Agile Projects, Programs and Portfolios Speaker: Bryan Campbell Website: www.bryancampbell.com

1. Agile Projects, Programs and Portfolios Speaker:Bryan Campbell Website: www.bryancampbell.com • Welcome to the PMI Houston Conference & Expo and Annual Job Fair 2011 • Please set your cell phone/pager to silent mode • Q&A will be taken at the close of this presentation • There will be time at the end of this presentation for you to take a few moments to complete the session survey. We value your feedback which allows us to improve this annual event.

2. Bryan Campbell • More than 22 years of IT experience across a wide range of industries and organizations (government, public, private) • The last 10 years focused on Agile and UP Project, Program and Portfolio initiatives. • Project and Program Manager of a wide range of small and very large projects. • Extensive experience working in large scale enterprise environments (Telcos, Utilities, Software, Government, Finance) • Experience as the VP of Delivery Services for a consulting company specializing in agile software development, Sr. Program Manager at BMC Software Inc. and Service Delivery Manager for BMC OnDemand solutions • Articles and blog can be found at www.bryancampbell.com

3. Agenda • Setting the Context: Projects, Programs and Portfolios • Agile Project Hallmarks • The Agility Challenge • Agile Programs • Agile Portfolios • Links

4. Goals of the session From the Conference Schedule Increasingly agile projects are required to scale up as their techniques are extended across organizations. How do we ensure that the many benefits of agile project delivery aren’t overwhelmed by corporate governance and large scale program delivery? By the same token how can agile projects be managed in a way to keep other key groups such as Finance and the PMO satisfied. Agile practices can scale effectively across the Programs and Portfolios of even the largest organizations. Using a variety of techniques such as Scrum of Scrum and scalable program frameworks for delivering project value, you’ll learn how to keep your projects agile while providing the controls and visibility required by senior executives.

5. Validation on Attendance Source: indeed.com

6. What is a Project? • Outcome focused • Follows a Lifecycle: Requirements-Design-Development-Test-Deploy • Requires a coordinated team of participants • Works towards a budget and schedule with an end date • Manages Risks and Issues • …

7. What is a Program? • A collection of projects with a similar outcomes • Focus on providing a benefit stream for a business unit or product area • Support a roadmap of value for a business unit or product area • No specific end-date

8. What is a Project Portfolio? • Portfolios look at the entire value chain of investments required for an organization • Align investments to business strategies • Executive level view of where to increase or scale back investments • Portfolios reflect a mix of investment opportunities and are managed to increase business value and to hedge against risk

9. Portfolios, Programs and Projects Portfolios contain a collection of Programs that support business strategies. Executives need the ability to adjust their portfolio mix as market conditions and opportunities change. Portfolio Management Enterprise perspective Strategic Goal Alignment Investment Mix Market and Shareholder Driven Adjust to Market Conditions/Opportunities Program Management Programs focus on benefit streams that yield value and look for opportunities to increase value and deliver solutions. Business area perspective Benefit Stream Realization Alignment of related projects Roadmap of value Project Management Projects have a specific outcomes that they are required to performance against. Agile practices are typically applied at the project level but have positive affects on Programs and Portfolios. Capability Delivery Budget Schedule Team delivery Requirements Mgmt Architecture Design Development Test

10. What Each View Needs to Answer

11. Project Programs and Portfolios • These ideas are still evolving and being refined • For many organizations the answer is to measure what is available • The result is that Programs and Portfolios end up looking the same and reward projects with highly rigorous, prescriptive processes

12. How Can Agile Techniques Help? Definition of Agile Agile is an iterative and incremental (evolutionary) approach to Software Development which is performed in a highly collaborative manner by self-organizing teams with "just enough" ceremony that produces high quality software in a cost effective and timely manner  which meets the changing needs of its stakeholders. • Scott Ambler www.agilemodeling.com Managing Agile Projects

