How SAFe Lean Portfolio Management Drives Business Agility?

What is Business Agility?

The ability of an enterprise to make rapid changes as per requirements to survive in a competitive environment is called Business Agility. In this digital era, everything is dynamic and the need to adapt or react quickly is necessary to thrive. Changes in consumer needs, the introduction of new technology, competition, and the growth of business as per expectation are all challenging. Collaboration and coordination can help enterprises to attain agility.

Core Competencies of Business Agility

Customer centricity is the key achieved with the help of Business Agility. However, it is not very easy to turn Agile and requires expertise in implementing the core competencies. There are seven SAFe core competencies that deliver value to the customers:

• SAFe Lean Portfolio Management

• Organizational Agility

• Continuous Learning Culture

• Lean-Agile Leadership

• Team and Technical Agility

• Agile Product Delivery

• Enterprise Solution Delivery

What is Lean Portfolio Management?

Lean Portfolio Management is a modernized approach to managing portfolios in an organization. LPM has been derived from Lean Methodology to provide solutions in management. The five principles of Lean also form a base for LPM to coordinate strategy and execution. The Lean Principles used by LPM are:

• Identify value

• Map the value stream

• Create Flow

• Establish Pull

• Continuous Improvement

Why is Lean Portfolio Management needed?

Organizations going through Agile Transformation have to implement Lean-Agile principles efficiently in order to deliver good results. The Agile way is complimented by the modern management approach as the business world is highly uncertain in nature. To overcome challenges of this dynamic world, organizations adopt Lean Portfolio Management as it is more organized and systematic.

Uncover the key principles that propel business agility through SAFe Lean Portfolio Management. From strategic alignment to portfolio prioritization, Acekube's training empowers leaders to navigate the complexities of organizational dynamics successfully.

How SAFe Lean Portfolio Management drives Business Agility?

LPM is a modern approach for management and also one of the core competencies of Business Agility. LPM benefits an organization that drives it towards attaining Agility. The benefits of Lean Portfolio Management are as follows:

• Fostering an environment for innovation.

• Optimum utilization of resources.

• Efficient Decision-making

• Portfolio prioritization to deliver maximum value to customers.

• Achieving agility through quick responses.

• Alignment of strategy, finances and customer needs.

What are the dimensions of Lean Portfolio Management?

There are three dimensions of SAFe Lean Portfolio Management:

Strategy & Investment Funding- This dimension deals with strategizing, allocating funds and aligning the finances with needs to meet the business objectives. Portfolio Prioritization is one of the main responsibilities of this dimension. The other responsibilities executed in this strategy are:

• Connecting the portfolio to the Enterprise objectives.

• Maintain the vision of the portfolio.

• Using Epics to realize portfolio vision.

• Establishing Guardrails and Lean Budgets.

• Establish Portfolio Flow.

Agile Portfolio Operations- As the name suggests, it is an operational dimension in which decentralized ARTs are coordinated. This dimension needs active involvement of VMO, LACE, RTE and Scrum Master to empower solution trains. The other responsibilities taken care of in this dimension are:

• Coordinating Value Streams.

• Creating an environment to foster Operational Excellence.

• Supporting ART execution.

Lean Governance- The success of a project depends on a number of factors directly or indirectly influencing the growth and progress. Lean Governance keeps a check on security, compliance, expenditure, measurement, spending, auditing and reporting. The following are the responsibilities of Lean Governance:

• Forecasting and Budgeting according to changes.

• Evaluating Portfolio performance.

• Continuous coordination of compliance.

Which roles are involved in Lean Portfolio Management?

The roles involved in LPM are broadly defined in the dimension they work in:

1.     Strategy & Investment Funding

• Enterprise Executives

• Business Owners

• Enterprise Architect

2.     Agile Portfolio Operations

• VMO/LACE

• RTE

• Coaches CoP

3.     Lean Governance

• VMO

• Business Owners

• Enterprise Architect

• Lean Portfolio Management Events

There are three significant events which enables efficient functionality of LPM. These events are:

Strategic Portfolio Review- This event is usually held on a quarterly basis to achieve portfolio optimization. This event makes strategy to implement while aligning to the budget.

Portfolio Sync- This event gives portfolio visibility through its operations. During this event the progress of the portfolio is tracked so that changes required can be made. The portfolio sync is a monthly event that addresses dependencies and removes blockages from the process.

Participatory Budgeting- This LPM event involves the stakeholders of the organization who make financial decisions. In this event the stakeholders perform portfolio prioritization for investments in epics and solutions. This event is half-yearly to review the budgets for changes to maintain agility.

Conclusion

The world is full of uncertainties and challenges making it harder to strategize things. A strong and well-structured Agile Portfolio Management can help organizations to face such changes in the market to deliver value to customers. Lean Portfolio Management is a course designed to manage and implement Lean-Agile principles in the organization. This certification course as well as many other SAFe certifications is available on the website Acekube.

FAQs

1. Is SAFe Lean Portfolio Management applicable to all types of organizations?

Yes, any type of organization that uses SAFe practices and has multiple portfolios to handle can use SAFe Lean Portfolio Management.

2. Can SAFe Lean Portfolio Management accommodate changing market conditions?

One of the basic responsibilities of SAFe Lean Portfolio Management is to align strategy and budget as per the changing customer desires. So, LPM can accommodate changing market conditions with its practices.

3. What role does Lean-Agile leadership play in SAFe Lean Portfolio Management?

The leaders of the organization are responsible for the adoption and success of other competencies that are mandatory to achieve Business Agility. Lean-Agile Leadership actively involves in all the LPM events to get the work done efficiently.