disciplined agile portfolio management

© Disciplined Agile Consortium 1

Disciplined Agile Portfolio Management

Agenda

•  What is portfolio management? •  What the guiding principles? •  How does portfolio management fit in? •  The activities of portfolio management

–  Initiating IT endeavors –  Funding the IT portfolio –  Overseeing the IT portfolio

•  Parting thoughts



IT Portfolio Management addresses how an IT organization goes about identifying, organizing, and governing their various IT endeavors. Disciplined Agile Portfolio Management seeks to do this in a lightweight and streamlined manner that maximizes the creation of business value in a long-term sustainable manner.

The Principles of Disciplined Agile Portfolio Management


Simplicity

Value

Reduce Delay

Stable Teams

Choice is Good

Trust

Risk Driven

Quality

Enterprise Aware

Keep your approach lightweight and streamlined

Focus on value over cost

Reduce the cost of delay

Improve Invest in streamlining the creation of value

Prefer stable teams over project teams

Support and enable diversity of approach

Trust but verify

Govern by risk not by artifacts

Invest in quality

Optimize the whole

Align to Value Align teams to value streams

Rolling Wave Prefer rolling wave plans and budgets over annual ones

Small is Good Prefer small endeavors over large ones

How does Portfolio Management Fit In?


Strategic Scaling: The Agile IT Department



The Activities

of

Initiating IT Endeavors


Initiating IT Endeavors: Workflow


Portfolio Management: Identify Potential Value

Portfolio management, working with product management, will identify potential IT endeavors (products, projects, experiments, and so on) that address the vision of the long-term business roadmap

Options Envision the future Obtain customer feedback Monitor business environment


Portfolio Management: Explore Potential Endeavors Every potential IT endeavor is different, with varying factors such as up front investment, ongoing costs, value generation, and time frames. None of these factors are ever clear, nor are they certain. As a result you need a way to explore your options to enable you to determine which ones to move forward with. Options

Run a small experiment Run a focus group Evaluate alternatives Estimate return on investment (ROI) Estimate market impact Develop business case


Portfolio Management: Prioritize Potential Endeavors There are always more opportunities that you can possibly fund, so you must pick the mix of investments which are best for you. Options

–  Legislated/regulatory requirement –  Business value –  Risk –  Weighted shortest job first (WSJF) –  Due date –  Dependency


1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Portfolio Management: Initiate Endeavors

There are different types of IT endeavors that you may choose to initiate. These endeavors need initial funding for their inception/initiation efforts. Options

Experiment team Product (stable) team Project/program team


Funding the IT Portfolio


Funding the IT Portfolio: IT Budgets


Portfolio Management: Plan IT Capability

There are three major components to IT capability, often referred to as Plan (which activities such as Portfolio Management, Product Management, and Enterprise Architecture are part of); Build (IT delivery); and Run (IT Operations and Support). Plan tends to be a small portion of the overall budget and is often funded as a necessary overhead. Build tends to be 20-40% of the budget and Run the rest. Options

–  Plan IT delivery capability –  Plan IT operational capability


Portfolio Management: Manage Portfolio Budget

The overall IT portfolio, including Plan, Build and Run endeavors, must be budgeted for and then funded. The increasing pace of change motivates the flexible budgeting strategies. Options

Rolling wave budgeting Stable team budgeting Annual budgeting Ad hoc budgeting


Portfolio Management: Finance Endeavors

IT endeavors must be financed. This often includes a combination of initial funding to get a team or project going, or to initially purchase hardware or software, and ongoing funding over the lifetime of the endeavor. Ensuring that your IT investment is well spent is often more important than staying “within budget.” Options

–  Provide initial funding –  Provide ongoing funding –  Monitor fund usage


Overseeing the IT Portfolio


Portfolio Management: Manage Vendors

Organizations work with external vendors who provide: –  Contracting, consulting, and outsourcing services –  Purchased software (requiring ongoing support services and licensing) –  Pay-as-you go software (including cloud, SAAS, PAAS, …) –  Hardware (requiring ongoing support and leases)

Options

–  Monitor contracts –  Identify potential vendors –  Award contracts –  Close contracts


Portfolio Management: Govern the Portfolio

Portfolio governance is an important part of your overall IT governance strategy that focuses on monitoring and guiding IT investments. Options

–  Monitor IT finances –  Monitor delivery teams –  Monitor production systems –  Assess portfolio health –  Develop portfolio metrics –  Develop guidance


Strategic Scaling: The Agile IT Department


Got Discipline? DisciplinedAgileConsortium.org

DisciplinedAgileDelivery.com ScottAmbler.com


Shuhari and Disciplined Agile Certification

At the shu stage you are beginning to learn the techniques and philosophies of

disciplined agile development. Your goal is to build a strong foundation from

which to build upon.

At the ha stage you reflect upon and question why disciplined agile strategies work, seeking to understand the range

of strategies available to you and when they are best applied.

At the ri stage you seek to extend and

improve upon disciplined agile techniques, sharing your learnings with

others.


Scott Ambler + Associates is the thought leader behind the Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) framework and its application. We are an IT

management consulting firm that advises organizations to be more effective applying disciplined agile and lean processes within the

context of your business.

Our website is ScottAmbler.com We can help

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