Shaping Portfolio Agility

Discovering, Designing, and Evolving the Portfolio Ecosystem (#4)

"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 WillekeWith 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) WrapCast:Eric WillekeMark RichardsShow NotesBook References:Zone to Win – Geoffrey Moore

Strategy Partitioning with Portfolios (#3)

"I don't want to have a minnow next to a minotaur because the minnow is never going to feature in the conversation" - Mark RichardsThis 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) WrapCast:Eric WillekeMark RichardsShow NotesBook References:Your strategy needs a strategy – Reeves, Haanaes, SinhaZone to Win – Geoffrey Moore

What makes a portfolio lean, and what are its jobs to be done? (#2)

"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 WillekeThis 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) WrapCast:Eric WillekeMark RichardsShow Notes 

Portfolios: What are they, and what really matters

"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 WillekeMark RichardsShow NotesBook References:Your strategy needs a strategy – Reeves, Haanaes, Sinha