This document discusses active portfolio planning and management. It describes calculating team capacity based on the number of stories a team can complete per iteration. It also discusses prioritizing projects based on business value. The document then outlines an active planning process that involves optimizing project selection and sequencing on a quarterly basis to maximize value delivery given team capacity constraints. Various exercises are included to illustrate calculating capacity, prioritizing projects, and planning project schedules across teams and quarters.

1. Copyright © 2014 SolutionsIQ Inc. All rights reserved.
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Agile Portfolio Planning
PREPARED BY
Sanjay Gupta
SolutionsIQ

2. Enterprise Agility
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3. Organizational Agility (Scaling)
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4. Portfolio Planning
Purpose - Maximize
Shareholder Value
Interfaces Business /
Organizational Agility
Portfolio Management
• Planning
• Execution
• Governance
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5. How is planning currently going?
» How are you all involved in planning?
» How is planning currently done and what are some of the pain points?
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6. Traditional Portfolio Planning - Attributes
Demand Vs Capacity
Top Down, Centralized Annual Budget
Focuses on Compliance, Control, Audit
Detailed Upfront Planning
Complex Analysis Tools, We Love Excel Sheets
Fixed Cost, Fixed Schedule
Focuses on Resource Allocation - Full utilization
Project Based - Teams created for projects
Generally Run by PMO focussing on budgeting, Auditing, resource
allocation
Success Means Adherence to Plan (Within B,C,S..Q?)
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7. Is It Agile?
•Being Agile / Doing Agile
•To be is to do
•How To Check Agile Mind-set
Agile is mindset
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8. Framing the discussion: “Desire vs Capacity” or
“Desire Based on Capacity”
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Alignment?» Alignment?

9. Active Planning for Maximizing Value
1. Supply: “what we can do”
2. Demand: “what we want”
3. Active planning
4. Continuous optimization
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10. Active Planning for Maximizing Value
1. Supply: “what we can do”
2. Demand: “what we want”
3. Active Planning
4. Continuous optimization
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11. Supply: “what we can do”
» Unique portfolio for each discrete non-
fungible delivery capability
» Production Unit = One Team Iteration
» Story = Unit of Measurement
» Iteration Capacity = Average stories per
team X total teams
» All work is visible
» Team Exercise: Calculating Capacity
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12. Team Exercise: Calculating Capacity
» Two platforms (three team members)
- Orange and Yellow
» Orange teams
- Build a unit (as described)
- Hearts and Diamonds = 1 story
- Track clubs and spades
» Yellow teams
- Build a unit as described
- All cards but aces = 1 story
- Track aces
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13. Active Planning for Maximizing Value
1. Supply: “what we can do”
2. Demand: “what we want”
3. Active Planning
4. Continuous optimization
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14. Demand: “what we want”
» One funnel or input per portfolio
» All work must be prioritized
- Match effort to benefit
» All work is visible
» Team Exercise: quick prioritization
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15. Team Exercise II: Quick Prioritization
» Teams of 5 or 6
» One Chief Product Owner
» 100 points
» Assign points to items
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16. Assigning Points
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17. Active Planning for Maximizing Value
1. Supply: “what we can do”
2. Demand: “what we want”
3. Active planning
4. Continuous optimization
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18. Active Planning
» Capacity is “fixed”
» Three quarter planning horizon
» Optimize for Return on Team (or the
highest value per iteration)
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19. “People to Projects” or “Work to Teams”
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Team momentum maintained
Project
start
Team
start

20. Exercise III: group planning
» Knowns
- 10 teams all on technology stack
- Averaging 3.5 stories per iteration
- There are 6 iterations per quarter
» What is my total quarterly capacity?
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21. Exercise III: group planning
» Situation
- Teams 1-4 are dedicated to strategic initiative
that will last for another 12 months
- Tech debt has historically represented 25% of
total capacity
- Production support has historically
represented 15% of total capacity
- Teams 9 &10 are working on finishing up a
release that will take two more iterations
» What is my available story capacity in the
upcoming quarter?
» What is capacity in two quarters?
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22. Active Planning for Maximizing Value
1. Supply: “what we can do”
2. Demand: “what we want”
3. Active planning
4. Continuous optimization
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23. Approach to Portfolio Optimization
» Review Portfolio @ regular cadence
» Prioritize / Re-prioritize to Maximize Value
Delivery
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24. Thank You!
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