- Strategic alignment: Ensures that all work is directly connected to the organization's strategic goals.
- Value maximization: Focuses on delivering the most value to the customer and the business by prioritizing high-value initiatives.
- Agile adaptation: Creates a flexible and dynamic environment where the organization can quickly pivot and adapt to market changes.
- Waste reduction: Eliminates non-essential work and processes to improve efficiency.
- Strategy and investment funding: Aligns and finances the portfolio to meet business targets. This involves flexible budgeting and allocation of funds to strategic initiatives rather than rigid, annual cycles.
- Agile portfolio operations: Coordinates and supports the development work across different value streams, enabling teams to adapt to change and address issues quickly.
- Lean governance: Provides guardrails for the portfolio, including guidelines for spending, audits, compliance, and forecasting.
- Flexibility over rigidity: LPM uses rolling planning cycles and flexible budgeting models, contrasting with the fixed annual cycles of traditional methods.
- Value over volume: LPM defines success by the value of the outcomes delivered, whereas traditional approaches may focus on the quantity of deliverables.
- Decentralized decision-making: Encourages more decentralized, agile decision-making instead of relying solely on a top-down hierarchy.
Lean Portfolio Management: A Detailed Guide
Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) is an approach that aligns strategy, funding, and execution to enhance business agility. It applies Lean and Agile principles to portfolio management, ensuring organizations can adapt to change quickly and deliver continuous value to customers.
Traditional portfolio management often relies on rigid budgeting cycles, extensive approvals, and siloed teams. In contrast, Lean Portfolio Management fosters flexibility, promotes decentralized decision-making, and aligns work to strategic objectives using Lean-Agile practices.
The Role of SAFe Lean Portfolio Management
The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) Lean Portfolio Management approach integrates Lean thinking with Agile execution. It provides a structured method for enterprises to align their investments, governance, and execution in a way that supports innovation and efficiency.
SAFe Lean Portfolio Management focuses on three key areas:
Strategy and Investment Funding: Aligning investments with strategic priorities.
Agile Portfolio Operations: Enabling decentralized decision-making and collaboration across teams.
Lean Governance: Implementing financial stewardship with Lean budgeting and flow-based metrics.
Key Principles of Lean Portfolio Management
Align Strategy with Execution – Ensure that every initiative aligns with business objectives.
Implement Lean Budgeting – Shift from project-based to Lean funding to improve agility.
Emphasize Continuous Improvement – Use feedback loops to optimize processes and outcomes.
Enable Decentralized Decision-Making – Empower teams to take ownership of their work.
Foster Collaboration – Break down silos and encourage cross-functional teamwork.
Measure Outcomes, Not Output – Focus on delivering customer value rather than simply completing tasks.
Use Agile Portfolio Operations – Optimize value streams to maximize efficiency.
Benefits of Lean Portfolio Management
1. Enhanced Business Agility
LPM ensures that organizations can quickly pivot to changes in the market, regulatory shifts, or emerging customer needs.
2. Improved Strategic Alignment
With Lean Agile Portfolio Management, organizations can ensure that their investments and initiatives align with long-term business goals.
3. Increased Efficiency and Reduced Waste
By eliminating unnecessary approvals, LPM helps organizations reduce waste and optimize resource allocation.
4. Faster Time to Market
LPM fosters a culture of continuous delivery, helping companies bring products and services to market more quickly.
5. Greater Transparency and Collaboration
With clear objectives and open communication, teams can work together more effectively.
Lean Portfolio Management in SAFe
Lean Portfolio Management SAFe integrates with various SAFe configurations, allowing organizations to implement it at different levels depending on their complexity and size. SAFe provides tools such as Lean Portfolio Canvas, participatory budgeting, and Lean Portfolio Metrics to ensure successful implementation.
Lean Portfolio Management Certification
A Lean Portfolio Management certification can help professionals and organizations gain expertise in implementing LPM effectively. Some of the most recognized certifications include:
1. SAFe Lean Portfolio Management Certification
The SAFe Lean Portfolio Management certification provides knowledge on how to implement SAFe principles in a portfolio management setting. Participants learn to align strategy with execution, apply Lean governance, and drive continuous improvement.
SAFe Lean Portfolio Management certification cost varies depending on the training provider, location, and format. Typically, the cost ranges from $1,200 to $2,500.
2. ICAgile Lean Portfolio Management Certification
The ICAgile Lean Portfolio Management certification is another valuable credential that focuses on applying Lean and Agile principles at the portfolio level. It helps leaders transition from traditional project management to Lean-Agile methodologies.
