Are You Struggling to Scale Your Organization ? Need agility but dubious of process BS/dogma? I share reflective, pragmatic, principled takes on how to approach scaling your organization leveraging the essence (rather than theater) of product operating models, agile practices and frameworks, and business operating systems such as EOS and OKRs.
From Blueprints To Trail Maps - A More Agile Approach To Agility
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When implementing agile portfolio management, leaders’ first—and often most daunting—question is: “Where do we start?” I’ve taught my share of frameworks. In some cases, a comprehensive blueprint or roadmap makes sense. They feel safer to people from traditional project/program management – who ARE often the exact people leading the move towards agile ways of working, especially at the portfolio level. But this sense of safety and predictability is often misplaced. It comes with the baggage of requiring people involved with the change to grasp a lot, plan in depth, and, most importantly, commit to comprehensive change. What often works better is a more straightforward, iterative, evolutionary approach. Think Trail Map rather than a blueprint. It highlights the trails but gives you options for approaching them. What does that look like when pursuing Portfolio-level agility?
By thinking of your portfolio as a living, evolving entity—and using a trail map to guide your early steps—you can gradually build a product‑oriented, agile portfolio without overwhelming your teams or leadership. As a side benefit, leadership will see, learn, and model the behaviors and culture needed for organizational agility… How are you thinking about bringing agility to your company/portfolio? What’s one first trail you can explore? PS The Portfolio Agility Trail Map is an email course where I share what I’ve learned about using this approach. Similarly, the Mastering Organizational Traction Trail Map applies this concept to improve organizational traction for growing companies. Read From Blueprints To Trail Maps On Your Browser Yours, Yuval |
Scaling w/ Agility
Are You Struggling to Scale Your Organization ? Need agility but dubious of process BS/dogma? I share reflective, pragmatic, principled takes on how to approach scaling your organization leveraging the essence (rather than theater) of product operating models, agile practices and frameworks, and business operating systems such as EOS and OKRs.
When Vered and I got married, my father-in-law gave me a very nice watch as a wedding gift. I didn’t wear a watch that often at the time. I wore the watch, but it didn’t transform me. It provided the service of telling the time, but even back in 2004, we had phones that had clocks. And I was and am pretty punctual so didn’t need that transformation. (And when you’re in Engineering/IT leadership, nobody cares about the watch you wear… at least in Israel… ) Don’t tell Eli, but that watch spent...
“GenAI can enable cheaper, faster experimentation / discovery (it compresses the truth curve by reducing the cost of pretotyping style product experimentation techniques)” (Yours truly, in yesterday’s insight on how AI can really help you build better products) This statement seems to have hit a nerve with reader Elad, who is product leader at a cybersecurity scaleup: “Not everyone can do this… New companies, sure. Larger, established companies are knee-deep in mountains of code,...
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