"You get a mad underspend in Q1; then you spend Q2 and Q3 trying to catch up on the questions about your Q1 underspend. This is variation waste, and causes massive issues in terms of the ability of the system to absorb the work" - Mark Richards

In this episode, we turn our attention to the application of lean to Portfolio Operations and Governance. Eric focuses on improving flow, while Mark wants to reduce waste. We start by looking at aggregating and analyzing patterns from portfolio members. Discussing moving from PMO to VMO is a prelude to exploring the lean evolution of portfolio events and governance.

We cover:

• (00:00) Intro
• (2:16) How does the systems view of the portfolio help you find points of leverage?
• (10:31) What happens when you aggregate and analyze problem data from portfolio members?
• (15:10) Why are standards so important to portfolio insights?
• (19:38) What typical patterns does a portfolio-level view of Inspect & Adapt events reveal?
• (23:51) How can you learn from analyzing escalation patterns?
• (32:10) What’s the difference between a PMO and a VMO?
• (38:01) What happens when you apply the classic lean waste definitions to portfolio operations and governance?
• (46:42) How does monitoring and governance change in a lean world?
• (51:41) How do you improve the data that supports effective operational governance?
• (1:02:04) Is empathy still important for strategic portfolios?

Cast:

Eric Willeke

Mark Richards

Book References:

Lean Product and Process Development – Allen Ward

From PMO to VMO – Augustine

"In most cases, the portfolio itself is under a fog of war. You can't actually see what's going on unless you take your telescope and really zoom in on an area" - Eric Willeke

This episode concludes the initial six-part arc laying the foundations of lean portfolio management. The first five episodes were devoted to building a clear picture of your portfolio ecosystem. Picture in hand, we explore the insights it might yield and the ensuing interventions they should trigger. The conversation dwells primarily on strategic insights, exploring the concept of 'acting this fiscal year' with operational interventions and preparing to activate strategic interventions next fiscal year.

In this episode, we cover:

• (00:40) Episode Intro
• (01:56) How do you avoid just having great conversations?
• (05:14) How do you pick the right interventions and get support to act on them?
• (16:13) Why start with strategy? What are some typical insights, what kind of interventions do they yield, and how does the fiscal year influence things?
• (33:26) How do you leverage operational interventions to act on strategy insights?
• (38:24) What happens when you focus on portfolio-level strategy insights rather than the ecosystem?
• (51:13) How do you move from executive hunches to data-driven insights and interventions?
• (58:05) What about outcome-based insights?
• (1:03:51) Wrap

Cast:

Eric Willeke

Mark Richards

Show Notes

"It's common for people to say they have a platform strategy that doesn't necessarily resemble a platform strategy so much as a center of dependency hell" - Mark Richards

In Episode 3, we explored the influence of Moore's Zone to Win model on understanding the portfolio ecosystem. Episode 4 explored the role of purpose, context, and structure in modeling the ecosystem you have and starting to look at it through Lean eyes. In this episode, we combine these ideas with the portfolio examples defined in the SAFe Portfolio article Eric contributed to last year. This sets the stage for exploring leveraging the examples to make sense of the portfolio ecosystem you have today and begin to think about the one you'd like to have tomorrow.

In this episode, we cover:

• (00:39) Episode Intro
• (02:51) Why is understanding the portfolio ecosystem so important?
• (05:31) What was the thinking behind SAFe's Portfolio examples?
• (15:49) What is the Single Portfolio example, and when is it too simplistic?
• (26:37) Which portfolio examples live in the Performance Zone?
• (54:10) Why are the Productivity Zone examples so useful?
• (01:06:31) How do you avoid the misconception that an Innovation Portfolio is the only place where innovation happens?
• (01:13:07) Why do none of the examples naturally map to the Transformation Zone?
• (01:18:43) Wrap

Cast:

Eric Willeke

Mark Richards

Show Notes

Book References:

• Zone to Win – Geoffrey Moore

Other References:

• SAFe Portfolio Article

"Create the visualizations that are going to be useful, do some cleanup work to create the space for people to think a little more deeply, and then make sure you don't waste their time so they can put some wins on the board" - Eric Willeke

With our love of strategy off the leash in Episode 3, we continue down the path this episode. We explore why strategy matters so much to portfolio design. This provides a bridge to understanding how portfolios evolve and change over time, the critical characteristics to clarify early, and the questions that might emerge. It's no use having interesting questions if you have no time to wrestle with them. We conclude the episode by examining some of our favorite approaches to creating space for critical conversations.