13. What Agile is Not • Agile is a set of values and principles NOT a concrete, defined process • From the Agile Manifesto it emphasizes: • Individuals and interactions over processes and tools • Working software over comprehensive documentation • Customer collaboration over contract negotiation • Responding to change over following a plan • These are the principles projects, programs and portfolios care most about

14. Agile Project Traits These two principles run against the grain of most ‘typical’ corporate governance functions Hallmarks of Agile Projects: • Prioritized Backlogs Drive Release Dates: Features are managed in a backlog, prioritized by business value and releases are determined by the development velocity and what is deemed acceptable as a production release. • Tradeoffs are an important part of the process: Prioritizing business value of work with Business and IT working collaboratively to balance risk. • Sustainable Pace: Team members are involved in estimates and commitment dates. Overtime, weekend work and heroic efforts are ‘bad smells’. • Frequent demonstrations of working functionality: The project should be broken into a series of time-boxed, iterations that have a demo to show progress to all stakeholders. • Continuous Improvement: Weekly team retrospectives should be held to learn how to improve and enhance the project delivery efforts. • Communication: Daily ‘scrums’ should be held amongst team members to understand what has been accomplished, what will be accomplished and what roadblocks exist. • Visibility: Information on project status, progress and issues/risks should be maintained in real-time, web accessible tools. • Quality: Everyone owns ‘quality’. Standards, Test automation and key principles such as Test Early / Test Often are emphasized.

15. Agile De-emphasizes • Big design and requirement gathering ‘up-front’. • Predictions on project completion. • Death march projects where project teams make up the difference for poor estimates with unpaid overtime. • Use of tools that force behaviors (task management tools, requirements management tools etc.). • Top Down Management/Control. • “Heavy” documentation, particularly status reports, Software Architecture Diagrams, Software Requirements Specifications, Test Plans etc. Many of these items are required by Programs and Portfolios to feed their reporting requirements.

16. The Benefits of Agile • Emphasizes many of the ‘right’ things: collaboration, team empowerment, working software, frequent demonstrations of progress etc. • Lightweight, relies on whiteboards, index cards and facilitation techniques (planning poker, Fist of Five etc.) • Very appealing to developers who make up a large portion of most development teams with its development focus. • Business sponsors like the idea of time-to-market opportunities and driving the features of the development lifecycle. • Implicitly focuses on ‘push vs. pull’’ • Simple and easy to understand. • Contemporary and ‘modern’ (remember the slides at the beginning of the presentation) This all sounds great… what’s the problem?

17. Agile Project Growth • Agile practices are getting increasingly more traction as, • traditional techniques don’t scale or extend to distributed, • global initiatives are becoming the norm • Projects are more complex • Agile is ‘silent’ on how to scale and integrate with governance structures: • Programs, Portfolios and regulatory requirements etc.

18. The Agility Challenge • Many Program and Portfolios are poorly constructed and they highlight areas that Agile de-emphasizes: • Programs and Portfolios are little more than status reports roll-ups • Most rely on ‘commit dates’ or things that are easy to track like ‘costs’ • All projects are treated as the same

19. The Agility Challenge Many times Agile projects are viewed as problems because they don’t fit into the ‘standard’ program and portfolio views of most organizations. Number of Project Change Requests, Committed and Planned Deployment Dates can make Agile projects square pegs in round holes Management by Christmas Tree Lights An actual example of a corporate portfolio… let’s zoom in some potential Agile problem areas…

20. Program Views – What to Avoid Examples from Program Dashboards • Essentially a status report roll-up. • No visibility on benefits or benefits availability. • Data sets are incomplete • Too much reliance on graphics • Difficult to interpret which dials are more important than others • Views the Program as a very large project

21. Portfolio Views - What to Avoid Some charts from actual Portfolio Dashboards • Difficult to see relative comparisons • No visibility for executives to determine what options they might have for project prioritization or spend • Requires considerable skill to interpret • No visibility for executives to determine what options they might have for project prioritization or spend

