Where run and change the business from a portfolio perspective meet and integrate

If we look at traditional portfolio management, like MoP or SfPfM, the focus is on doing the right projects and programmes in the right way and delivering business benefits. These are temporary set-ups to help the organization to change. I would say the traditional change in the perspective of change the business and run the business. See attached figure 1 which shows the position of portfolio management in this traditional world according tot he MoP framework.

We see, more and more, organisations benefit from the fact to keep multi disciplined teams together to deliver more often and faster changes to existing products, systems and processes to accommodate business agility. These teams become permanent and will have their position in the organizational structure. This means these teams become part of the Business as Usual / Run the business environment. In this case, the work to be done, the functional changes, additions, regulatory changes etc. will be brought to these teams. The teams can focus on the development or become DevOps like teams. And this is a complete mind shift if I compare this with the traditional projects and programmes where the people are brought to the work itself.

I expect that the number of projects and programmes will decline because much of needed changes will be handled by these permanent teams. I don’t believe projects and programmes will disappear completely. For transformations, developing new product/market combinations, organizational and/or behaviour changes etc. we still need these temporary projects and programmes but after delivering, and closing these projects/programmes, new permanent teams can be established to maintain and operate the results. In these situations, we can still benefit a lot from frameworks like PRINCE2 Agile, AgilePM, MSP, RPM, and AgilePgM.

We see an enormous increase in the usage of agile delivery frameworks like Scrum by these permanent delivery teams. We also see an explosion of the number of these teams and this asks for a certain level of coordination between these teams. Delivery of specific changes may ask for orchestration between these permanent delivery teams. The usage of Scrum of scrums is not enough and new frameworks to help with this coordination are needed. Frameworks like Nexus and SAFe are developed to support this orchestration.

Like we had in the past, also for these permanent teams we need to prioritize the work to be done. At the lowest level, the development team itself, a product owner can do the prioritization, and if there are a few teams a group of product owners can discuss and agree about the prioritization among the teams. But when we have more and more teams there is definitely a need for portfolio management at the highest level. The SAFe framework contains a portfolio level to divide budget between different value streams based on the alignment with strategic themes. Within the value streams epics are prioritized by using backlog and using simple business cases or mechanisms like Weighted Shortest Job First (preference for those epics with the shorter duration and higher Cost of Delay).

As a result, we will have two portfolio management mechanisms. One for the temporary bigger one-time changes in the Change the business organization and one for the changes managed by the permanent delivery teams in the Run the business organization.

I would suggest to integrate these two mechanisms into one portfolio office. In figure 2 I changed the original set-up based on MoP and suggest to integrate the portfolio part of SAFe with MoP.

It still starts with Strategic / Business Planning. The Portfolio Office needs to be closely aligned with this strategy team. Based on the strategy there will be the understanding of strategic themes (SAFe) or categories (MoP). Here we also need to understand which value streams in the organisation are supporting the strategy. As a result, one or more permanent teams can be dismantled or added. In the traditional set-up portfolio management was only looking at Change the business and prioritized the work to be done by the Programme and Project Management organization. Now we see that also the work to be done by the Development / DevOps teams as part of Run the business needs to be prioritized. During the Understand practice (MoP) we will look at all traditional changes and Epics and categorize them across buckets for the traditional (temporary) world as well as the Backlog for the (permanent) world. Following the SAFe framework these Epics can be assigned to the corresponding Value Streams and within the Value Streams (outside the portfolio Office) to the corresponding Agile Release Trains and from there, via the Program Increment Planning meetings to the delivery teams.

I am looking forward to your ideas regarding this set-up. Many people are looking for Agile Portfolio Management. Maybe this article can trigger a discussion and as a result an outline of Agile Portfolio Management can be co-created.

DICE, a tool for executional certainty

I received a mail from the Boston Consulting Group. Among other topics they highlighted their DICE tool to access and set up change initiatives. The DICE framework is a tool originally developed by Perry Keenan, Kathleen Conlon, and Alan Jackson (all current or former Partners at The Boston Consulting Group). By using this DICE tool, BCG claims that you can dramatically improve the odds of success.

