Instructor: Eric Aiyathurai

4100 E. Third Ave, Suite 205, Foster City, CA 94404 | 650-931-1651 | www.cprime.com

The leader in training and consulting for project management and agile development

Agile Portfolio Management

2

Migrations, Add-Ons, Licensing, Training, Optimization and more

Atlassian, VersionOne, AgileCraft, Innotas and more

Contract to Hire, Consulting, Full-time, Executive Search and more

ScrumMasters, Product Owners, Scrum Coaches and more

Transformations, Scaling, Assessments, Planning, Coaching, Training, Advisory Services, Change Management and more

WHO IS CPRIME?

3

What is a Portfolio?

• Definition

• A collection of projects or programs and other work that are grouped

together to facilitate effective management of that work to meet

strategic business objectives. - PMI

• Typically contains a mix of strategic and tactical initiatives, growth-

driven and cost-driven initiatives, and customer and internally-focused

projects.

• Why do PPM?

• PPM (Project Portfolio Management): a formal approach that an

organization can use to orchestrate, prioritize and benefit from

projects. This approach examines the risk-reward of each project, the

available funds, the likelihood of a project's duration, and the expected

outcomes.

4

Portfolio-Program-Project Visual Hierarchy

5

Survey question

• How is the portfolio/ project status tracked in your company?

• Percent complete

• Remaining effort

• Sprints remaining

• Earned Value

• Other

6

Reasons for misalignment

• Projects still treated as…projects

• Long term planning horizons (1-3yrs)

• Different tools used for PPM vs Agile teams: Don’t integrate

• Unclear how to translate sprints to time and dollars

• Traditional PM uses different metrics and terminology than

Agile/ Scrum

https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/technology/articles/agile-and-ppm.html

7

Survey question

• What are the main reasons for misalignment in your org?

• Unsure how to map sprint story points to (portfolio) time estimates

• PPM tool does not integrate with Agile tool

• Execs/ Portfolio Managers do not understand the concepts of

Agile/ Agile Portfolio Management

• Other

8

Key Areas of Alignment

• Definition and classification of the larger deliverables

• Traditional: Projects WBS (Tasks) project completion

• Agile: Value Streams Epics Value delivered

• Reduction of long planning cycles into shorter ones

• 3-month/ quarterly

• Switch to non-time based estimates at the portfolio level

• Commits given by high priority items vs kitchen sink requirements

• Adjustment of Portfolio deliverables based on Epic deliveries

• Portfolio level meetings should occur more frequently (every 2

weeks)

• Initial allocation of staff done for the most important set of

Initiatives/ Epics

• Stable delivery teams

• Limit WIP

9

Cone of uncertainty – with an Agile context

10

Shift from Project to Epic delivery

• Map traditional Projects/ Initiatives to the Feature – Epic level

• Make Epics the common artifact for reporting and tracking up

and down

“Epics are large cross-cutting initiatives that deliver solutions to the end

user. As more teams adopt agile across the organization, the need to

define value-streams and epics is critical, to ensure coordinated planning

and delivery.”

• Use Epic burndowns to track progress and changes

• Use the built in reporting from Agile tools which have Epic

burndown capability

11

Mapping the Portfolio to Epics

From: Avisi

Note: Depending on your Agile framework/tool, Epic and Feature could be switched around.

12

Change how Portfolio Estimations are Done

• Advisable not to use time estimates at the Portfolio level

• People tend to think of them as due dates (and time commits)

• Can be used if only for planning

• Story points, T-shirt sizing, story sizing, ‘fudge factors’, etc

• These estimates get plugged in at the portfolio level

• Delivery timeframes are decided by the respective velocities

• If none, then rough guesses can be used but gets refined as team

gathers velocity data

13

Cone of uncertainty in Agile estimating

14

Prioritize and Track and update the Epics

• Prioritize Epics with stakeholders

• Track progress and changes using Epic burndowns

• Done at both Portfolio level and team level

• As Epics get progressively elaborated and estimated, update

portfolio estimates accordingly (as applicable)

15

Steps for alignment of Portfolio-Sprints

• Reframe how initiatives/ projects are to be prioritized, funded,

and delivered

• Not by fixed scope but by Epics

• Delivering the highest value items first.

• Incremental delivery

• Break up the initial project scope into Epics

• Prioritize the Epics

• Estimate the Epics

• Progressive elaborate the Epics

• Re-estimate the Epics based on the above

• Adjust either the features delivered or delivery timeframe as

needed

• Use Portfolio tools to track at the higher level (if possible,

extract numbers directly from the Agile tool used by the teams)