Agile Portfolio Management - 1

A few people have been asking about "Agile Portfolio Management". Or at least about "how do we manage this stuff?" and what they mean is what I call Agile Portfolio Management.

Agile Portfolio Management is of course distinct from Scrum, but for simplicity, I have assumed a Scrum context.

First, Scrum is relatively silent on this subject, which is well and good. It is an advanced subject. And one can't implement "all" of Agile in a single go. So, better to make it an advanced topic.

Still, I have heard others say that if one gets "demand management" down (controlled) in an Agile way, then all the Team stuff (eg, all the other Scrum stuff) becomes so much easier to implement.

One might say: Mura, muri, muda. That is to say:
* Establish an evenness of flow first
* Do not overstress the system
* Then remove waste (or, one might say, other wastes)

Let's unpack these for a moment.

You can't get evenness of flow if the team is constantly being interrupted (for example). So, demand management means you have to control the flow of demand (new features) into the team to eliminate interruptions (and allow change).

You have to get business (and the team) willing to identify each team's capacity and NOT over-stress the team by asking them to deliver more than their capacity. When you over-stress, you actually reduce the real capacity of the team.

Then, removing waste, in simple terms, is removing the impediments identified by Scrum.

Next, some discussion of "single product backlog" (for multiple teams) and "chief product owner".

Note: Apologies for typos in the earlier version.

Reading List CSM Sutherland/Little course

We recently led a course in Atlanta.

Suggested reading included the following:

    

And....

The New New Product Development Game by Takeuchi and Nonaka. hbr.com

The Contradictions That Drive Toyota's Success by Takeuchi. hbr.com

The Concept of "Ba" by Nonaka and Konno.

Comment: For the books, I think it is more colorful and more useful to provide you with a picture of the book and access to Amazon's info about the book. Hope this is not otherwise a problem; I am slightly concerned that it may appear too commercial.

Note: I 

Scrum Certification Test

The Scrum Alliance has recently announced a Scrum Certification test.

Two cheers. This is a minor, good thing.

And it gives us an opportunity to say what makes someone good at Scrum.

Hint: High scores on the Scrum Test probably have very little to do with it.

First, Scrum is a team sport, so how good one person is is almost irrelevant.

Second, explicit knowledge, while somewhat useful, is not the main deal. The juice is in the tacit knowledge.

Third, building unused inventories of explicit knowledge is probably NOT going to help.

Fourth: Courage.

It takes courage to come in each day and face one's own imperfections, and force oneself to get better. Similarly, it takes courage from the team to come in each morning, tell the truth, and face their own imperfections. Every day. (It's fun too, but I think courage is the key.)

And it takes courage to tell the managers of the organization you are in that things need fixing around here.

So...

More book learning about Scrum. Yes, good. Hey, and let's add a minor test just to encourage that.

More courage. Much more useful.