3. Lean Portfolio Management Training Programs
Several training programs offer in-depth knowledge of LPM principles, including workshops, online courses, and corporate training sessions.
Implementing Lean Portfolio Management
1. Establish Lean Budgeting
Replace traditional project-based funding with Lean budgeting to allocate resources efficiently and drive flexibility.
2. Define Value Streams
Identify and optimize value streams to ensure a smooth flow of work from strategy to execution.
3. Implement Agile Portfolio Operations
Encourage decentralized decision-making, enabling teams to collaborate effectively without excessive oversight.
4. Use Lean Governance
Ensure financial accountability while maintaining agility through participatory budgeting and Lean metrics.
5. Measure and Optimize
Continuously track performance using leading indicators like customer satisfaction, time-to-market, and return on investment (ROI).
Challenges in Lean Portfolio Management
1. Resistance to Change
Many organizations struggle with the transition from traditional portfolio management to LPM due to resistance from leadership and employees.
2. Balancing Flexibility with Governance
While LPM promotes agility, maintaining financial control and compliance remains a challenge.
3. Cultural Shift
Implementing LPM requires a significant cultural shift from top-down management to a decentralized, value-driven approach.
4. Scaling Across Large Enterprises
Applying Lean Portfolio Management at scale requires careful planning, training, and continuous improvement.
Best Practices for Lean Portfolio Management
1. Foster a Lean-Agile Mindset
Encourage leadership and teams to embrace Agile and Lean principles to drive successful implementation.
2. Leverage Technology
Use Lean Portfolio Management tools such as Jira Align, Rally Software, and SAFe Portfolio Kanban to manage workflows effectively.
3. Engage Stakeholders Early
Ensure that executives, product managers, and teams collaborate from the beginning to drive alignment and commitment.
4. Focus on Value Delivery
Prioritize initiatives based on their potential to deliver value rather than on rigid plans.
5. Train and Certify Teams
Invest in Lean Portfolio Management training and certifications to ensure teams have the necessary skills and knowledge.
Conclusion
Lean Portfolio Management is a crucial practice for modern enterprises looking to enhance agility, improve efficiency, and drive strategic alignment. By adopting SAFe Lean Portfolio Management, implementing Lean budgeting, and focusing on continuous improvement, organizations can stay competitive in a rapidly changing market.
What is lean portfolio management (LPM)? 6 steps to start now
Lean portfolio management (LPM) is a new way of managing company portfolios to increase efficiency and boost customer satisfaction. LPM was inspired by the lean methodology, which started small but quickly spread to the masses.
Lean management began when engineers at Toyota created a system to reduce waste in their manufacturing line. The lean methodology quickly took off, and other industries started to apply these principles to their project workflows. . In this piece, we’ll explain how you can implement lean portfolio management to streamline your processes.
What is lean methodology?
The lean methodology seeks to minimize waste in your organization’s workflow and increase customer value. Japanese engineers first developed the lean methodology at Toyota, but John Krafcik—president and CEO of Hyundai Motor America— introduced lean to project management in his 1988 article titled, “Triumph of the Lean Production System.”
There are five principles (or steps) that make up the lean methodology:
Identify value: Determine the value of your product or service.
Map the value stream: Diagram your workflow and compare it to your ideal workflow.
Create flow: Remove waste from your workflow to promote efficiency.
Establish pull: Pull work from the previous process stage to move it through the project life cycle.
Continue to improve: Make continuous improvements to your workflow.
Whether you’re managing a project or a portfolio, you can use these principles to identify weaknesses in your processes and remove anything that doesn’t add value to your project.
Paired with portfolio management tools, LPM can help you quickly identify waste in your workflow and streamline your systems.
What is lean portfolio management (LPM)?
Lean portfolio management is an extension of the lean methodology. It uses the five principles of lean to connect business strategy with project execution. As a portfolio manager, you can use lean principles to assess business strategies and allocate appropriate budgets for the execution of those strategies.
There are three dimensions of lean portfolio management:
Strategy and investment funding: Align and finance the portfolio so that you meet business targets.
Agile portfolio operations: Enable Agile teams to adapt to change and quickly address issues as they arise.
Lean governance: Provide guardrails for spending, audit and compliance, and forecasting expenses.
Implementing lean portfolio management will take time, especially if your team is used to a traditional portfolio management system. But once adopted, this new way of managing a portfolio can help you reduce overhead costs and delays.
