How to design an Agile Portfolio in a work context: a practical guide

Aim of the Article: The Agile Portfolio is a key concept in SAFe. However, its abstract nature in SAFe's framework leaves a gap in practical guidance on implementing one in a specific work context. This article offers my personal best practices for defining an Agile Portfolio using the Agile Portfolio Canvas, helping to secure stakeholder commitment and clarify roles.

Keywords: Agile Portfolio, SAFe, Agile Release Trains, Agile Budgeting, Epic Backlog, Business Owners, Portfolio Team

Note: This article is intended for those familiar with SAFe. For more information, see the Scaled Agile Framework.

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The aim of an Agile Portfolio?

The Agile Portfolio ideally has several key tasks:

1. Defining Strategic Themes and Objectives: setting strategic themes and steering towards achieving specific objectives.
2. Defining and monitoring Epics: identifying epics to realize these objectives and steering towards realizing their value.
3. Prioritizing the Epic Backlog: creating a single source of truth by ranking epics in order of priority.
4. Ensuring Prepared Epics for PI Planning: making sure epics (and its underlying features) are detailed enough for the PI planning event.
5. Managing the Agile Portfolio Budget: safeguarding the total portfolio budget and its expenditures. And allocating the budget across ARTs for every two PIs and monitoring the spending.

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Design of an Agile Portfolio

The Agile Portfolio orchestrates collaboration around the Epic Backlog, ensuring epics are prioritized and prepared effectively. The key entities involved (see Figure 1) are:

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1. The Epic Backlog: the list of epics on which the involved ARTs work together. For each epic an Epic Owner is assigned, who ensures together with the involved ARTs that the content is prepared and aligned.
2. Business Owners: a stable set of stakeholders representing various departments. They prioritize the Epic Backlog, benefiting from having a single prioritized backlog that assures them their priorities are addressed.
3. Agile Release Trains (ARTs): these have structural dependencies for realizing epics on the Epic Backlog. They benefit from centralized priorities, enhancing alignment. The Product Manager, Release Train Engineer and System Architect take an active role in the Agile Portfolio events.
4. Portfolio Team: this team, comprising of the Portfolio Manager, APMO and Enterprise Architect organizes and facilitates Agile Portfolio events, leading to a prioritized backlog and well-prepared epics.

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Typical events in an Agile Portfolio

So what are the typical events of an Agile Portfolio? I personally have implemented two variants for Agile Portfolio events:

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Situation 1 - In case the Agile Portfolio is the one and only portfolio

Biweekly WSJF Event

Epic owners pitch new ideas for epics and give a suggestion for the WSJF values of the epic. Business Owners calibrate the WSJF score. In this event Product Management and Business Owners also address preparation issues (Flow to Ready) and implementation issues (Iterate to Done).

Priority Alignment & Roadmap Alignment Event

Business Owners and Product Management align the prioritized epics with senior stakeholders, informing them of what epics ARTs will likely address in the PI Planning Event.

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Situation 2 - In case the Agile Portfolio is implemented next to existing (project) portfolios

I have implemented Agile Portfolios in more complex organizations consisting of multiple existing project portfolios. This also implied that it was more difficult to set up the Business Owner role. In this case the following set up worked well to gain trust in the set up.

Pre PI Event

Event of one day (one – two weeks before the PI Planning Event) in which the ARTs present their aligned and prioritized epic backlog and align this with the other ARTs and Business Owners. The ARTs ensure they prepare the following:

• The ARTs split up the priority list into two sections: 1) the epics that they propose are ready for implementation and 2) what epics have been prioritized for Flow to Ready work.
• The ARTs clarify their help questions related to priority or capacity issues to the Business Owners.
• The ARTs clarify which epics they will not bring to the PI Planning Event.

Once above is discussed the Business Owners and other ARTs accept the priority list, so the ARTs can focus on preparation and implementation.

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Biweekly Flow to Ready Event (Epic Kanban)

New cross-ART epics are pitched by Epic Owners, and exit criteria are discussed, allowing epics to progress in the Epic Kanban.

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When is an Agile Portfolio worthwhile to implement?

An Agile Portfolio is beneficial when:

1. ARTs are structurally interconnected: they need to collaborate to realize epics. However, ensure the organization’s focus is first on ensuring ARTs can deliver work end to end as much as possible. The organization can become overcomplicated if ARTs are just put in an Agile Portfolio without checking if the layout of the ARTs can be optimized.?
2. ARTs realize strategic themes together: combining them focuses on achieving strategic themes.
3. Shared Portfolio Budget: the ARTs share one agile portfolio budget.

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Introducing the Agile Portfolio Canvas

To overcome the issue of the setup of the Agile Portfolio being vague to the involved stakeholders, I use the Agile Portfolio Canvas. It clearly shows which entities are organized together and which roles people take on, clarifying their mandate. Additionally, it highlights the purpose of the agile portfolio. My advice is to sketch this canvas and align it with your stakeholders, leading to a session with key stakeholders where the design is accepted. This acceptance streamlines implementing events and coaching people into their new roles, ensuring a cohesive and functional portfolio.

Conclusion

The overarching goal of the Agile Portfolio is to ensure all efforts are strategically aligned, well-coordinated, and effectively executed, leading to successful value delivery to customers and achieving key business objectives.

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Feel free to make adjustments or let me know if there's anything more you'd like to add or know!

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