Lean Portfolio Management

Part 1: What Problems Does LPM Solve?

• Align Work to Organization Strategy
• Use Limited Resources for Maximum Value
• Increase Decision-making Velocity
• Adapt to Changing Needs
• Enable Agile Execution
• Ensure Value Delivery

Exercise: Brainstorm problems you have that LPM could fix

Part 2: The LPM Framework

• Build Portfolios of Products (Not Projects)
• Link Portfolios to Strategy
• Intake, Fund & Prioritize Work
  • Participatory Budgeting
• Oversee Work
• Govern Portfolios
• Align With Lean Principles
• Use Lean Startup to Prove Value of Work

Exercise: Contrast LPM vs. the approach we use

Part 3: Establish Portfolios

• Distill Mission into Strategic Themes
• Define Objectives for each Strategic Theme
• Quantify Key Results for each Objective
• Map Products/Solutions to Strategic Themes
• Arrange Products/Solutions into one or more Portfolios
• Define Each Portfolio:
  • Brainstorm the Portfolio Vision
  • Document the Portfolio Canvas (Current State)
  • Agree on the Portfolio Canvas Desired Future State
  • Brainstorm Epics to get us to the Future State
  • Create a Portfolio Kanban
  • Establish Lean Budget Guardrails

Exercise: For your own organization, Map Strategic Themes to Portfolios

Part 4: Triage Incoming Work Ideas

• Determine: Manage at Portfolio Level?
• Document as an Epic (Deliverable)
• Assign an Epic Owner
• Build the Lean Business Case
  • Solution Alternatives
  • Affected Value Stream(s)
  • Benefit Hypothesis(es)
  • MVP that proves Hypotheses
  • Rough Cost Estimate for MVP
  • Rough Cost Estimate for Entire Epic
• Approve Epic for Budgeting

Exercise: Write Epics w/Lean Business Cases

Part 5: Budget for the Work

• Overview of the Budgeting Process
• Short Funding Cycles
• Inputs to the Budgeting Process
  • Participatory Budgeting Event
• Analyze Participatory Budget Results
• Adjust Value Stream Budgets

Exercise: Plan the Budget Cycle for a Portfolio

Part 6: Minimum Viable Product

• (When Agile Team has capacity)
• Pull Approved/Budgeted Epic
• Plan, Build MVP with Epic Owner
• Deploy finished MVP, collect data
• Pivot/Persevere/Stop Decision
• Persevere: Prioritize w/other work

Exercise: Decompose MVP into Stories

Part 7: Manage the Portfolio

• Maintain a Unified Portfolio Roadmap
• Coordinate work across Value Streams
  • For Business Benefits
    • for Technical Reasons
    • for Cadence & Efficiency
    • Ensure Integration often
• Work with Agile Teams:
  • Decompose Epics into Features & Stories
• Plan Release & Deployments

Exercise: Identify Coordination opportunities among Value Streams

Part 8: Portfolio Governance

• Governing the Portfolio
• Managing Risk, Conflict, Variance
• Lean Portfolio Metrics
• Portfolio Performance Metrics
• Value Stream Metrics
• Incremental Quality/Security/Compliance

Exercise: Identify Valuable Portfolio Metrics

Part 9: Adopting Lean Portfolio Management

• Move to a Product Team Structure
• Fund Value Streams (not Projects)
• Use Rolling-Wave Plans & Budgets
• Match Work to Value Stream Capacity
• Develop Incrementally
• Prove Hypotheses with MVP First
• Continuously Improve LPM

Exercise: Map your LPM Journey

Individuals who would benefit from attending this course include:

• Product Owners
• Product Managers
• Project Managers
• PMO (Project Management Office) members
• Senior Executives and Managers

• Explain why the shift to LPM is necessary for Business Agility. Specifically, how:
  • traditional portfolio management can impede sensing and responding to an ever-changing market
  • a lean process of continuous adaptive planning enables quick response to changing market forces 
  • Lean Portfolio Management principles and practices transform an organization’s ability to get ideas to the development engine Just-In-Time to maximize value and efficiency.
• Understand what Agile Development truly means and how LPM helps your enterprise achieve it 
• Use the 9 Principles of LPM for Business Agility as a foundation to establish complete portfolios that use lean principles to fulfill your enterprise’s mission
• Allocate and govern budgets using lean principles to direct funding where it will do the most good
• Use the portfolio intake process to create stakeholder alignment
• Write Epics and their associated lean business case
• Exploit fast learning using the Lean start-up cycle by defining a Minimal Viable Product (MVP)
• Use a portfolio Kanban to limit Work in Progress, match demand and capacity and enable portfolio flow. 
• Use LPM Principles and Practices for adopting Lean Portfolio Management