portfolio kanban - seeing the big picture
DESCRIPTION
Doing too many things at once can slow an entire organisation down. As every successful organisation will have more great ideas than they have capacity to build, it is tempting to start too many of them at the same time. However, too many projects in progress will slow down delivery of each and every one of them. So, how can we make sure we work to our organisational capacity and don’t try to do too much? How do we make sure we’re working on the important and not just the urgent stuff? This is where Portfolio Kanban can help: In this session we will explore how Portfolio Kanban can help an organisation prioritise, plan and visually track its projects. Through the example of Trade Me, New Zealand's biggest e-commerce site, I will demonstrate the practical application of Portfolio Kanban. I will explore how Trade Me have benefitted from the increased visibility and reduced work in progress, and how they are using Portfolio Kanban to direct the organisation’s Agile teams. Come along and enjoy tales of our successes, challenges and struggles on our (still continuing) journey towards awesome portfolio management.TRANSCRIPT
Sandy Mamoli
@smamol [email protected] www.nomad8.com
Portfolio Kanban
AgileAustralia Quiz: bit.ly/agileoz1Or pull down from the session description in the app
Number of Member Accounts 3,400,000
2 thirds of NZ’s domestic internet traffic
Each month we:• Send 80 million emails• Serve 1.5 billion pages• Sell 3000 chickens
Every second we have:
• 10,000 images served
• 20,000+ DB transactions
• 450 auctions viewed
Growing
I asked and found ...
‣ Projects take a really long time to get finished
‣ We don’t know where our projects are at
‣ We can’t trust the estimates
Project stickies
We realised...
‣ Heaps of projects are in progress
‣ We have no idea of what our capacity is
Causes
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Solution
Moving targets
Small Stable Teams
Stable work
Portfolio Kanban
1. Visualise your workflow
2. Limit work in progress
3. Manage flow
4. Make policies explicit
5. Implement feedback loops
6. Improve collaboratively
Portfolio Kanban
1. Visualise your workflow
2. Limit work in progress
3. Manage flow
4. Make policies explicit
5. Implement feedback loops
6. Improve collaboratively
Step 1: Visualise
Portfolio Kanban
1. Visualise your workflow
2. Limit work in progress
3. Manage flow
4. Make policies explicit
5. Implement feedback loops
6. Improve collaboratively
Block stuff in progress
Blocked means don’t work on it!
How we prioritised
Whi
ch
pro
jec
ts t
o b
loc
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Prioritisation session outcomes
‣ A ranked list of 14 projects
‣ Shared understanding of all projects
‣ An agreement to do this every 3 months
‣ Acceptance that things will change
Priorities <> Our Work
Portfolio Kanban
1. Visualise your workflow
2. Limit work in progress
3. Manage flow
4. Make policies explicit
5. Implement feedback loops
6. Improve collaboratively
Portfolio Kanban
1. Visualise your workflow
2. Limit work in progress
3. Manage flow
4. Make policies explicit
5. Implement feedback loops
6. Improve collaboratively
Explicit exit policies
Portfolio Kanban
1. Visualise your workflow
2. Limit work in progress
3. Manage flow
4. Make policies explicit
5. Implement feedback loops
6. Improve collaboratively
What matters to Trade Me?
‣ Get stuff out fast
‣ Have high quality
‣ Have happy clients (business people/end users)
‣ Have happy employees
‣ Build the right thing
Portfolio Kanban
1. Visualise your workflow
2. Limit work in progress
3. Manage flow
4. Make policies explicit
5. Implement feedback loops
6. Improve collaboratively
Visibility
Link to squads
What we got out of it
Fewer projects in progress
Working on the right stuff
What next?
Portfolio Kanban
1. Visualise your workflow
2. Limit work in progress
3. Manage flow
4. Make policies explicit
5. Implement feedback loops
6. Improve collaboratively
Thank You
www.nomad8.com
Sandy Mamoli
[email protected] @smamol
AgileAustralia Quiz: bit.ly/agileoz1Or pull down from the session description in the app