How do you match agile principles with project portfolio governance?

The alignment of a project portfolio to the organisation's and customer goals is far from new. Good portfolio management has always done this. It is certainly consistent with agility but is not an agile driven change to best practise. I disagree that by default 'all stakeholders' are involved as suggested. The point of stakeholder management and the analysis it entails is to ensure that the right messages are given to the right stakeholders at the right times in the best way to achieve the desired stakeholder outcomes and goals. Anything else is scattergun and definitely not agile....which encourages doing the minimum needed to be successful.

To align portfolio vision and goals with agile values, focus on customer needs, define clear strategic objectives, and prioritize projects that deliver early and continuous value. Ensure transparent communication with stakeholders and adapt the portfolio based on customer feedback, risks, and project dependencies to maintain alignment with organizational goals and agile principles.

?? In my experience, aligning agile values with PPM isn't merely about communication but more about integration. ?? Portfolio Agility Ensure portfolio agility by routinely re-evaluating projects based on current realities, allowing dynamic resource allocation. ?? Stakeholder Collaboration Stakeholders must be part of the decision-making process, ensuring alignment between business strategy and project delivery. ?? Feedback Loops Implement regular feedback mechanisms at the portfolio level, fostering continuous improvement and timely course-correction. ?? The true synergy between agile values and PPM is realized when they operate in harmony, where one enhances the effectiveness of the other.

The key is at what level do you integrate ?? I have seen water fall project aligned to epics in agile framework. Kind of worked with some mish- mash. It’s not perfect, but it works ??

To empower portfolio teams with autonomy and accountability in alignment with agile principles, it is crucial to trust teams, providing them with the authority and responsibility to make decisions, plan, and execute their projects without micromanagement. This requires offering the necessary resources, tools & support, while clearly defining roles, responsibilities, expectations, and boundaries. Feedback mechanisms and recognition for the team's work are also important for maintaining motivation and fostering a productive environment Empower portfolio teams by giving them decision-making authority,clear roles, and resources, while avoiding micromanagement. Establish feedback and recognition systems to promote accountability and motivation.

The PMO can be accountable for establishing and promulgating the standards, policies, tools, techniques and processes that enable the organization (not just the project teams) to efficiently and effectively deliver the strategy, projects and benefits. This accountability can also include taking “lessons learned” and incorporating them into the standard processes and policies. Within each project the project/program manager is accountable for the quality of the results delivered

Adopt a lean, adaptive portfolio process by using MVPs, delivering value in small increments, and applying agile metrics like customer satisfaction and ROI to monitor performance and adjust to changing requirements.

Lean portfolio Management LPM has the highest decision-making and financial accountability for a portfolio’s solutions and development value streams. The people who fulfill the LPM function have various roles and titles and often reside in different parts of the organization’s hierarchy. Because LPM is vital to the enterprise, executives and business owners who understand the financial, technical, business contexts hold strategy and investment funding responsibilities. They are accountable for the overall business outcomes and address the challenge of defining, communicating, aligning strategy with execution. The portfolio adaptive design also facilitates the reuse of software components & proven design patterns to help value streams.

Agile portfolio management promotes flexibility and data-driven decisions by regularly reviewing projects and aligning them with strategic initiatives. Agile governance focuses on delivering outputs rather than milestones, and emphasizes transparency, simplicity, and trust in the organizational team. Agile PPM involves adopting agile values, principles, and frameworks at the portfolio level, aligning projects with strategic goals and objectives, and prioritizing them based on value and outcomes. Agile governance and portfolio management should be light-weighted, with frequent monitoring and reflection to improve overall effectiveness. Agile portfolio management can increase transparency, empower teams, and improve strategic alignment.

To foster a culture of collaboration and learning across the portfolio, encourage regular knowledge sharing and continuous improvement among teams and stakeholders. Establish a portfolio community of practice where ideas, experiences, and best practices can be exchanged. Conduct portfolio reviews and retrospectives to reflect on the strategy, process, and results, allowing teams to adapt and implement lessons learned for future improvements. Promote collaboration and learning by creating a community of practice, sharing knowledge, and conducting reviews and retrospectives to adapt the portfolio strategy and processes.

Agile culture has emerged as an effective method for product development with increasing software development across industries. Agile culture gives the organisation a strategic framework to deliver a high-quality software product. Agile facilitates transparency, a collaborative approach, better communication, self-organisation and exploration. For managing a project, learning agile would help you to boost productivity and collaboration. Projects that adopted Agile culture have 64% success rate and 60% spike in revenue and profit. Agile culture is not only about collaboration, also focus on project monitoring regularly and refining strategy with feedback. Agile culture would increase performance conversations among the employees.

Agile is a powerful mindset that simplified not only the world of software development, but is working for many times outside the IT sector. The key to a satisfactory Agile implementation is everyone being on the same page, and not being afraid to make mistakes. They are going to happen either way, but the change happens if you are able to spot them fast. It’s easier in a team than it is on your own.