Agile2013

Do you work in an organization where development is expected to be done in an Agile way, but upper management operates in a way that makes being Agile downstream difficult? Do you feel like your organization is working on way too many products/projects at the same time? Are people so busy multitasking that they do the best job that they can on one project before hoping to the next--never really doing the high-quality work that is desired? If so, your organization needs to align Agile throughout the value chain starting with portfolio management!

Traditional portfolio management frequently uses principles that are at odds with agile thinking. For example, believing that people should be 100% utilized might lead to us to start many simultaneous projects leading to high levels of team-member multitasking. Managing a portfolio according to these principles all but guarantees a continuous stream of impediments that interfere with team-level agility and sub-optimizes delivered value.

In this session I discuss a framework of 11 strategies for aligning portfolio management with agile development to ensure a better end-to-end flow of value. Attendees will:
* Understand the framework's 11 strategies for how to restructure their portfolio-management process to better align it with core agile principles
* Be exposed to real-world examples of how other companies have successfully applied these strategies.
* Return to their organization and promote real change throughout their organizational value chains by ensuring that decisions at the portfolio level are well-aligned with and do not disrupt the fast, flexible flow of work that Scrum team perform downstream.