In one of my previous posts regarding MoP practices in practice I already made a reference to this tool.

It’s a very simple tool to position your project on the DICE chart. Based on five questions you get an indication if your project is positioned as win, worry or woe. A project in the woe area is structured or guaranteed to fail. The tool gives suggestions for improving your DICE score. And of course it’s much more important to have a conversation about the scores and what you can do about it than only look at the final score itself!

The DICE score (D + 2I + 2C + C₂ + E) is based on:

Duration (D): Either the total duration of short projects, or the time between two milestones on longer projects

Team Performance Integrity (I): The project team’s ability to execute successfully, with specific emphasis on the ability of the project leader

Commitment (C): Levels of support, composed of two factors:

• C₁ visible backing from the sponsor and senior executives for the change
• C₂ support from those who are impacted by the change

Effort (E): How much effort will it require to implement (above and beyond business as usual)

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In the embedded video from Perry Keenan you get an intro to the DICE tool.

If you go to the BCG DICE website you can get access to the DICE calculator, DICE FAQs and a library with the original HBR article The hard side of change management.

You will also find a set of small videos explaining the assessment of the DICE score, Duration, Integrity, Commitment and Effort and the setup of a DICE workshop and the DICE portfolio.

You will also get access to some related documents like:

• A way to access and prioritize your change efforts (new HBR article about the DICE tool)
• Leading change in turbulent times (about emotional turmoil that can drastically undercut the change effort)
• Transformation: The imperative to change (Case studies of transformation excellence)
• Executing Change beyond the PMO (from PMO to SIO: Strategic Initiative Office)
• Strategic initiative management: the PMO imperative (The role of the PMO).

Conclusion: a simple tool, be accompanied by many relevant documents and videos. It is shared by BCG and can be very helpful in assessing your own portfolio and to trigger conversations about the focus in your portfolio and individual interventions for your most important projects!

MoP: Organizational energy

It’s a good start to have your processes in place to accommodate the practices of the portfolio definition and delivery cycles. But you need more. If there is no commitment of senior management it will be a mission impossible to accomplish the portfolio goals.

Your staff must show involvement, looking for new opportunities, new innovations, willing to take decisive actions to solve problems because they want to work for a successful organisation, or in other words they must show productive energy.

MoP describes the energized change culture as one of the principles and sees this organization energy as the linking pin between the two portfolio management cycles. The energy is the “fuel” for change and performance.

Being successful is all about people and in that sense it’s a pity the MoP manual spends just a few pages on this topic. Searching on the Internet gave some interesting presentations and articles from Vogel.

Henley Business School/Vogel defines organizational energy as ‘the extent to which an organization (or division or team) has mobilized its emotional, cognitive and behaviour potential to pursue its goals.’

This article is divided into the following paragraph:

• Intro
• Portfolio management principle 5: Energized change culture
• Organizational energy matrix
• What is the energy state of your company?

To download: MoP (practice Organizational energy, 150515) v0.1

This article will be used in a new book MoP practices in practice, for portfolio managers who want to embed the MoP theory in their organization. In the coming months several blog posts and articles will be published waiting for your feedback. To see all, select the tag MoP_practices_in_practice.

MoP: Portfolio management organization

To implement en maintain portfolio management in your organization you need to have senior managers who are committed to portfolio management. The first step will be the institutionalization of a portfolio board. In line with the P3O and MoP theory we see the following portfolio bodies and teams (see Figure 1: Portfolio management organization):

• Portfolio Direction Group or Investment Committee
• Portfolio Progress Group or Change Delivery Committee
• Portfolio Office (permanent)
• Centre of Excellence

This article is divided into the following paragraph:

• Overview
• Purpose and responsibilities

To download: MoP (practice Organization, 150422) v0.1

This article will be used in a new book MoP practices in practice, for portfolio managers who want to embed the MoP theory in their organization. In the coming months several blog posts and articles will be published waiting for your feedback. To see all, select the tag MoP_practices_in_practice.