Learn how an evolved PMO can bring discipline to project prioritization, track project portfolios, and provide the support teams need to embrace Agile.

1. The Lean-Agile PMO
From Process Police to Adaptive Governance
Presented by Sanjiv Augustine and Roland Cuellar
Sanjiv.Augustine@LitheSpeed.com
Twitter: @saugustine, @rolandcue, @lithespeed

2. 1. Barriers to Agile Adoption
2. Setting up the Lean-Agile
PMO
3. Adaptive Governance via
the Lean-Agile PMO
1. Project Prioritization & Selection
2. Portfolio Tracking
3. Resource Management
4. Q&A
Agenda
“An overwhelming majority of
executives (88%) cite
organizational agility as key to
global success...MIT suggests
that agile firms grow revenue
37% faster and generate 30%
higher profits than non-agile.
Yet most companies admit they
are not flexible enough to
compete successfully.”
The Economist, via Jim
Highsmith
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3. Sanjiv Augustine
• Co-Founder LitheSpeed, LLC and
The Agile Leadership Academy
• Experience: 27 years industry, 17
years of Agile, 14 years of Lean
• Specialties: Agile, Lean,
Innovation
• Practitioner, entrepreneur,
consultant, trainer, author,
speaker and community
organizer
Introductions
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4. Introductions
Roland Cuellar (‘kway-are’)
• 14 years of agile experience
• BS CS, MBA
LitheSpeed
• We only do agile consulting, coaching and
training
• Capital One, Nationwide, CNBC, DHS, Freddie
Mac, Fannie Mae, Westinghouse, Nike, many
many others
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5. Barriers to Further Agile Adoption
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6. “Our Project Teams Need Help!”
Over the years, I can’t tell you how many times we’ve talked with customers about their
‘project team’ problems. We hear the following sorts of things all the time:
• Our teams can’t manage projects
• Despite Agile adoption, we are terrible at project delivery
• We can’t estimate
• We need more project management training
• Yada yada yada
These sorts of conversations are almost always fascinating and here is how they often go:
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7. Tell Me More
• Mgr: We need training for our teams on estimation and planning.
• Me: Really! Why do you say that?
• Mgr: We can’t estimate anything. We do it all the time, you’d think we’d be better
at it by now but all of our projects are late.
• Me: Hmm. What do you mean when you say that you estimate “all the time?”
• Mgr: We have new project requests coming in every week. We need to provide
quick and accurate estimates so that we can get these projects approved and
started.
• Me: Don’t you realize that every time you inject a new project into an already
busy team, or pull them out to do unplanned estimation work, you are destroying
all of the estimates they provided to you previously?
• Mgr: … silence …
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8. Digging Deeper
• Client: Our teams can’t estimate or drive
delivery successfully. They need more
training.
• Us: Are there just a few teams struggling or
is this a more widespread issue?
• Client: All of them! It is a problem across
our organization.
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9. It’s Not the Teams!
• If only a few teams are struggling, then perhaps it is a
training/skills/experience issue.
• But if almost everyone is struggling, then the
problem isn’t the teams. The system which they are
trying to operate in is broken.
1. No effective work-intake process
2. Weak management that says ‘yes’ to everyone
3. Defining projects that are way too large
4. Inappropriate use of ‘projects’
5. No real management system
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10. So, how can a Lean-Agile PMO help?
Lean-Agile PMOs consider teams to be their
customers, and support them in:
1. Bringing Lean discipline to project
prioritization & selection
2. Tracking project portfolios using Agile tracking
techniques
3. Moving towards a stable teams model of
resource management
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11. Setting up the
Lean-Agile PMO
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12. • Encourage face-to-
face dialogue
across levels
• Create overlapping
management with
“linking pins”
• Run the Lean-Agile
PMO as an Agile
project teamSource: The Lean-Agile PMO, Sanjiv Augustine and Roland Cuellar (Cutter Consortium 2006)
Organizational Structure
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13. A Steering Committee creates the direction for agile
teams to deliver for the organization
Steering
Committee
Project
teams
Linking pin: individual that is a
member of two groups
Lean-Agile PMO
Steering Committee
Steering Committee
• Sponsor and provide support for new initiatives
• Prioritize projects
• Establish metrics and track progress
• Members
• Key executive sponsors and application owners
• Individuals from the project coordination team
Major Benefits
• Clear vision and prioritization
• High stakeholder visibility
• Cross organizational coordination of efforts
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14. A Lean-Agile PMO enables agile teams to execute in a
coordinated way
Steering
Committee
Lean-Agile PMO
Project
teams
Linking pin: individual that is a
member of two groups
Agile PMO
Lean-Agile PMO
• Execute vision of the steering committee
• Manage the portfolio of projects on an iterative basis
• Track projects
• Allocate resources across projects
• Support to the teams (e.g., training, coaching, removal of
organizational obstacle, etc.)
• Manage dependencies
Major Benefits
• Ability to manage change
• Portfolio alignment
• Coordinated release schedules
• Increased organizational visibility across projects
• Reduced risk across projects
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15. Teams are created in a way that is conducive to agile
delivery
Steering
Committee
Project
Teams
Linking pin: individual that is a
member of two groups
Project Teams
Project teams
• Delivery working software in an iterative incremental
manner
• Empowered cross functional teams
• Development
• Business
• QA
• Time boxed sprints
• Stakeholder prioritization
Major Benefits
• Adaptive teams
• Greater employee engagement
• Improved quality
• Faster time to market
• Reduced miscommunication
• Lower process overhead
Lean-Agile PMO
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16. Project Prioritization &
Selection
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17. All Agile Methods Limit WIP
• WIP determines speed and WE control WIP
• Scrum uses the 2-week time box to indirectly
limit WIP
• Kanban uses explicit WIP limits instead.
• All agile methods achieve speed and quality by
narrowing the near-term focus
• Excessive project WIP causes high levels of
spending and very slow delivery!
PROJECT PORTFOLIOS NEED WIP LIMITS TOO!
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18. • Each sector is a different business
area
• Concentric circles represent time
• Managers put their approximate
project timing needs on the board
• The center circles represent what’s
going on right now
• Use it to drive hard discussions
• If you keep saying ‘Yes’ to
everything, you have a work-intake
problem, not a PM problem!
Great photo … not sure who took it
Work Intake
•“We have 12 more efforts scheduled to start next month”
•But we aren’t finished with what is going on right now
•What are we going to do?

