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.

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

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.

Great LPM Training is just part of the picture

For a while, I’ve been trying to figure out how to create an open enrollment registration, learning, and getting started experience that delivers the quality and impact of an in-house engagement. What I’ve landed on is an immersive LPM master class experience that won’t be for everyone and won’t happen very often, but it will attract portfolio leaders who are interested in driving real portfolio agility. It starts with the training and then continues to support you in a community setting as you shape your LPM structure and adoption approach and get started on your LPM journey:

Pragmatic LPM Training with a SAFe Fellow/SPCT – $2k

Set for Success – Create your LPM approach with 3 months of community support – $3k

Participate in 2 additional Getting Started workshops where you create your Blueprint for Portfolio Structure and Adoption Approach Outline  

VIP – Mentoring/advisory for your initial steps – 3 months 1:1 access to Yuval – $6k

Are you interested to learn more about the LPM Master Class?

FAQ

I heard SAFe training is a prescriptive by-the-book death by PowerPoint

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…

Are there prerequisites? Should everyone participating be SAFe certified already?

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.

What’s the right timing? Should we already be implementing other aspects of Agile/SAFe?

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. I’ve had students who are considering introducing Lean Portfolio Management into an ad-hoc / waterfall environment as well as experienced SAFe practitioners looking to extend to the Portfolio level.

What if we want to bring a larger group to the workshop?

You have two options. One is to bring along a couple of colleagues, take advantage of group pricing, and enjoy the mix of internal conversations and exposure to other contexts that is offered in a public open enrollment class.

The other option is to go the inhouse direction. 

We can discuss other questions you have as part of the application process…