Below are the differences between a traditional and lean portfolio to identify which method works best for your team.
Six steps to lean portfolio management
You can think of lean portfolio management like repairing a car. There are adjustments you must make along the way to get the engine up and running. These six steps can help you implement lean portfolio management for your next project.
1. Assemble your leaders
Repairing a car can take months if you don’t have people with the mechanical knowledge to help you. Similarly, lean portfolio management is easier with a properly assembled team.
Your first step when managing a portfolio should be to form a group of financially skilled leaders who can help you align business strategy with project execution.
Tip: To assemble a strong portfolio leadership team, assess the strengths of internal team members or collaborate with your hiring manager to recruit people with the right skills for the job. Portfolio managers must excel at gathering data, monitoring project performance, and influencing those in charge of priority management.
2. Find funding
Even once you have a skilled team ready to repair your car, you can’t get started without the money to buy tools and parts. Lean portfolio management also requires proper funding to turn business strategy into execution.
Once you know which projects are of highest cost and priority to key stakeholders, assess the company budget so you can confidently allocate resources.
Tip: Finding funding usually means looking within the company’s existing resources and determining where the project can fit into the budget. If the company budget can’t accommodate a project or certain features of a project, communicate that to the project manager and discuss how to restructure the project.
3. Build an operating structure
Now that you have a team of people ready to work on the car and you have the money needed to start your repair, you can develop a game plan for how to fix the car. Will you start with the engine or the carburetor? Will everyone work together or will each person handle a different car part?
Your company portfolio also needs a game plan. Discuss how you’ll transition to a leaner operational plan with your leadership team. Refer back to the five principles of the lean methodology and identify areas of waste in your original method of portfolio management.
Tip: Customer satisfaction should be your highest priority when building an operating structure that promotes lean portfolio performance. Use customer feedback to improve your operations and prioritize Agile practices so that your portfolio flow is adaptable.
4. Implement a lean workflow
Now that you have a game plan, your team can begin the car repairs. If the last car repair you did took a long time because too many people were under the hood, make sure your game plan has everyone working on different areas of the car. While you work under the hood, assign someone to work under the car and someone else to work inside it. This plan will be faster and more efficient.
To create your lean workflow, eliminate unnecessary work or inefficiencies from your portfolio management process. For example, if you were previously delayed in prioritizing projects because you didn’t receive timely notifications from the project manager, you can establish a pull system that notifies you when the previous stage in the process is complete.
Tip: You can establish a pull system with portfolio management software. Kanban tools or Gantt charts can help you visualize the stages of your portfolio management process. Build project dependencies to notify team members when the next stage of the process is ready to begin.
5. Add upgrades and clarity
Once your car repairs are complete, you’ll want to take the finished product for a test drive. This is when you can look out for humming sounds or things that don’t feel quite right. You can then drive the car back to the shop to add any finishing touches so that you’re confident the vehicle is road ready.
Focusing on lean initiatives should make your portfolio management workflow run smoothly, but because this framework will be an adjustment for your team, you’ll likely need to add clarity and upgrades to polish things out. You can’t achieve operational excellence without flexibility and the constant desire to improve.
Tip: Use change management best practices to roll out the changes between traditional portfolio management and lean portfolio management. By putting a change management process in place, you can make the transition to LPM as painless as possible.
6. Celebrate improvements
Whenever you complete a project, whether it’s a car repair or a product deliverable, it’s important to celebrate your success. It’s rewarding to see a car racing down the road after watching it sit immobile in a junkyard, and it’s also rewarding to see business strategy come to life and satisfy a customer because of your lean budgeting.
Tip: Even if your project doesn’t go as planned, use any mistakes made as lessons to optimize your next project and improve future decision making. If you maintain a portfolio vision that strives to become better, then even projects that don’t end with an increased value will be worth celebrating.
Lean Portfolio Management:
Strategies, Insights, and Best Practices for Optimal Organizational Performance
What Is the Primary Focus of Lean Portfolio Management?
The primary focus of Lean Portfolio Management is to shift an organization from annual planning and budgeting cycles with fixed scope expectations to a more agile, continuous flow managed through a portfolio Kanban system.
Lean Portfolio Management creates the opportunity for organizations to prioritize the highest-value work first, fund the priorities, and create feedback loops to deliver faster. This means companies invest more of their time and money on the things that actually matter.
Done right, Lean Portfolio Management increases enterprise agility by allowing an organization to redesign planning and funding processes to align to the business outcomes desired.
