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...
9 days ago • 1 min read
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...
14 days ago • 2 min read
For the fun of it – the next time a big consultancy gives a big presentation to your organization, pitching a POM – ask them how they recommend managing this transformation. And see if what they describe looks more like a Project or a Product. For example – Will they measure vanity metrics or product metrics? It just goes to show how tempting these vanity metrics are. How hard it is to talk about the real WHY (especially when the WHY is because a big consultancy firm sold us on it…) How...
16 days ago • 1 min read
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...
17 days ago • 1 min read
Many organizations tackling cross-product initiatives struggle with initiative ownership. At its heart, a cross-product initiative involves significant impact across multiple products/groups (sometimes called a portfolio) As organizations scale up, they get to the point where they need to tackle cross-product/cross-organization initiatives. These are often significant, complex endeavors aimed at solving an expensive problem or opening a very lucrative door for the organization. In other words...
18 days ago • 1 min read
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......
24 days ago • 1 min read
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...
25 days ago • 1 min read
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...
28 days ago • 2 min read
Most organizations wait way too long to adopt some portfolio-level agility practices. They’ve been told, “You can’t scale what’s broken,” so they wait until they nail agile at the team and product group level. What if fixing what’s broken REQUIRES focusing on the upstream operating models shaping the work and context of these teams? Back in 2012 or so, I met an SVP responsible for a 1000-person delivery organization that was working in a traditional waterfall. Critical Chain optimized...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
