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.
A primary focus of mine these days is helping Leaders who want to shift their organizations from a project to a product mindset figure out how to scale their product orientation to a multi-product environment. They want to apply product thinking to their strategic initiatives that extend beyond the product organization. This is what we refer to as Product Portfolio Management. A few weeks ago, I joined Dave West and Darrell Fernandes on the Scrum.org Community Podcast to help answer key...
What do you do when a product team’s capabilities aren’t aligned with strategic priorities? This is a common challenge for product/portfolio leaders. On the one hand – a product-oriented operating model talks about empowered, stable product teams. On the other hand – we want to focus on maximizing outcomes. What if a product is good enough? How would we even know? And how would we know whether we have a flexibility/alignment issue? Because this is such a tough predicament, in many cases, the...
The idea of bringing dependent teams together to collaborate better and minimize cross-dependency overhead isn’t new. It's a fractal of the pattern of an agile cross-functional team, which Agile hasn’t invented either, just leveraged. Whether you call these Tribes, Scrum of Scrums, ARTs, doesn't change the essence - Organizing around value. Here’s how you might go about it: Examine your work – what’s on the roadmap, what’s the vision, etc. – and how it will hit the different teams/groups in...