Presentation made during the 2017 Gatineau-Ottawa Agile Tour by Nicolas Mercier and Frédéric Paquet. Portfolio management is a key aspect of organizational performance. The ability to visualize upcoming projects, projects in progress, the process of value creation, the dependencies, the ability to share a common vision and to throttle the work in progress based on organizational capacity are all contributing elements to the effectiveness of an organization. Unfortunately, the shared vision of a portfolio is too often buried in a tool shared with too few people and does not help the organization build a global and cohesive plan of action. But when we think about it... Value chain, limiting work in progress, transparency, flow... have you ever thought about using Kanban for portfolio management? Seems like a great idea! Create alignment around what delivers value to your end-users, use cadence to move forward, help shape a new organizational culture, support innovation, continuous improvement, and leadership and unite people around a shared mission, that is what Kanban at the strategic level can bring.

1. Strategic Portfolio Management With
Kanban
Nicolas Mercier (Nmercier@facilite.com) &
Frédéric Paquet (Fpaquet@facilite.com)

2. Speakers
Frédéric Paquet Nicolas Mercier
fpaquet@Facilite.com nmercier@Facilite.com

3. Agenda
Yesterday
Today
Tomorrow
Based on an operational experience in a
government field.
With more than 1k IT folks.

4. Intro
There must be a better way?
You didn’t even think about asking yourself this question.1
You asked yourself this question but can’t find answers.2
You found the answers.3

5. Intro
Disclaimer

6. Once upon a time, the creation
• A sometime epic story
(in the non-agile way of the term)
• Team building (internal & external)
• Define scope, budget and schedule
… of a project

7. Accountability measures and KPIs
• Baseline, BAC
• EV, SV, CV, SPI, CPI, TCPI
• Velocity
• Parking graph
• Sunset graph

8. Tactics and tricks
• Happy hours
• Recursive Padding
• Watermelon indicators

9. Project-centric dimension
• Let’s suppose everything is fine
but there is still a problem …
,
WE ARE
NOT ALONE

10. A successful project can hurt the organization

11. Everyone is full capacity
300
J F M A M J J A S O N D J F

12. A common strategy to fix the problem
• Plan better
Magic
button
All I have to do, is hit the
magic button …

13. The perfect master gantt

14. From creation to …
SCIENCE
FICTION

15. We need an army of PCOs and PMs

16. At a portfolio level

17. At a portfolio level

18. From beginning to realization
The longer the process for starting
a project is ...
the more difficult it will be to stop it.

19. And you got a lot of useless features
• 64% of features really
rarely or Never used
Standish Group

20. TODAY

21. There must be a better way?!
If only someone could have invented something to put on
your head to block the sun from your eyes…

22. 1. Visualize
2. Limit WIP
3. Manage flow
4. Make policies explicit
5. Implement feedback loops
6. Improve continuously
Our experience with Kanban
Source: Essential Kanban – Condensed Guide, 2016, p. 17, http://leankanban.com/guide/
REVEAL THRIVESTABILIZE

23. Visualize
• Where is what?
• Dependencies?
• Health?
• Issues?
• Whatever!
Let’s see this thing!

24. Visualize - Start with what you do now
Reveal the system!
• See it just the way it is.
• Don’t change it in any way.
• Empower people to own it.
This will generally hurt quite a bit.

25. Visualize
Why do we do this
to ourselves?

26. Visualize - The Great Kanban!

27. Visualize - Systems Thinking
A system is not the sum of it’s part, it’s the product of their interactions.
- Russell L. Ackoff

28. Limit your WIP
Stop starting,
start finishing!

29. Limit your WIP
Maximize productivity Become responsive collectively
…but how?

30. Limit your WIP - Pull
Pull!
• Create a pull system.
• Value creation will
drive your choices.
Value

31. Limit your WIP – Little’s Law
L = W
L=
W
WIP
=Throughput
Cycle
Time

32. Manage flow
Go with the flow!
• Decentralize decisions.
• Empower and trust your people.
• Support your system:
• Eliminate bottlenecks.
• Puts the spotlight on constraints.
• Set up a cadence.

33. Manage flow - Cadence
• Rythmn of the system.
• Creates alignment and synchronisation.
• Breaks down BIG THINGS into small things.
Move to the beat!

34. Make policies explicit
Know the rules!
• Use Definitions of Done.
• Share and follow the rules.
• Ex: Card templates

35. Implement feedback loops
Portfolio
Project
Team
Weekly sync and Quarterly replenishment
Sprint review and planning
Daily meeting

36. Improve continuously
Inspect and Adapt!
• High level drives high impact.
• Invest in improvement opportunities
at this level.
You’ll be rewared!

37. TOMORROW

38. We still have challenges to come
How does the highest level of
government measure the success of
IT Initiatives?
Evaluating IT initiatives as an
whole vs Individually
VS VS

39. Go from silos to system
WE’RE LUCKY THE HOLE ISN’T ON
OUR SIDE!
The non-performing system
The performing project

40. We still have challenges to come
The fear of auditor or medias is
strong
Transparency vs individual’s
motivations
VS

41. We still have challenges to come
• Your structure will need to change. Sometimes
drastically to support these things:
• Flatten your organization
• Break silos
• Move from project-centric to user-centric
• Make boundaries from roles and responsabilities a little
more blurry
• DevOps
• Understand people will disappear… and reappear in new
form (caterpillar to butterfly)
• Measure the impact of changes is hard on things that last
for months at a time

42. Metrics
• Focus more on outcomes than following the plan
• Use flow metrics and Value to steer your decisions

43. Questions?