Leaders in the enterprise are taught to look at the flow of value as a whole and focus on areas with the most opportunity. As a result, funding models and planning cycles run in a continuous flow; business units (commonly called “value streams” in Agile) are given leeway to make decisions on how value is produced or achieved.
A value stream describes the set of steps from the start of value creation until the delivery of the value to the customer. Organizations can form value streams around a specific product or solution, specific verticals, or in other ways.
Regardless of how an organization defines its value streams, the impact of Lean Portfolio Management is this: Entire value streams and their respective teams gain more autonomy and self-organize to deliver the highest-value work first.
What Are the Benefits of Lean Portfolio Management?
By taking steps to implement Lean Portfolio Management at the enterprise level, organizations unlock the ability to maximize value from the portfolio down through the teams by embracing iterative funding and continuous planning. Lean Portfolio Management practices create the opportunity for new ideas and organizational pivots, and are designed to deliver the incremental capacity and funding necessary to continue highly valuable work.
Maximize value
At the heart of any Lean-Agile initiative is the desire to create more value. That starts by defining value (through the eyes of the customer), and then aligning team structures around the delivery of that value. By aligning the way work is planned, funded, and executed with the way value is defined within the organization, Lean Portfolio Management helps organizations maximize the delivery of value.
Time to market
Time to market (TTM) can be the difference between leading a category, and being the second or third best thing – the difference between being viewed as an “innovator” and a “follower,” or being the “household name” and the “competition.”
Lean Portfolio Management can help increase time to market by streamlining the delivery of what matters most. The faster an organization’s time to market, across the portfolio, the faster the business is able to collect data about its offerings, and incorporate them into creating more value.
Quick pivots
The ability to quickly pivot in light of changing conditions is a key business capability – but the larger, and more complex the portfolio is, the harder it becomes. In traditional organizations, where business functions are siloed from each other, and momentum dies in a sea of red tape, quick pivots can feel like a pipe dream.
Lean Portfolio Management creates the conditions that make quick pivots achievable: By organizing into nimble, self-organizing, cross-functional teams around key value streams, Lean-Agile organizations have the visibility and agility to adapt to changing conditions.
Read Next: Enterprise Agility: How to transcend disruption in the financial services industry
How Is Lean Portfolio Management Different from Other Approaches?
Traditional portfolio management approaches were not designed to align with the Lean-Agile way of working. They also weren’t designed to keep pace with today’s rate of change and market disruption. Trying to operate as Lean-Agile teams, within a traditional organizational environment, is inherently difficult and unsustainable.
Applying a Lean-Agile approach to portfolio management empowers organizations to work more effectively – reducing wasted time and effort while continuously prioritizing customer needs.
Traditional Approach - Resources are told what to work on
- People are moved from project to project and work on many projects at the same time
- Detailed, requirement-laden project plans are created before work begins
- Plans are project-driven and typically follow inflexible annual plans that are difficult to change
- Work is very detailed before it is ever started
- Project-based budgeting and funding is tightly controlled by finance
- Adherence to waterfall, milestone or stage gate project-driven work
Lean-Agile Approach - Teams contribute to decision making
- Work is flowed to the team and value is delivered incrementally
- Lean business cases are utilized to prioritize and fund the work that matters most
- Plans are value-driven and are adaptive to produce maximum customer value
- Work is incrementally delivered and customer feedback is gathered to define what is worked on next
- Value-stream funding, with value delivery determined by the value stream leaders and team members
- Adherence and focus on outcome-driven value delivery
What changes with Lean Portfolio Management?
The traditional approach to portfolio management centralizes control, with a heavy focus on projects. To gain approval for the project, the plans have incredible detail that requires a “best guess” as to what the value delivery will be in 12–18 months (or longer). Organizations generally keep annual planning centralized in the traditional approach, realign resources to various projects, and fund those projects based on waterfall milestones.
Once the project is completed, the measurements are simply, “Did the project finish on time and on budget?” not, “Did the project deliver value to the customer or market?”
With Lean Portfolio Management, traditional portfolio management is flipped on its head to better suit the needs of Lean-Agile teams. Instead of a hefty project plan, a lightweight business case is used with just enough information to create a go or no-go decision for funding and priorities. The decision making is decentralized with the value streams determining how they will achieve the strategic objectives of the organization.
Value stream leaders have the ultimate discretion on how best to align to the organization’s goals and satisfy specific objectives within a particular delivery window.
