In the 90s Scrum was developed, and in the last 15 years we have developed Agile Portfolio Management (APfM). This APfM guide, indebted to the Scrum guide by Ken Schwaber & Jeff Sutherland, emphasizes that Agile teams and APfM teams share the same theory and philosophy. The guide describes the APfM framework without going into specific methods, techniques and tools, because their success is context-dependent. While formulating goals is recognized as important, the guide does not describe how these goals are formulated. APfM exists as a whole and functions well as a container for other techniques, methodologies and practices. The purpose of this guide is to share understanding, improve APfM implementation and receive feedback from communities of practice. Periodic updates, fueled by user experiences, are actively shared in the communities, with authors Martin Vodegel & Rini van Solingen evolving this APfM guide with input from those practicing Agile Portfolio Management.
Centric is an IT service provider with a significant market share in the public sector. Centric Public Sector Solutions is an organizational unit with more than 800 employees, responsible for all services for the public sector. Centric and Prowareness Xeleron have jointly invested heavily in recent years in increasing the agility of their organization at team and department level.
Imagine you are running a goldmine. This goldmine is your organization, and the nuggets you hope to find are the valuable outcomes of your projects and initiatives. Let’s use this analogy to illustrate the difference between output-driven work and outcome-driven work.
The second of the ten dimensions of Agile Portfolio Management is about limiting the amount of 'Work in Progress' (WIP). Many organizations work on too many initiatives at the same time, which makes the lead time of those initiatives too long. The trick is to not work on too much at the same time to speed up the lead time. This requires transparency and making choices, but also improving collaboration so that acceleration takes place.