Pawel Brodzinski introduces the concept of Portfolio Kanban as a backdoor to organizational evolution. Portfolio Kanban addresses problems that arise from taking on too many concurrent projects, including context switching costs, lower quality work, and emergencies. It uses a visual board to manage total capabilities, commitments, and work in progress limits across all projects. Implementing Portfolio Kanban can result in fewer ongoing projects, fewer emergencies, healthier team work environments, and more slack time for teams.

1. Portfolio Kanban
A Backdoor to Organizational Evolution
Pawel Brodzinski
@pawelbrodzinski

2. Hi, I’m Pawel
Lunar Logic
http://llp.pl
Software Project
Management
http://brodzinski.com
Twitter
@pawelbrodzinski

3. A story of a
team...

4. Failure

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

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

7. If you are doing
the wrong thing
you can’t learn, you will
only be trying to do the
wrong thing righter.
John Seddon

8. Lack of
support on
portfolio
level

9. I’ve been supervising
multiple concurrent
projects for 8 years...
And it sucks!

10. Excel frenzy

11. Oh, there are
just too many
of them!

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

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

14. Cost of task
switching is rooted
in interference from
thoughts about the task
your are not doing
Eyal Ophir

15. Time to market

16. Source: E. Ophir, C. Nass, A. Wagner:
Cognitive control in media multitaskers
Lower
quality

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

19. Don’t we
know the
cure already?

20. Portfolio Kanban

21. Portfolio Kanban

22. Variability stupid!

23. We should learn to
absorb variability,
not to fight it

24. Stalled board

25. WIP limits? Oh...

26. Non-standard
board designs

30. Total capabilities

31. Different capabilities

32. Free capabilities

33. Commitments

34. Concurrent engagements

35. Planned time span

36. Types of work

37. Future commitments

38. Planned work

39. Unavailability

40. Show me
that here

41. Low hanging
fruit

42. Value-adding items

43. Value adding
!=
value adding

44. What about WIP
limits then?
5O

45. Free capabilities

46. WIP limits by
conversation

47. Finally,
data from
other
sources

48. Cost of delay

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

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

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

52. The outcomes?

53. Meaningful metrics

54. Fewer ongoing projects
1O

55. Fewer
emergencies

56. Healthier work
environment
for teams

57. Team-level
slack time

58. Problem we tend to ignore

59. Low-friction
method

60. Thank you
Pawel Brodzinski
blog.brodzinski.com
llp.pl
@pawelbrodzinski