aligning portfolio management reporting and tracking with agile delivery at the team level
TRANSCRIPT
Instructor: Eric Aiyathurai
4100 E. Third Ave, Suite 205, Foster City, CA 94404 | 650-931-1651 | www.cprime.com
The leader in training and consulting for project management and agile development
Agile Portfolio Management
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WHO IS CPRIME?
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What is a Portfolio?
• Definition
• A collection of projects or programs and other work that are grouped
together to facilitate effective management of that work to meet
strategic business objectives. - PMI
• Typically contains a mix of strategic and tactical initiatives, growth-
driven and cost-driven initiatives, and customer and internally-focused
projects.
• Why do PPM?
• PPM (Project Portfolio Management): a formal approach that an
organization can use to orchestrate, prioritize and benefit from
projects. This approach examines the risk-reward of each project, the
available funds, the likelihood of a project's duration, and the expected
outcomes.
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Portfolio-Program-Project Visual Hierarchy
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Survey question
• How is the portfolio/ project status tracked in your company?
• Percent complete
• Remaining effort
• Sprints remaining
• Earned Value
• Other
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Reasons for misalignment
• Projects still treated as…projects
• Long term planning horizons (1-3yrs)
• Different tools used for PPM vs Agile teams: Don’t integrate
• Unclear how to translate sprints to time and dollars
• Traditional PM uses different metrics and terminology than
Agile/ Scrum
https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/technology/articles/agile-and-ppm.html
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Survey question
• What are the main reasons for misalignment in your org?
• Unsure how to map sprint story points to (portfolio) time estimates
• PPM tool does not integrate with Agile tool
• Execs/ Portfolio Managers do not understand the concepts of
Agile/ Agile Portfolio Management
• Other
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Key Areas of Alignment
• Definition and classification of the larger deliverables
• Traditional: Projects WBS (Tasks) project completion
• Agile: Value Streams Epics Value delivered
• Reduction of long planning cycles into shorter ones
• 3-month/ quarterly
• Switch to non-time based estimates at the portfolio level
• Commits given by high priority items vs kitchen sink requirements
• Adjustment of Portfolio deliverables based on Epic deliveries
• Portfolio level meetings should occur more frequently (every 2
weeks)
• Initial allocation of staff done for the most important set of
Initiatives/ Epics
• Stable delivery teams
• Limit WIP
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Cone of uncertainty – with an Agile context
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Shift from Project to Epic delivery
• Map traditional Projects/ Initiatives to the Feature – Epic level
• Make Epics the common artifact for reporting and tracking up
and down
“Epics are large cross-cutting initiatives that deliver solutions to the end
user. As more teams adopt agile across the organization, the need to
define value-streams and epics is critical, to ensure coordinated planning
and delivery.”
• Use Epic burndowns to track progress and changes
• Use the built in reporting from Agile tools which have Epic
burndown capability
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Mapping the Portfolio to Epics
From: Avisi
Note: Depending on your Agile framework/tool, Epic and Feature could be switched around.
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Change how Portfolio Estimations are Done
• Advisable not to use time estimates at the Portfolio level
• People tend to think of them as due dates (and time commits)
• Can be used if only for planning
• Story points, T-shirt sizing, story sizing, ‘fudge factors’, etc
• These estimates get plugged in at the portfolio level
• Delivery timeframes are decided by the respective velocities
• If none, then rough guesses can be used but gets refined as team
gathers velocity data
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Cone of uncertainty in Agile estimating
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Prioritize and Track and update the Epics
• Prioritize Epics with stakeholders
• Track progress and changes using Epic burndowns
• Done at both Portfolio level and team level
• As Epics get progressively elaborated and estimated, update
portfolio estimates accordingly (as applicable)
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Steps for alignment of Portfolio-Sprints
• Reframe how initiatives/ projects are to be prioritized, funded,
and delivered
• Not by fixed scope but by Epics
• Delivering the highest value items first.
• Incremental delivery
• Break up the initial project scope into Epics
• Prioritize the Epics
• Estimate the Epics
• Progressive elaborate the Epics
• Re-estimate the Epics based on the above
• Adjust either the features delivered or delivery timeframe as
needed
• Use Portfolio tools to track at the higher level (if possible,
extract numbers directly from the Agile tool used by the teams)