In this episode, we cover:

• (00:39) Episode Intro
• (1:38) Why is understanding the portfolio's role in the ecosystem important?
• (10:27) How does strategy influence the internals of the portfolio?
• (16:51) What's the best way to begin 'becoming lean'?
• (33:49) Why are purpose, context, and structure essential to clarify?
• (48:09) How do you create space for executives to have conversations that matter?
• (01:04:58) Wrap

Cast:

Eric Willeke

Mark Richards

Show Notes

Book References:

• Zone to Win – Geoffrey Moore

"I don't want to have a minnow next to a minotaur because the minnow is never going to feature in the conversation" - Mark Richards

This is the first episode where we deep-dive into strategy. Whether your portfolio is shaping a strategy or deploying one shaped elsewhere, you need tools to contextualize it in the overall enterprise. We take horizon-based investment and Geoffrey Moore's Zone to Win model and explore what happens when you use it as a conceptual model for your portfolio ecosystem.

Along the way, we discuss our belief that you should be able to take an overall enterprise strategy and model your portfolios as logical pieces of it. Each should have a clear purpose and context, and collectively they should add back up to the whole. Our conversation explores the implications of each of Moore's four zones and the insights and implications that emerge when you leverage them to characterize your portfolios.

In this episode, we cover:

• (00:39) Episode Intro
• (3:00) Why partition your strategy?
• (7:01) What is horizon-based investment?
• (14:38) How does Geoffrey Moore's Zone to Win model help us understand portfolios?
• (24:56) What is the Performance Zone and how does it apply to portfolios?
• (38:31) What types of portfolios live in the Productivity Zone, and what are the strategy implications?
• (49:04) What is the difference between general "innovation investment" and the Incubation Zone?
• (55:41) When does the Transformation Zone come to life, and what kind of strategies play out there?
• (1:05:02) Wrap

Cast:

Eric Willeke

Mark Richards

Show Notes

Book References:

• Your strategy needs a strategy – Reeves, Haanaes, Sinha
• Zone to Win – Geoffrey Moore

"In nearly half of the cases I can think of, the things that the teams most hate providing to governance are the same things the governance team doesn't actually want and doesn't know how to tell the teams to stop providing" - Eric Willeke

This episode dives into the 'Lean' aspect of lean portfolio management. It begins with a brief exploration of lean and systems thinking and their focus on optimizing the whole, improving flow, and reducing waste. We then 'put our lean hats on' to explore lean’s relation to strategy, operations, and governance.

Treating these elements as a portfolio's 'jobs to be done,' we stress the importance of taking the portfolio in your line of sight and understanding its mandate for each job. We share common patterns and variations of mandates we've seen and typical ways in which lean thinking generates positive change.

In this episode, we cover:

• (00:39) Intro
• (01:34) Where do you start with lean portfolio management?
• (16:45) What are the first questions you ask?
• (25:47) What are the primary jobs of a portfolio?
• (29:50) How do the mandates typically vary for these jobs?
• (36:56) Governance is often a dominant mandate. How does lean shift the governance mindset?
• (42:00) What are the significant opportunities with lean operations?
• (46:14) How do strategic mandates vary, and how does this affect your initial lean focus?
• (54:07) What are the most common first steps in the lean governance space?
• (58:13) Wrap

Cast:

Eric Willeke

Mark Richards

Show Notes

"Start with questions that paint a picture of today before you try painting a picture of tomorrow" - Mark Richards

In this podcast's first episode, we lay the foundations for exploring Lean Portfolio Management. We start with a high-level overview of portfolios and their uses and share our stories of first encountering them. From there, we dig into the few key definitions and elements we feel are critical to setting the stage for the show's arc before diving into the tensions, trade-offs, and recurring definitional pieces.

We stress the importance of being aware of your naturally inherent bias and the criticality of your starting stance: seeking first to understand. The first questions we pose in pursuit of understanding relate to the nature of the portfolio, the mandate, its context in the ecosystem, and its relationship to strategy, portfolio operations, and governance.

In this episode, we cover:

• (00:00) Podcast Overview and Origins
• (02:06) Episode Intro
• (02:58) Our stance on SAFe's lean portfolio management content
• (04:33) Where did our journey with portfolio management begin?
• (15:59) A Portfolio of what?
• (27:15) What lens do you look through?
• (33:37) Where do you draw the line between defining and steering the investment and operating the portfolio?
• (40:31) How do business strategy and business operations interact?
• (45:25) What key themes recur when considering a portfolio within the enterprise?
• (1:01:30) Wrap

Cast:

Eric Willeke

Mark Richards

Show Notes

Book References:

• Your strategy needs a strategy – Reeves, Haanaes, Sinha