Most organizations wait way too long to adopt some portfolio-level agility practices. They’ve been told, “You can’t scale what’s broken,” so they wait until they nail agile at the team and product group level. What if fixing what’s broken REQUIRES focusing on the upstream that’s shaping the work and context of these teams? Back in …
What does Product Oriented Portfolio Leadership Look like? These leaders … Does this look familiar? Honestly, You could come up with this list yourself. All I did was think through what it would look like to apply the Agility Principles for Portfolio Leaders. But I think its a nice example of the power of starting …
You’re actively managing the flow of your most significant investments. You’ve started conversations about how to descale by organizing around products. What’s next? It depends. Where do you want to improve? Outcome orientation? Aligned Autonomy? Sustainable Pace? Predictability? Empiricism? The principles of agility apply at the portfolio level as well. A principle-based assessment can help …
Is your Portfolio Kanban Board Busy? Do you feel like almost any outcome of any significance needs to be managed at the Portfolio level because it involves several of your product/development groups? One solution would be to invest in better portfolio management, coordination mechanisms, etc. A better solution would be to descale. To find ways …
They tell us a story of slow, centralized decision-making, often related to classic program management culture combined with an iron spaghetti portfolio where delivering product outcomes often requires wide collaboration across teams and even teams of teams. An agile, product-oriented portfolio relies mainly on providing strategic guidance and alignment, not managing every Portfolio Kanban board …
So you have a Portfolio Kanban board managing your biggest investments. You’re actively managing the flow by using this kanban board in your conversations about the portfolio. Kanban/Flow Metrics can help sharpen your flow focus even further. The four flow metrics described in the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams / Kanban Guide are Work in …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Three members of a PMO are asked what they are doing: Since we’re talking about a Product-oriented Portfolio, it makes sense to treat developing it as a Product Initiative. Making sure we’re focused on outcomes, rather than checkboxes. We might use patterns and frameworks (such as a Kanban Board, OKRs, and Portfolio Reviews), but we …