Set Heartbeat of Portfolio Management towards Business Agility

On 27th and 28th February, portfolio leaders of more than a dozen organizations in DACH region have met in Berlin to share practices towards the future of Portfolio Management. It became obvious that classical Project Portfolio Management (PPM) approaches are becoming less effective in today's dynamic business environment, change is imminent. Here are few takeaways.

30 years after Scrum's creation, agile has finally arrived in mainstream, but ?Technology will never again develop as slowly as it is today“, organization requires new type of leadership with clear ownership and shared responsibility to steer Portfolio, both value delivery & capability upskilling

Prof. Dr. Ayelt Komus had delivered the keynote, how AI and Cloud Native will impact the future of Agile and Portfolio Management. We also did few quick surveys to confirm that there is not much new concepts rising, agile has moved to mainstream, despite the effectivity varies.

Classical PPM methods struggle to integrate with agile and iterative project management methodologies. This can create tensions between traditional project management and agile teams, leading to suboptimal outcomes and cultural clashes, in the age of AI and Cloud Native, the challenges are rapidly rising, therefore new type of leadership is required, a dual-operating system to balance value vs. line organization.

But this is will not be an easy ride, according to Larman's Law of organizational behavior :

"culture follows structure"

Leaders will need to be highly adaptable and agile in response to rapidly changing environments. The ability to navigate uncertainty, embrace change, and lead organizations through dynamic situations will be crucial.

Speaking about Mindset change won't do the job, because Mindset is neither measurable nor actionable, portfolio management transformation is about supporting people with change management and a lot of patience, both business and IT

A quote was made by Lutz Ehrlich:

Appeals to the right “agile mindset” are like brushing your teeth 8 times a day when you have pneumonia. You can do it, get fresh breath, but it doesn't help

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

In order to change people's behavior, we must have a solid change management approach in place, with proven practice, sensitivity of organizational culture, learn but not follow the book blindly. Changing People's mindset is a fantasy, rather changing the context, so that people can make the informed choice.

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

Lean Portfolio Management of SAFe is suitable for SAFe, non-SAFe and hybrid portfolios, especially across multiple business units with different maturity

During the conference, I noticed that majority of Portfolio Directors have planned either to implement Lean Portfolio Management, or already putting it to practice.

One common challenge is where to focus, and how to balance decentralized decision making vs. central governance, the idea is to apply Portfolio Kanban and visualize flow of work with key stakeholders, define clear decision guardrails and engage business owners, despite the methods and maturity varies across organization.

Set priorities based on capabilities gap towards corporate strategy and bottlenecks, say no to vanity metrics, integrate Enterprise Architecture with Portfolio Management

As Elon Musk likes to sleep on bottlenecks, he clearly understands the value of lean. During the discussion round, participants have explored different methodologies such as process mining, capability mapping, OKR, tooling and incentives for leaders and employees. One key discussion, was on the capability mapping, not reactive to business change but proactively identify where the gaps are, what are bottlenecks and how to upskill ALL employees towards the future ways of working.

To identify a vanity metric, consider whether it identifies a way for you to reproduce your desired result and whether its context is included or could be manipulated. To avoid vanity metrics entirely, you can focus your assessments on actionable metrics, measurements tied directly to your project's success.

Rethink Golden Triangle of Portfolio Management by considering your business model and associated digital architecture, putting time to perspective

The Iron Triangle represents the 3 primary constraints of delivery:

1. Scope: deliverables that are in or out of scope
2. Time: timeline and the deadlines associated with various tasks and milestones
3. Cost (Budget): financial resources allocated, such as labor, materials, equipment, and overhead

While the agile approach put time and cost fixed with flexible scope, shouldn't we also consider how your business model and digital architecture can change the cognitive approach how to see change and priorities.

"Learn to say no" creates focus

Learning to say "no" is an important skill that helps portfolio to set boundaries, manage capacity effectively, and prioritize commitments that contribute the most towards organizational strategy.

Portfolio Management creates the heartbeat between strategy and execution

Cadence is a rhythmic pattern of events that provides the steady heartbeat of the development process. It makes routine everything that can be routine, so developers can focus on managing the variable part of solution development. Synchronization allows multiple solution perspectives to be understood, resolved, and integrated at the same time.

Towards the end of this conference, I recalled what Oliver B?te said during 2024 Conference call:

what we need is discipline (of delivery), not inventing new stories every day.

new technologies, new ideas can create quick distraction, focus has precious value and we shall always keep in mind why do we do in portfolio management and continuously improve, with stable cadence, create a stable heartbeat through changing ways of working towards lean-agile, to incrementally improve business agility, and strengthen organizational resilience.