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.
What Do Busy Portfolio Kanban Boards Tell Us?
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They tell us a story of slow, centralized decision-making, often related to classic program management culture combined with an iron spaghetti portfolio where delivering product outcomes often requires wide collaboration across teams and even teams of teams. An agile, product-oriented portfolio relies mainly on providing strategic guidance and alignment, not managing every Portfolio Kanban board investment. This is why, once you establish a Portfolio Kanban board to see the investments you’re managing, you should think about whether you actually NEED to manage these investments at the portfolio level. It might be time to inspect and adapt the definition of portfolio workflow – focusing on which items should flow at the Portfolio level. A few elements we often consider are –
Essentially, we want the portfolio conversations to focus on the larger, higher opportunity/risk high cross-product collaboration investments, and decentralize decision making to empowered product teams for other investments. It doesn’t mean portfolio leaders don’t care about these other investments. But they trust their product teams and maintain a lighter touch interface, compared to those investments they want to focus on. Here’s what you can do – Analyze the cards on your portfolio kanban according to these 3 criteria. Let’s say a grade of 1-3 for each. This means the overall grade for each investment/card will be between 3-9:
(feel free to add a criteria and use whatever formula works for you – I provide this here just for illustration purposes) What if it turns out most of your cards SHOULD be portfolio-level cards? One option is that you’re running a good portfolio approach already with empowered stream-aligned product teams working on smaller, more focused investments most of the time. But if you have lots of cards AND it looks like they should stay at the portfolio level – now its time to think about how to descale your portfolio by organizing around products, and building products using continuous discovery. (in other words, it is time to continue your product portfolio agility journey…) What does your Portfolio Kanban Board tell you? The post What Do Busy Portfolio Kanban Boards Tell Us? appeared first on Yeret Agility. |
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.
Reader Jonathan asked for some more color on the OKR swamp... Remember the Fire Swamp from Princess Bride? (If you don't, RUN to watch the movie. And consider this spoiler alert - and snooze this email until you're back) Navigating your OKRs often feels like the Fire Swamp. There are so many OKRs that they are all stuck - like the standing, dark, moist water in the Fire Swamp. The exercise of creating them involves wordsmithing agony that reminds you of a Battle of Wits with a sicilian......
What gets measured gets managed. But setting OKRs isn't enough. The flow and traction of OKRs need to be managed as well - otherwise, you'll find yourself in the OKR swamp.Using an OKR Kanban can help you both see the swamp and improve the flow and traction of OKRs. Here's an example - Here are some of my favorite patterns for managing OKR flow using Kanban: Use One OKR Kanban board. It's okay and preferable to see OKRs from multiple departments/teams/groups on the same board. It reinforces...
Hi there. I thought I'd share what is going on behind the scenes ... January started with a flurry of deep work with clients and I'm still trying to figure out how to weave writing on a consistent schedule into these periods. In the future I might use these opportunities to share some classics/reruns. In addition, I've been focused on developing an email course. It's about how to improve organizational traction and outcomes using familiar agility principles and techniques. I've been working...