1. Agile Projects, Programs and Portfolios
Speaker: Bryan Campbell
Website:
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2. Bryan Campbell
More than 22 years of IT experience across a wide range of industries and organizations (government, public, private)
The last 10 years focused on Agile and UP Project, Program and Portfolio initiatives.
Project and Program Manager of a wide range of small and very large projects.
Extensive experience working in large scale enterprise environments (Telcos, Utilities, Software, Government, Finance)
Experience as the VP of Delivery Services for a consulting company specializing in agile software development, Sr. Program Manager at BMC Software Inc. and Service Delivery Manager for BMC OnDemand solutions
Articles and blog can be found at

3. Agenda Setting the Context: Projects, Programs and Portfolios
Agile Project Hallmarks
The Agility Challenge
Agile Programs
Agile Portfolios
Links

4. Goals of the session
From the Conference Schedule Increasingly agile projects are required to scale up as their techniques are extended across organizations. How do we ensure that the many benefits of agile project delivery aren’t overwhelmed by corporate governance and large scale program delivery? By the same token how can agile projects be managed in a way to keep other key groups such as Finance and the PMO satisfied. Agile practices can scale effectively across the Programs and Portfolios of even the largest organizations. Using a variety of techniques such as Scrum of Scrum and scalable program frameworks for delivering project value, you’ll learn how to keep your projects agile while providing the controls and visibility required by senior executives.

5. Validation on Attendance
Source: indeed.com

6. What is a Project? Outcome focused
Follows a Lifecycle: Requirements-Design-Development-Test-Deploy
Requires a coordinated team of participants
Works towards a budget and schedule with an end date
Manages Risks and Issues …

7. What is a Program? A collection of projects with a similar outcomes
Focus on providing a benefit stream for a business unit or product area
Support a roadmap of value for a business unit or product area
No specific end-date

8. What is a Project Portfolio?
Portfolios look at the entire value chain of investments required for an organization
Align investments to business strategies
Executive level view of where to increase or scale back investments
Portfolios reflect a mix of investment opportunities and are managed to increase business value and to hedge against risk

9. Portfolios, Programs and Projects
Portfolios contain a collection of Programs that support business strategies. Executives need the ability to adjust their portfolio mix as market conditions and opportunities change.
Portfolio Management
Enterprise perspective
Strategic Goal Alignment
Investment Mix
Market and Shareholder Driven
Adjust to Market Conditions/Opportunities
Program
Management
Programs focus on benefit streams that yield value and look for opportunities to increase value and deliver solutions.
Business area perspective
Benefit Stream Realization
Alignment of related projects
Roadmap of value
Project
Management
Projects have a specific outcomes that they are required to performance against.
Agile practices are typically applied at the project level but have positive affects on Programs and Portfolios.
Capability Delivery
Budget
Schedule
Team delivery
Requirements Mgmt
Architecture Design
Development
Test

10. What Each View Needs to Answer
Project
Deliver as much business value as possible
Deliver rapidly
Provide visibility
Program
View of business value delivery over time by business value segment
Alignment to strategic roadmaps
Portfolio
‘Levers’ for Executives to adjust portfolio mix
Ability to adjust portfolio based on market conditions
Line of sight visibility across enterprise value chain

11. Project Programs and Portfolios
These ideas are still evolving and being refined
For many organizations the answer is to measure what is available
The result is that Programs and Portfolios end up looking the same and reward projects with highly rigorous, prescriptive processes

12. How Can Agile Techniques Help?
Definition of Agile
Agile is an iterative and incremental (evolutionary) approach to Software Development
which is performed in a highly collaborative manner
by self-organizing teams
with "just enough" ceremony
that produces high quality software
in a cost effective and timely manner
 which meets the changing needs of its stakeholders.
Scott Ambler
Managing Agile Projects

13. What Agile is Not
Agile is a set of values and principles NOT a concrete, defined process
From the Agile Manifesto it emphasizes:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
These are the principles projects, programs and portfolios care most about

14. Agile Project Traits Hallmarks of Agile Projects:
These two principles run against the grain of most ‘typical’ corporate governance functions
Hallmarks of Agile Projects:
Prioritized Backlogs Drive Release Dates: Features are managed in a backlog, prioritized by business value and releases are determined by the development velocity and what is deemed acceptable as a production release.
Tradeoffs are an important part of the process: Prioritizing business value of work with Business and IT working collaboratively to balance risk.
Sustainable Pace: Team members are involved in estimates and commitment dates. Overtime, weekend work and heroic efforts are ‘bad smells’.
Frequent demonstrations of working functionality: The project should be broken into a series of time-boxed, iterations that have a demo to show progress to all stakeholders.
Continuous Improvement: Weekly team retrospectives should be held to learn how to improve and enhance the project delivery efforts.
Communication: Daily ‘scrums’ should be held amongst team members to understand what has been accomplished, what will be accomplished and what roadblocks exist.
Visibility: Information on project status, progress and issues/risks should be maintained in real-time, web accessible tools.
Quality: Everyone owns ‘quality’. Standards, Test automation and key principles such as Test Early / Test Often are emphasized. 14

15. Agile De-emphasizes Big design and requirement gathering ‘up-front’.
Predictions on project completion.
Death march projects where project teams make up the difference for poor estimates with unpaid overtime.
Use of tools that force behaviors (task management tools, requirements management tools etc.).
Top Down Management/Control.
“Heavy” documentation, particularly status reports, Software Architecture Diagrams, Software Requirements Specifications, Test Plans etc.
Many of these items are required by Programs and Portfolios to feed their reporting requirements.

