The CTO of Wolters Kluwer Italia asked if they could improve their time-to-market. The response was yes, if they followed an evolutionary approach. Initially a Kanban board was set up for a pilot team to manage business ideas, projects, and urgerncies. This was later expanded to a larger pilot project using Scrum. With 200 initiatives and 400 people involved, they created a "Sala Caravaggio" room to visualize projects using Kanban boards. They began measuring initiatives from pre-funnel through implementation to monitor the effects of the transition. Goals were reached, including regular board meetings, improved project control, training over 125 people, and continuous business-ICT alignment on

1. Kanban Portfolio Management
supported by Canvas,
a Real Case in Wolters Kluwer Italia.
Lean Kanban Southern Europe 2014
@giulioroggero www.agilereloaded.it

2. December 2012
The Wolters Kluwer Italia CTO:
“Can we improve our
time-to-market?”

3. I replied:
“Yes,
if we follow an
evolutionary approach!”

4. January-March 2013
“a Kanban Board for a pilot team”
Business Ideas and Projects selection
Urgencies
Team running Closure

5. April-June2013
“Scrum for a pilot project”

6. July 2013
“pilots are going well and now?”
“how can we scale the Pilot?”
200 initiative in-flight
400 person involved
We have

7. Visualize to share!
Projects Canvas Portfolio Kanban Boards
“Sala Caravaggio”
A room dedicated only to Initiatives Visualization
Executives meet every two weeks in this room to check impediments and to rank initiatives.
All departments are involved.

8. Pre-Funnel Funnel
Vision and T-Shirt Sizing Business Model, Business Case, Backlog, Devel, UAT, Deploy
Initiatives Gathering Initiatives Analysis and Implementation

9. Example of a Kanban Card

10. Vision Board
Business Model Canvas
Product Canvas
Pre - Funnel
Funnel

11. We start to
measure …
… to monitor
the effect of the
transition

12. May 2014 – Goals reached
• Board meetings are regular and useful.
• All information about project are now under control.
• All company departments are involved, not only ICT!
• More than 125 person, trained on Agile, Canvas and Kanban Boards, are participating to the portfolio model definition and
evolution.
• New roles have been identified: Demand Manager, Portfolio Facilitator.
• Only one reference per Initiative: the Product Owner.
• Some project have been discarded because other opportunities have been revealed by the Kanban Board.
• Continuous alignment
between Business and ICT
on more than 180 projects.
• Identified bottlenecks.
• Low resistance to change.
and more…

13. Next Challenges
Reduce WIP, sustain POs and avoid exceptions.
• The Product Owner role is vital for the Flow. We are defining a path to help POs in this journey.
• We are defining WIP limits monitoring a first rough estimation of them.
• Cross-department ranking is still to be done.
• We are preparing the 2015 budget starting from Pre-Funnel.
• Initiatives KPIs have to be defined.
• Initiatives Business Case definition is in draft.
• We need a better way to keep aligned the room and Atlassian Jira.
and more…

14. Thanks to Wolters Kluwer Italia for having given the permission for this presentation
@giulioroggero www.agilereloaded.it