One of areas of constant struggle for many organizations is managing portfolio. Too many concurrent endeavors, commitments made without available capabilities, lack of discussion about expected value and cost of delay, disconnection between portfolio management and work organization on team level, constant expediting, highly insufficient or inaccurate information... If any of these sounds familiar it indicates common issues on portfolio level. Interestingly enough, in these areas improvements are rare and traditional models surprisingly prevalent even in organizations that adopt agility across development teams. At the same time very frequently low-hanging fruits can be harvested at PMO level after introducing fairly simple improvements. In this session I will describe how Portfolio Kanban can be used to steer evolution not only at PMO level but across an organization and show how it can be orchestrated with introduction of Lean and Agile on team level.

1. Fixing Portfolio
Management
Pawel Brodzinski
@pawelbrodzinski

2. Hi, I’m Pawel
Lunar Logic
http://lunarlogic.io
Blog
http://brodzinski.com
Twitter
@pawelbrodzinski

3. Why
portfolio?

4. A system of
local optima is not
an optimal system at all;
it is a very suboptimal system
Eli Goldratt

5. Processing the waste
more effectively is
cheaper, neater, faster waste
Stephen Parry

6. More than
a single
project per
team?

7. Cost of context switching
Source: Gerald Weinberg, Quality Software Management: Vol. 1 System Thinking

8. Zeigarnik Effect
Tendency to experience
intrusive thought about an
objective left incomplete
Source: S. Greist-Bousquet, N. Shiffman: The effect of task interruption and closure on perceived duration

9. Teams that worked
only on a single project
were significantly better in
terms of defects density
Larry Maccherone

10. Time to market

11. What if there’s
just too many
of them?

12. My first experience
was this:
113 ongoing projects
for 25 developers
Klaus Leopold

13. Why does
it happen?

14. Lack of
visibility

15. Excel frenzy

16. WYSIATI
What You See Is
All There Is
Source: Daniel Kahneman: Thinking Fast and Slow

17. Cost-driven decisions

18. If you fall for
estimation as your
way of valuing projects
in the portfolio,
you are doomed to fail.
Johanna Rothman

19. Where is
value?

20. Portfolio Kanban

24. Focus on
one level
of work
http://brodzinski.com/2013/08/portfolio-visualization.html

25. Can you call it Kanban?

26. Start with what you have
Agree for evolutionary change
Respect current situation
Encourage leadership on all levels

27. Visualize
Limit WIP
Manage flow
Make policies explicit
Implement feedbak loops
Improve collaboratively, evolve
experimentally

28. Visualize
Limit WIP
Manage flow
Make policies explicit
Implement feedbak loops
Improve collaboratively, evolve
experimentally

29. Variability!

30. WIP Limits by
conversation

31. How does
it help?

32. http://clearly.io/

33. http://clearly.io/

34. Informed decisions

35. Shifting discussion from
cost and income to value
and cost of delay

36. Key driver to evolution of
portfolio management

37. There is
more

38. Backlog is a list of
unvalidated
product options
Ellen Gottesdiener

39. Projects and
products are
(unvalidated)
options too

40. Real
Options

41. Options have value
Options expire
Never commit early unless you know
why
Source: Olav Maassen, Chris Matts, Chris Geary: Real Options

42. Best poker players
don’t play many games;
they play the games
that they can win
Todd Little

43. http://brodzinski.com/2013/09/options-options-options.html

44. http://brodzinski.com/2013/09/options-options-options.html

45. http://brodzinski.com/2013/09/options-options-options.html

46. http://brodzinski.com/2013/09/options-options-options.html

50. Common problems
with portfolio
management

51. Visualization
helps to
understand the
current situation
and informs
discussion on
starting new
projects

52. WIP limits (by
conversation)
address the
problem of too
many concurrent
projects and
steer discussion
about value

53. Constraints
introduced by
the method shift
focus from cost
and income to
value and
incentivize
saying no

54. Portfolio Kanban
is not about choosing
the work you do;
it’s about choosing the
work you don’t do

55. Mind shift from looking
through the attractiveness
glasses to looking through
capabilities glasses

56. Inspirations:
Eli Goldratt
Stephen Parry (@leanvoices)
Don Reinertsen (@dreinertsen)
David Anderson (@djaa_dja)
Mike Burrows (@asplake)
Klaus Leopold (@klausleopold)
David Joyce (@dpjoyce)
Chris Matts (@papachrismatts)
Olav Maassen (@olavmaassen)
Ellen Gottesdiener (@ellengott)
Jabe Bloom (@cyetain)
Troy Magennis (@t_magennis)
Johanna Rothman (@johannarothman)
Benjamin Mitchell (@benjaminm)
Larry Maccherone (@lmaccherone)
Gerald Weinberg (@jerryweinberg)
Karl Scotland (@kjscotland)
Andy Carmichael (@andycarmich)
Mary Gorman (@mbgorman)

57. Thank you
Pawel Brodzinski
brodzinski.com
lunarlogic.io
@pawelbrodzinski