Insights

Actively Managing Portfolio Flow

Seeing the swamp is the first step in shaping it into a river.  You’ve established a Portfolio Kanban – a flow-based view of the significant work taking place in your organization. (also known as your portfolio).  More likely than not, there are a lot of cards on that board, like a traffic jam in rush …

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Let’s open the (Portfolio Kanban) Cards 

A question you’re probably asking yourself as you’re trying to visualize and manage the flow of your most significant initiatives/projects (Aka Portfolio Flow) is – what should the cards represent? What information should they contain? Following SAFe Lean Portfolio Management? your cards will reflect Epics. And you’ll probably use Epic hypothesis statements and Lean Business …

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The Change Agent Catch 22

“Don’t tell me to implement this new process.“ “I don’t have time to discuss process.“ Many change agents I work with struggle with engaging senior leaders who don’t have time for dialogues around systems and ways of working. They also don’t appreciate being prescribed a new process. They rarely have time to learn about principles. …

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Visualizing Portfolio Flow (Or Lack Thereof)

You can’t improve what you can’t see. Improving flow at the portfolio level requires seeing it first.  How do you see? A Portfolio-level Kanban is a common way to start seeing.  Let’s explore what that looks like Let’s discuss how work flows at this level (Definition of Workflow as described in the Kanban Guide) The …

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Expensive Problems >> Principles >> Practices

End-to-end flow of value Continuous Improvement Autonomy and Empowerment Organizing Around Value Sustainable Pace Alignment around Outcome-oriented Goals Energized People Leaders who Serve Speed and Empiricism All worthy Agility Principles (at least I think so…)  But why should anyone care?  I mean, it’s much healthier to focus on principles than practices as a goal.  But …

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Is it Time for Our Agility Work To Go Underground?

It seems like we are working on a lot of initiatives. Could it help to get a picture of all the initiatives and where they are in the pipeline? Would it help to make sure we involve the teams and leaders who will need to execute on initiatives in the decision when to actually start …

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What Happened to Agile? And Where Do We Go From Here

Let’s be honest. These are “interesting” times for being an agilist. Whether you’re in the “Agile is Dead” camp or not, it is clear that the movement is not well. Agile took over the software development world in a storm. As that happened, the demand for agile outstripped the supply. Agile became practice-focused. A commodity. …

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The Two Word Check-in – Minimally Viable Daily Meeting

What a difference through just two words. Two Words Check-in. I used it as a warm-up in a leadership session for a Boston-based BioTech. They liked it so much that they started using it as common practice. They started using it in their weekly Review/Retrospective/Planning sessions (Yes, they were using Scrum to develop the company; …

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To Async or Not to Async

So you identified a meeting people won’t miss one bit in your organization. Let’s say it’s a daily check-in. Standup. Scrum. The name doesn’t change the fact that this is an often-mentioned issue people have with approaches such as Scrum, EOS, Scaling-up, SAFe. Want to improve this event? You can try increasing focus via visualization. …

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Agile Marketing – Gateway to Wider Agility

Agile marketing helps marketing organizations develop better campaigns faster. It helps marketers find sustainable pace and flow in the hectic marketing world by leveraging Scrum and Kanban. Team members act as “Mini CMOs” – thinking cross-functionally and are empowered to deliver results. BUT When there’s a problem or opportunity requiring collaboration with other functions… Agile …

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