

From an experience perspective, the classroom / workshop can accommodate up to 25 people. From a cost perspective there’s an extra cost of $1000 to each additional student in the core training offer.

I only take on a limited number of workshops/engagements. This means I’m typically booking 2-3 months ahead, especially for in person workshops. If you have a specific timing in mind, reach out and I’m happy to accommodate if I can or will connect you to someone I trust

Still have more questions?

Let’s discuss
Yuval Yeret

I’m Yuval Yeret. As an agility coach/consultant/trainer, I help leaders pursue real and pragmatic agility at scale. Leaders reach out to me when looking for ways to improve product development as well as when they want to apply agile ideas towards overall operational excellence and business scaling/improvement.

The engagements I thrive in involve taking an agile, pragmatic path to an agile organization. I’m based in Boston. My clients are all over.

What’s unique about my approach to LPM? Why take my class?

Let me give you my insider take on the SAFe world. Through its trainer certification program (SAFe Practice Consultant – SPC), Scaled Agile helped organizations scale SAFe adoption by making it easier to identify trainers and consultants as well as create an internal cadre of change agents and potential trainers to help drive and sustain the change. That’s all good. However, what happened as an undesired effect is that the industry relies too much on the SAFe certificates, which should be considered just one bare minimum prerequisite for someone to be in a position to guide other people on their SAFe journey. I write more about this here.

That is a long way to say that I believe you should choose a SAFe trainer/consultant based on more than their certification. I AM a SAFe Fellow and SPCT (and also a Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainer), but much more importantly, I suggest you work with me if you relate to my take on SAFe and the world of agility in general.

Don’t work with me if:

  • You are looking to learn/implement SAFe LPM by the book, with much more focus on the WHAT than the WHY.
  • You consider it crucial to focus on the SAFe LPM certification exam, much more than actually applying LPM.
  • You want to solely focus on SAFe LPM and are not interested in complementary approaches and contrarian views.

In other words – if you like to color within the lines, I’m not sure I’m the one for you…

I bring to LPM my experience in driving evolutionary change, enterprise-level kanban, evidence-based management, and my tendency to create hybrid mashups that explore the boundaries of frameworks. That is why people who are innovators, early adopters and pragmatic proactive tweakers often choose to work with me.

Let’s explore the options for starting our LPM journey with a SAFe LPM workshop

The purpose of this call is to understand your context and goals, explore some options, and see if we are a good fit. You’ll probably get some valuable advice for your portfolio journey whether we decide to proceed or not.