16. This all sounds great… what’s the problem?
The Benefits of Agile
Emphasizes many of the ‘right’ things: collaboration, team empowerment, working software, frequent demonstrations of progress etc.
Lightweight, relies on whiteboards, index cards and facilitation techniques (planning poker, Fist of Five etc.)
Very appealing to developers who make up a large portion of most development teams with its development focus.
Business sponsors like the idea of time-to-market opportunities and driving the features of the development lifecycle.
Implicitly focuses on ‘push vs. pull’’
Simple and easy to understand.
Contemporary and ‘modern’ (remember the slides at the beginning of the presentation)
This all sounds great… what’s the problem?

17. Agile Project Growth
Agile practices are getting increasingly more traction as,
traditional techniques don’t scale or extend to distributed,
global initiatives are becoming the norm
Projects are more complex
Agile is ‘silent’ on how to scale and integrate with governance structures:
Programs, Portfolios and regulatory requirements etc.

18. The Agility Challenge
Many Program and Portfolios are poorly constructed and they highlight areas that Agile de-emphasizes:
Programs and Portfolios are little more than status reports roll-ups
Most rely on ‘commit dates’ or things that are easy to track like ‘costs’
All projects are treated as the same

19. Management by Christmas Tree Lights
The Agility Challenge
Many times Agile projects are viewed as problems because they don’t fit into the ‘standard’ program and portfolio views of most organizations.
Number of Project Change Requests, Committed and Planned Deployment Dates can make Agile projects square pegs in round holes
An actual example of a corporate portfolio… let’s zoom in some potential Agile problem areas…
Management by Christmas Tree Lights

20. Program Views – What to Avoid
Examples from Program Dashboards
Essentially a status report roll-up.
No visibility on benefits or benefits availability.
Data sets are incomplete
Too much reliance on graphics
Difficult to interpret which dials are more important than others
Views the Program as a very large project

21. Portfolio Views - What to Avoid
Some charts from actual Portfolio Dashboards
Difficult to see relative comparisons
No visibility for executives to determine what options they might have for project prioritization or spend
Requires considerable skill to interpret
No visibility for executives to determine what options they might have for project prioritization or spend

22. Agile Connects The Dots
Portfolios contain a collection of Programs that support business strategies. Adjusting an investment portfolio ,mix requires a program and project structure that is adaptable.
Portfolio Management
Business Leadership
Value Optimization
Strategic Goal Alignment
Program
Management
Program Managers are focused on ‘doing the right project’. Which requires the ability to change priorities without ‘stranding’ investments.
Business Sponsorship
Benefit Stream Realization
Alignment of related projects
Project
Management
Agile practices applied at the project level are focused on ‘doing the project right’. These techniques ensure steady streams of throughput based on business value.
Capability Delivery
Budget
Schedule
Team delivery
Requirements Mgmt
Architecture Design
Development
Test

23. Agile Projects, Programs, Portfolios
Agile projects drive Portfolio and Program adaptability and responsiveness.
Portfolio
New product release supporting Cloud technology receiving rave reviews. Increase sales capacity to generate more revenue in Q3 without impacting earning projections.
Increase Sales investments
Throttle back on HR projects
Accelerate troubled projects
Green Light new project
Sales
Program
Road
Map
Automated Pricing Engine
Marketing Proposal Gen
Mobile CRM Access
Product Demo Portal
Program A
Program B
Project C
Project A
Project B
Project D
Projects
$250k
$500k
$750k
$1M

24. Improving Agile Projects
Agile projects need to behave like ‘projects’. They must work towards an end-date deliverable.
Choose the minimum amount of releasable value as a project target.
Familiarize stakeholders and teams with the Cone of Uncertainty.
Increase training on different techniques. PMI or other certifications such as Certified Scrum Master
Ensure prioritization of features based on business value
Increase Project Managers ability to select the right methodology for their needs
Use a Risk based assessment tool to determine the right fit of methodologies/processes

25. Scaling Agile Projects to Programs
Where geographically distributed teams are necessary remember that co-location is ‘good’ so optimize around this as much as possible
Have development teams focus on ‘Feature’ sets
Keep Feature Teams as ‘agile’ as possible
Ensure teams receive sufficient detail to build what is required:
Architecture
Requirements
User Interfaces
Ensure that teams are enabled by an effective ‘ScrumMaster’ to escalate issues and resolve roadblocks
Ensure retrospectives occur at the team level at the end of iterations
Support teams with a Program Team to provide overall guidance/direction
Establish an Architecture Team which is responsible for ‘feeding’ Feature teams with frameworks, components and guidelines.

26. Scrum of Scrums For scaling larger scale Agile projects
A representative from each Feature team meets to discuss status for their team
Ideally representatives meet each day but a less frequent schedule (every other day) works well
Ask Four questions:
What has your team done since we last met?
What will your team do before we meet again?
Is anything slowing your team down or getting in their way?
Are you about to put something in another team’s way?
For more information:

27. Increasing Program Management Agility
Align programs by key business functional / area
Split large projects into smaller ones with clear business value streams laid out
Ensure programs are comprised of small releasable components of value to realize this value as soon as possible
Show a roadmap of business value to stakeholders

28. Increasing Portfolio Agility
Emphasize value delivery streams and increase agile project mix
Provision the right ‘levers’ to Executives so they can re-direct investments and re-prioritize based on Market Conditions
Provide the right level of visibility to Executives on what options they have

29. Closing thoughts… Thank you for attending this session.
We hope you found this presentation added value to your knowledge of
Project Management.
Take a few moments to complete the Session Survey. We appreciate and value your feedback.
Hand in your completed survey to Booth #46 you will receive a free raffle ticket for one of the drawings to be held in the Vendor Expo (see Conference Program Guide for details).

30. Presented by: Bryan Campbell
Agile Projects, Programs and Portfolios The Three Ps of Agile Executive Management
Presented by: Bryan Campbell