Most organizations wait way too long to adopt some portfolio-level agility practices. They’ve been told, “You can’t scale what’s broken,” so they wait until they nail Agile at the team and product group level.
What if fixing what’s broken REQUIRES focusing on the upstream that’s shaping the work and context of these teams?
Back in 2012 or so, I met an SVP responsible for a 1000-person delivery organization that was working in a traditional waterfall. Critical Chain optimized waterfall. But still. Component Teams. Heavy coordination and integration costs across multiple products. Build that takes 2 weeks to integrate.
The SVP ran a very successful and profitable shop. However, they recognized that to satisfy their customers, they often had to accept change out of cycle, which created a constant fire drill.
We discussed options for approaching the change. Going all in on Agile teams was one alternative. Another was to start with a lighter touch intervention at the portfolio level by visualizing, understanding, and managing flow at the portfolio level, to see and begin breaking the waterfall.
We got a Portfolio Kanban view going within a couple of weeks. It didn’t take long for some flow-oriented light bulbs to turn on. And then Flow started improving. This led to a somewhat more iterative release planning approach, making change a reasonable proposition.
Over time, we’ve noticed how much “cross-product” work this portfolio delivered and started exploring ways to reorganize around value.
We started introducing more and more agility principles and practices (eventually, they did reorganize to stream-aligned cross-product groups focused on the REAL product and leveraged team-level agile ways of working).
Here’s the thing –
Starting at the Portfolio level gives you as a leader, tons of leverage to make an impact on the product-oriented agility of your organization – by tackling the systemic constraints to Product thinking, Flow, and Empiricism and allowing you to learn and model the behaviors you expect from your people.
Are Your Traditional Portfolio Processes Inhibiting Innovation and Agility?
This is one example of how starting with a portfolio perspective can be a useful approach to the project to product journey - for leaders whose organizations are still deep in the project world.
Other leaders have actually tried to move from project to product operating models for a while now, including sizable investments into team-level and even group-level agility using Scrum, SAFe, Kanban and the like.
But Still, the promised land of outsized value creation and improvement of time to market (rather than flow time of stories or “features”) is elusive.
Looking at the conversations around budget, governance, and driving your significant business initiatives, agility is the last term that comes to mind for these leaders (bureaucracy and large ship struggling to maneuver are more apt descriptions).
Decision Paralysis: Uncertainty brings your business to a standstill. Teams operate in silos, unable to adapt or innovate.
Missed Opportunities: You see competitors pivot and innovate while your organization struggles to maintain the status quo. Your phased gate process is intended to bring order, discipline, and reduce risk – but it doesn’t prevent building the wrong thing, just slows the process down.
Cross-functional Hell: Despite creating “Agile” teams, every meaningful innovation/transformation requires heavy collaboration – becoming a “project” or “program”.
I Want To Improve Portfolio Agility But I'm Afraid Of Another Heavy Agile Processes
A lot of leaders do realize that there's a mismatch between their portfolio/organizational operating system and the delivery approach used by teams/groups.
As they start looking at the landscape, they encounter SAFe Lean Portfolio Management (LPM), which can be a valuable step forward for organizations leveraging SAFe as the foundation for their Product Operating Model (some of my favorite clients do that!).
Other leaders look for a leaner portfolio operating system. What does that look like? We want an operating model that orients around outcomes, where the right people collaborate closely with each other, where people naturally and efficiently integrate and experiment, and where there’s a goldilocks mix of alignment, autonomy, and guardrails.
Leaner Portfolio Management – Bringing Product and Agility to the Portfolio
Leaner Portfolio Management is about transforming your IT portfolio from a feature factory managing scattered investments to creating a product-oriented mega-lab that drives growth, value, and resilience.
It is the application of the same concepts that work at the Team/Product level, to the Cross-Product / Organizational level. (You can think of it as a Fractal, or “Turtles all the way” perspective.)
The Road To Portfolio Agility
You can think about the journey to a product-oriented portfolio in four stages: Crawl, Walk, Run, and Fly.
Each stage helps your organization evolve towards agility, evidence-based decision-making, and continuous alignment.
Crawl: You start by recognizing that you already have a portfolio of investments, even if it’s not formalized. In this stage, you start to understand your portfolio and the flow (or lack thereof) of your significant investments.
Walk: Begin actively managing the flow and shaping demand. (Saying No, or not yet) It’s about turning a collection of projects into cohesive products—creating an intentional balance between technology and business investments. We are starting to have conversations around which decisions to manage at the portfolio level and which to empower product teams to have.
Run: Now, it’s about aligned autonomy. Teams are free to innovate, while strategic goals keep everyone focused on the outcomes that matter. Stable funding decoupled from product cycles helps teams thrive without constant budget concerns.
Fly: Finally; you’re in full agility mode—treating your entire business like a product. Lean Startup principles guide how you adapt and grow, and every aspect of the industry evolves in response to real-world feedback.
This journey isn’t about frameworks or processes—it’s about behaviors.
In the early stages, it is focused on establishing flow. Then, it is about reorganizing around value and outcomes and eventually being evidence-informed.
Are you interested to learn more about how to leverage Flow and Evidence-based Management to scale an Agile Product Operating Model, moving from projects to products at the Portfolio level?
Check out this free email course that goes into more depth on why and how to go about doing this.