This is a significant shift from traditional portfolio management, as stakeholders are less concerned with the individual funding of specific projects and highly invested in the outcomes produced. Lean Portfolio Management also reduces some of the exposure associated with longer cycle funding models. By funding value streams in a more incremental fashion, the organization reduces potential financial risk.
Implementing Lean Portfolio Management
Adaptability, agility, and speed are the key ingredients to success in a world where the only constant is change. Enterprises are at particular risk for disruption because of their inherent complexity – but Lean Portfolio Management can illuminate the path toward enterprise agility.
The practice of Lean Portfolio Management provides a set of three key collaborations – strategy and investment funding, Agile portfolio operations, and Lean-Agile governance – that are intended to align leadership around organizational strategy. These collaborations can bring visibility and transparency around the key decisions that can make or break an enterprise’s success.
When implementing Lean Portfolio Management, there are five shifts to consider:
- Shift to stable, yet iterative funding by value stream
- Shift to outcome-focused measurement
- Shift to continuous flow and improvement
- Shift to less governance and more autonomy
- Shift to focus on customer value first
Lean Portfolio Management budgeting and funding
When implementing Lean-Agile practices at scale, organizations quickly realize their push for agility conflicts with traditional budgeting and cost accounting practices. To evolve with Lean Portfolio Management, an organization must evolve its budgeting practices, as well. Lean budgeting can help companies shift the way they plan the distribution of dollars to fund value streams and teams.
That’s because funding practices – the way budgets are allocated throughout the organization – dictate nearly every business outcome. They determine what work is prioritized, how teams are structured, and how impact is measured. Very little is accomplished in an organization without the investment of time, money, and people – so, it’s important to ensure the way funding decisions are made aligns well with the business outcomes the organization is trying to drive.
This is where Lean budgeting comes in. In Lean budgeting, Lean Portfolio Management fiduciaries determine spending by value stream, while teams within each value stream are empowered for rapid decision making and flexible value delivery. Enterprises can have the best of both worlds: a value delivery process that is far more dynamic and responsive to market needs, as well as accountable management of value stream spending.
Funding by value stream
Rather than trying to fund individual projects, the Lean approach allocates budgets to value streams, with guardrails to define spending policies, guidelines, and practices for that portfolio (more on this later). This allows for flexibility, autonomy, and speed within each value stream, while maintaining cohesion across the portfolio.
Read Next: Costing Agile: Win the Timesheet Debate with Finance
Continuous flow, not sequential steps
Traditional (annual) budgeting and planning follows a linear structure, where plans are made for the year and then executed, with checkpoints throughout the year to assess status. Success within this sequential structure assumes conditions and information remain relatively stable throughout the year. However, in most industries, conditions are not stable: New information, competitors, and business models can completely change the face of an industry within a matter of months.
In Lean-Agile organizations, work is planned, prioritized, and executed in a continuous flow.
These organizations are always collecting data about the performance of their products and services, as well as the market in which their customers operate. Teams, the value stream, and leadership continuously monitor both internal and external conditions to evaluate whether the current focus aligns with larger organizational goals. New proposals are evaluated frequently, typically in alignment with quarterly or mid-range planning cadences.
The continuous flow of Lean budgeting and planning includes space for incorporating new data, feedback, and information, and pivoting plans accordingly. As plans are executed, more data is collected about these and other ongoing initiatives to determine priorities for the near and distant future.
Lean Portfolio Management metrics
Lean Portfolio Management metrics are a blend of qualitative and quantitative outcome metrics that monitor the health and progress of the whole portfolio.
Being able to track and analyze these metrics is important to ensure that Lean-Agile practices (or the way they’re implemented) are actually contributing to desirable outcomes.
There are three categories of metrics that can be used within Lean Portfolio Management to define and measure goals: Objectives and Key Results (OKRS), flow metrics, and Lean-Agile metrics.
Objectives and Key Results: Are we working on the right things?
OKRs are often used in Lean-Agile organizations to define and communicate success criteria across the portfolio.
OKRs are a widely utilized framework for defining, aligning around, executing, and measuring progress toward key organizational goals. Although not exclusive to Agile organizations, OKRs are frequently used in Agile organizations as a planning, execution, and measurement tool.
Put simply, OKRs answer the question, “Are we working on the right things?” In other words, “Are the things we’re doing going to help us achieve the business outcomes we’re after?”
Defining and aligning around OKRs helps to link organizational and team goals in a hierarchical way to measurable outcomes. Those outcomes might include a combination of flow metrics, used to measure the flow of value, and Lean-Agile metrics, used to measure work performance.