19. • Terminate sick projects
• Split large projects in smaller ones
• Prioritize projects by business value,
at least within business unit
• Limit development timeframe to months
• Re-prioritize projects regularly
1
Development
3 24
Little’s Law
Cycle Time = WIP/Completion Rate
Portfolio Realignment
Business Goals &
Strategy Production Sunset
Backlog
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20. Whittling It
Down
• I asked one team to write
down all of the current
efforts underway
• 12 projects for a 10-person
team!
• Score them on several
factors:
• T-Shirt Size (S,M,L)
• Biz Value ($, $$, $$$)
• Do Smaller and $$$ first
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21. LeanKit Examples: Portfolio Management
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22. Portfolio Tracking
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23. Portfolio Management Framework
1. Strategic Performance Monitoring: Are we hitting our business goals?
2. Work Intake Process: What are the requests that are being made of
us?
3. Capacity Availability and Allocation: What teams are available and
when?
4. Delivery Performance Monitoring: Are our teams on schedule? Will
we get the capabilities that we agreed to?
5. Impediment Resolution: What do we need to do to address our
delivery challenges?
6. Stakeholder Communications: Who do we need to inform regarding
delivery status?
7. Process Improvement: What do we need to do to improve the
effectiveness of our portfolio management?
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24. Lean-Agile Portfolio Management
Lean-Agile Practices
• Cross functional and cross team project coordination team
• Coordinated sprint planning across teams
• Lean-Agile portfolio management is performed by the steering
committee to manage cross project priorities
• Reduce WIP
• Feature stream or value stream
• Portfolio alignment wall
Major Benefits
Manage the flow
• Early ROI
• Clear prioritization for entire portfolio of features
• Visualization of entire portfolio of of features and work
• Ability to prioritize high priority features from multiple competing
projects against each other
Lean-Agile Portfolio
Management
Steering Committee
Project coordination
team
Release Release
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25. Visualize the Flow
• Use visual boards to track projects
• Note where they are in the process
• And how long they have been there
• And what is coming up next
• If most projects are not flowing through to DONE then
you have a system problem (not a team problem!)
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26. Portfolio Alignment Wall
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27. Portfolio Alignment Wall (Cont’d)
• Features laid out on index cards as
per overall release plan
• Card colors identify agile teams
• Labels identify dependent teams
• Rows track feature streams
• Columns track sprints/timeline
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28. LeanKit Examples: Program
Management
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29. Resource Management
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30. Traditional Resource Management
• Run many projects
concurrently, with similar
priorities
• Split resources between
multiple projects
• Stress maximum resource
utilization
• ROI only after projects are
done
Time
Projects & Resources
ROI
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31. • Projects are by definition …. 1-time events
• “Let’s deliver into production every month … If we do that, it’s not
a project”
• We don’t do tons of documentation and artifacts for our monthly
payroll run ... Why would we do all of that for monthly software
updates?
• Let’s deliver frequently as a normal course of operations and
focus on DELIVERY and QUALITY and NOT on paperwork!
• How much of your time could be recovered by removing the
overhead?
• We have several F500 clients and major govt agencies that are
already experimenting with this approach and doing very well
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The #NoProjects Movement
Even if you have to stick to projects, you should try to chunk
them down into multiple small deliveries.

32. • Multiple, stable teams each
focused on a single project at a
time
• Dedicated to platforms or lines of
business
• Platform owner prioritizes next
project
• Result:
• Support multiple lines of business
simultaneously
• Focused effort results in quick
delivery for individual projects
• Clear accountability
• Stability and predictability
Source: The Lean-Agile PMO, Sanjiv Augustine and Roland Cuellar (Cutter Consortium 2006)
Stable Teams
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33. Lean Resource Management
Lean organizations:
• Dedicate core resources to each
project team
• Ensure that each team has all
resources needed to complete
projects
• Stress maximum project throughput
• ROI delivered incrementally with
each project release
ROI
Time
Projects & Resources
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34. Here’s how can a Lean-Agile PMO can
help!
Lean-Agile PMOs consider Scrum teams to be their
customers, and support them in:
1. Bringing Lean discipline to project prioritization &
selection
2. Tracking project portfolios using Lean-Agile tracking
techniques
3. Moving towards a stable teams model of resource
management
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35. Contact Us
Roland Cuellar (‘kway-are’)
Roland.Cuellar@LitheSpeed.com
@rolandcue
Sanjiv Augustine
Sanjiv.Augustine@LitheSpeed.com
@saugustine
On the Web:
http://www.lithespeed.com
+1 703 745 9125
@LitheSpeed, @AgileAcad
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36. SAFe Portfolio and Program
Management
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37. Enabling Your Lean-Agile PMO through
Connected Kanban
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