22. Agile Connects The Dots Portfolios contain a collection of Programs that support business strategies. Adjusting an investment portfolio ,mix requires a program and project structure that is adaptable. Portfolio Management Business Leadership Value Optimization Strategic Goal Alignment Program Management Program Managers are focused on ‘doing the right project’. Which requires the ability to change priorities without ‘stranding’ investments. Business Sponsorship Benefit Stream Realization Alignment of related projects Project Management Agile practices applied at the project level are focused on ‘doing the project right’. These techniques ensure steady streams of throughput based on business value. Capability Delivery Budget Schedule Team delivery Requirements Mgmt Architecture Design Development Test

23. Agile Projects, Programs, Portfolios Agile projects drive Portfolio and Program adaptability and responsiveness. Portfolio • Increase Sales investments • Throttle back on HR projects • Accelerate troubled projects • Green Light new project New product release supporting Cloud technology receiving rave reviews. Increase sales capacity to generate more revenue in Q3 without impacting earning projections. Sales Program Marketing Proposal Gen Automated Pricing Engine Road Map Mobile CRM Access Product Demo Portal Program A Program B Project C Project A Project B Project D Projects $250k $500k $750k $1M

24. Improving Agile Projects • Agile projects need to behave like ‘projects’. They must work towards an end-date deliverable. • Choose the minimum amount of releasable value as a project target. • Familiarize stakeholders and teams withthe Cone of Uncertainty. • Increase training on different techniques. PMI or other certifications such as Certified Scrum Master • Ensure prioritization of features based on business value • Increase Project Managers ability to select the right methodology for their needs • Use a Risk based assessment tool to determine the right fit of methodologies/processes

25. Scaling Agile Projects to Programs • Where geographically distributed teams are necessary remember that co-location is ‘good’ so optimize around this as much as possible • Have development teams focus on ‘Feature’ sets • Keep Feature Teams as ‘agile’ as possible • Ensure teams receive sufficient detail to build what is required: • Architecture • Requirements • User Interfaces • Ensure that teams are enabled by an effective ‘ScrumMaster’ to escalate issues and resolve roadblocks • Ensure retrospectives occur at the team level at the end of iterations • Support teams with a Program Team to provide overall guidance/direction • Establish an Architecture Team which is responsible for ‘feeding’ Feature teams with frameworks, components and guidelines.

26. Scrum of Scrums • For scaling larger scale Agile projects • A representative from each Feature team meets to discuss status for their team • Ideally representatives meet each day but a less frequent schedule (every other day) works well • Ask Four questions: • What has your team done since we last met? • What will your team do before we meet again? • Is anything slowing your team down or getting in their way? • Are you about to put something in another team’s way? • For more information: http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/46-advice-on-conducting-the-scrum-of-scrums-meeting

27. Increasing Program Management Agility • Align programs by key business functional / area • Split large projects into smaller ones with clear business value streams laid out • Ensure programs are comprised of small releasable components of value to realize this value as soon as possible • Show a roadmap of business value to stakeholders

28. Increasing Portfolio Agility • Emphasize value delivery streams and increase agile project mix • Provision the right ‘levers’ to Executives so they can re-direct investments and re-prioritize based on Market Conditions • Provide the right level of visibility to Executives on what options they have

29. Thank you for attending this session. We hope you found this presentation added value to your knowledge of Project Management. Closing thoughts… • Take a few moments to complete the Session Survey. We appreciate and value your feedback. • Hand in your completed survey to Booth #46 you will receive a free raffle ticket for one of the drawings to be held in the Vendor Expo (see Conference Program Guide for details).

30. Agile Projects, Programs and PortfoliosThe Three Ps of Agile Executive Management Presented by: Bryan Campbell www.bryancampbell.com bryan@bryancampbell.com http://blog.bryancampbell.com