Flow metrics: How healthy and efficient is our process?
Flow metrics, as defined by Mik Kersten, measure the flow of business value through all the activities involved in producing business value through a value stream. They include:
- Flow time (time to market)
- Flow efficiency (identifies waste in a value stream)
- Flow load (monitors over- and under-utilization of value streams)
- Flow distribution (illustrates the tradeoffs between flow items in a reporting period)
Flow metrics answer the question, “Is our process efficient and healthy?” Tracking these metrics can help leaders understand how efficiently and effectively teams are able to deliver on value, over time.
Lean-Agile metrics: How likely are we to achieve our objectives?
Finally, Lean-Agile metrics such as cumulative flow diagrams, burn-up and burn-down charts, help teams measure their progress toward a specific scope. They help teams analyze their effectiveness of completing a certain scope or set of work items/deliverables through different stages of their lifecycle.
Lean-Agile metrics answer the question, “Based on how we’ve been working, how likely are we to achieve our intended objectives?”
Lean-Agile metrics can be used in combination with flow metrics to help teams define and achieve their OKRs.
SAFe Lean Portfolio Management
The Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) provides guidance on the vital components of Lean Portfolio Management not otherwise covered in the framework, more specifically Strategy and Investment Funding, Lean Governance, and Agile Portfolio Operations.
Strategy and investment funding
Lean Portfolio Management creates a structure for organizations to plan, fund, and map strategic objectives to value streams. Often, this initial alignment requires a shift in how organizations historically think about portfolio initiatives within a traditional project management model.
Lean Portfolio Management planning and steering meetings are often created as a forum for determining where opportunities lie, and how all parts of the organization must work together to meet desired business outcomes in a more iterative way, through continuous planning.
Lean governance
Lean Portfolio Management loosens the reins on value streams and associated teams, creating a culture of autonomy. Value stream leaders are trusted to use their capacity and budget to focus on prioritized features and deliverables.
With the help of the PMO, prioritized items flow through the teams with more efficiency and speed. Lean governance provides “just enough” guidance to achieve value-based delivery, while providing the flexibility to try new things and learn from both successes and failures.
Agile portfolio operations
Continuous planning would be incomplete without release cadences to match the iterative planning cycles. Lean Portfolio Management leverages the power of iterative funding tied to these iterative releases, enabling truly Agile portfolio operations.
Rather than annual funding, Lean Portfolio Management creates guardrails for funding policies and processes. Internal and customer feedback loops are used constantly. Quarterly planning meetings are leveraged to ensure high-value priorities remain well funded to maximize value delivered with each release. These new, shorter cadences and iterative practices require significant stakeholder expectation management. The PMO facilitates collaboration throughout the process to maintain alignment regardless of work management or methodology.
Considerations When Selecting Lean Portfolio Management Tools
Comparing vendors when you are evaluating Lean Portfolio Management tools can be a daunting process. Knowing what makes a solution effective can help you narrow down your search.
A comprehensive Lean Portfolio Management solution should be designed to enable:
- Lean budgeting, funding, and governance
- Value stream planning and alignment
- Agile Program Management
- Agile team costing and capitalization
Planview’s Enterprise Agile Planning solution is purpose-built to enable organizations to shift from a traditional to a Lean-Agile portfolio management approach with capabilities that enable:
- The visualization of strategic objectives across portfolios, value streams, and teams of teams
- Setting of OKRs and financial targets for portfolio investments
- Value stream planning and funding
- Ranking and analysis of investments or epics by business drivers
- What-if scenario modeling to compare trade-offs and compromises
- Automated actuals for better Agile team costing and capitalization
Bringing It All Together
The path to Lean Portfolio Management takes a mindset and organizational shift at the highest levels of the organization. While it does foster a mental and cultural change, it isn’t a guardrail-to-guardrail approach.
Lean Portfolio Management lets leaders stay in tune with what their organizations need as they revisit and evolve their planning and funding. It creates space for new ideas and organizational pivots that produce high-value, customer-centric products. It also helps the whole organization become champions of change and customer value.
Lean Portfolio Management encourages leaders to move from command-and-control management to servant leadership. It empowers the organization to reprioritize and change based on iterative cycles and feedback.
With Lean Portfolio Management practices enabled, the organization has the flexibility to find the right mix of work styles, funding, and planning cycles. To achieve maximum value from their portfolios, organizations need to be both flexible and predictable in their product or solution delivery. The PMO, with the help of Lean Portfolio Management practices, sits in an ideal spot in the organization to lead the shift.