agile portfolio planning

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Agile Portfolio Planning

PREPARED BYSanjay GuptaSolutionsIQ

Active Portfolio Management, John Rudd, SolutionsIQ 2

Enterprise Agility


Organizational Agility (Scaling)

Portfolio

Program

Team


Portfolio Planning

Purpose - Maximize

Shareholder Value

Interfaces Business / Organizational Agility

Portfolio Management •Planning•Execution•Governance


How is planning currently going?

» How are you all involved in planning?

» How is planning currently done and what are some of the pain points?


Traditional Portfolio Planning - Attributes

Demand Vs CapacityTop Down, Centralized Annual BudgetFocuses on Compliance, Control, AuditDetailed Upfront PlanningComplex Analysis Tools, We Love Excel SheetsFixed Cost, Fixed ScheduleFocuses on Resource Allocation - Full utilizationProject Based - Teams created for projectsGenerally Run by PMO focussing on budgeting, Auditing, resource allocationSuccess Means Adherence to Plan (Within B,C,S..Q?)


Is It Agile?

Agile is mindset

• Being Agile / Doing Agile• To be is to do• How To Check Agile Mind-set


Framing the discussion: “Desire vs Capacity” or “Desire Based on Capacity”

Alignment?» Alignment?


Active Planning for Maximizing Value

1. Supply: “what we can do”

2. Demand: “what we want”

3. Active planning

4. Continuous optimization





3. Active Planning



Supply: “what we can do”

» Unique portfolio for each discrete non-fungible delivery capability

» Production Unit = One Team Iteration

» Story = Unit of Measurement

» Iteration Capacity = Average stories per team X total teams

» All work is visible

» Team Exercise: Calculating Capacity


Team Exercise: Calculating Capacity

» Two platforms (three team members)

- Orange and Yellow

» Orange teams

- Build a unit (as described)

- Hearts and Diamonds = 1 story

- Track clubs and spades

» Yellow teams

- Build a unit as described

- All cards but aces = 1 story

- Track aces





3. Active Planning



Demand: “what we want”

» One funnel or input per portfolio

» All work must be prioritized

- Match effort to benefit

» All work is visible

» Team Exercise: quick prioritization


Team Exercise II: Quick Prioritization

» Teams of 5 or 6

» One Chief Product Owner

» 100 points

» Assign points to items


Assigning Points





3. Active planning



Active Planning

» Capacity is “fixed”

» Three quarter planning horizon

» Optimize for Return on Team (or the highest value per iteration)


“People to Projects” or “Work to Teams”

Team momentum maintained

Project start

Team start


Exercise III: group planning

» Knowns

- 10 teams all on technology stack

- Averaging 3.5 stories per iteration

- There are 6 iterations per quarter

» What is my total quarterly capacity?


Exercise III: group planning

» Situation

- Teams 1-4 are dedicated to strategic initiative that will last for another 12 months

- Tech debt has historically represented 25% of total capacity

- Production support has historically represented 15% of total capacity

- Teams 9 &10 are working on finishing up a release that will take two more iterations

» What is my available story capacity in the upcoming quarter?

» What is capacity in two quarters?





3. Active planning



Approach to Portfolio Optimization

» Review Portfolio @ regular cadence

» Prioritize / Re-prioritize to Maximize Value Delivery


Thank You!

agile portfolio planning

Technology