Organizations might have set up all the process steps for portfolio flow: the monthly strategic portfolio review, the portfolio kanban, even the lean business case. But, they are still not getting the idea that small, testable, constantly evaluated initiatives are what really increase your output of value to the customer and put you way ahead of the competition. In part 1 of this webinar we explored how signs of imitation LPM show up in an organization’s approach to strategy. In part 2, we covered how to organize around value streams with examples of successful LPM. Now, in this third webinar in our Lean Portfolio Management series we’ll join Cprime's Michiko Quinones (Jira Align Consultant), Jean Dahl (General Manager, Scaled Agility), & Neha Tiwari (Business Agility Portfolio Consultant) to learn techniques to: Question performing work that doesn't clearly align to your organization's strategy Develop a process that makes things smaller and testable when it comes to initiative creation and management Build a culture that allows work to stop if it's not going to meet its intended purpose Make sure that you are "thinking lean," rather than just "doing lean"

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Lean Portfolio Strategy Part 3:
Epic Management – Take the Exits

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HOUSEKEEPING ITEMS
Audio is streamed through
your computer speakers, so
make sure your audio is on
and turned up.
The recording and slides will
be sent to everyone via email
within 24-48 hours after the
webinar concludes.
Submit questions any time
during this presentation via
the Q&A box on the bottom
panel of your screen.

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OUR SPEAKERS
Michiko Quinones
Jira Align
Consultant
Jean Dahl
General Manager,
Scaled Agility
Neha Tiwari
Business Agility
Portfolio Consultant

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AGENDA
01 PORTFOLIO KANBAN AND MVP
02 REAL VS. IMITIATION INTIATIVE MANAGEMENT
03 REAL STORIES
04 KEEP THE CONVERSATION GOING/Q&A

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©2021 Cprime, Inc. All rights reserved and no copying without express written permission.
A Little Bit about Portfolio Kanban and MVP

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• Manage the flow and bring structure to analysis and decision making
• Makes largest business initiatives visible
• Provides WIP limits to ensure the teams analyze responsibly
• Helps prevent unrealistic expectations
• Helps drive collaboration amongst the key stakeholders
• Provides a transparent and quantitative basis for economic
decision-making
ROLE OF THE EPIC LIFE CYCLE

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• Kanban means “visual signal”, Progress
is tracked by visualizing all work
• Contains the states (Columns) that
define the workflow
• Limit Work in Progress (WIP) to improve flow
• Flow of the work can be measured via
Cycle time and throughput
• Exit criteria is defined for each column
to manage work
• Kanban is a pull system. Teams pull work
when they have the capacity for it
WHAT IS KANBAN
Kanban

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PORTFOLIO KANBAN COLUMNS/STATES
Funnel Portfolio
Backlog
Implementing Done
Review Analyzing
New Ideas Go/No Go
decisions
WIP Limit is applied in each column and prioritization is done
Pivot or persevere decision is
taken based on the metrics
Stakeholder collaborate
to review the idea
• • •
• •
• • •

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WHAT IS A MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT?
A minimum viable product, MVP, contains just enough features to get early adopters
(Analysis Summary) to provide feedback that can be used to prove
or disprove the epic hypothesis.
It is MVP if-
• It can satisfy the minimum need for a specific solution in a way that
makes a profit.
• It is a minimal form of any product that is tested on the market.
• It is the basic model of any product that will fulfill the primary goal
that Product hopes to achieve.

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WHAT ARE LEADING INDICATORS?
Leading Indicators:
• Describe the early measures
that objectively predict
whether the business
outcomes are being achieved
• Key Results of Portfolio
Objectives
• Establish innovation
accounting metrics to
objectively measure leading
indicators of hypothesis
success
Leading Indicator Examples:
• Amount of sales in the
pipeline at 90%
• Customer complaints three-
month trend
• Number of leads created
• Contracts in negotiation for
Q3
• Average handle time
• Number of leads converted to
opportunities
• Customer cases currently
open
• Team closing ratio
• Average speed of answer
• Number of contacts
Lagging Indicator Examples:
• Last month's P&L statement
• Q2 Revenue review
• Total problems
• # of units sold
• Call center calls completed
within two minutes
• Total incidents
• # of different products sold
• Product returns in July
• Total customer contacts

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WHY MVP?
• The main goal of an MVP is to develop a working product that provides immediate value,
quickly, while minimizing costs.
• The MVP strategy focuses software development on the smallest
feature set of value to a user or customer.
• MVP developers are encouraged to fail fast, quickly releasing a series
of MVPs to learn which features are valuable or undesirable.
• Delivery of MVP often sparks insights and even a pivot to a fundamentally different product.
The cycle is repeated until the product feature set is sufficiently grown and validated.
• This helps provide insight into properly allocating budget to satisfy
the overall business objectives.

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AFTER MVP LAUNCH
• Imperative to collect Metrics and feedback, the Leading Indicator
• Important to continue to test, learn and measure, and then test
again until the product is finalized.
• Metrics & feedback help generate new ideas grounded in user
behavior research which shape future versions of the product.

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©2021 Cprime, Inc. All rights reserved and no copying without express written permission.
Doing One But Not The Other

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WE DO PORTFOLIO KANBAN BUT….
• Our initiatives are very big and take lots of documentation and
time to approve to start
• Overtime we forget, or are unclear on the value we intended

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THE MULTI YEAR BIG INITIATIVE CYCLE

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THE LEAN PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT CYCLE

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• Multi Year
• Must be Fully Deployed
• Not Provable Until Fully Deployed
• Based on Lagging Indicators
• ROI
• TCO
• Full Documentation
• Full commitment
• Within a year
• Small, testable Initiatives
• Provable by Leading Indicator
• Based on Leading Indicators
• Immediate Change Metrics
• Eg: 20% increase in Sales Pipeline
• Lean Documentation
• Ability to back out if the test fails
KEY DIFFERENCES
Lean Portfolio Management Initiative Management
Multi Year Big Initiative Management

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REAL LIFE STORIES
Shifting from Big Initiative to Lean Initiative
Management

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WHY DON’T COMPANIES GO SMALLER?

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BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE HARD CONVERSATION MUSCLES
• They don’t ask the hard questions at the beginning
• The don’t ask the hard questions during the middle
• They haven’t set up for easy exists without shame

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• Difficult to make trade-off decisions due to lack of proper commitment and silos
• Encourage a Fail Fast mindset by incorporating hard questions into how you setup and
value the work
• Score the work based on the hard questions
• Market value
• Customer value
• Leading Indicators
• Prioritize based on score
• Constant evaluation of well thought out OKRs
THE PRIMARY CHALLENGE
How to Shift
What Happens

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Shared Agreement to Well Thought out Measures
Stories about Getting Used to Value Scoring and Prioritization

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Kumbuya
Stories about Getting used to Business, Product and IT working together

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• Business Leadership – successful transformations really work between Product and
Business, not just IT
• Thoughtfully vetted initiatives that move in the direction of strategic OKRs
• Get real about who you really are, about existing state vs. future state
• Many companies don’t even know what their portfolio intake really is - they want to talk about
who they want to be without talking about who they really are
• Leadership that asks for Real metrics
• People understanding that its not a motion activity, it’s got have real thought
• Culture that is open to tough conversations – that’s it’s not just about spending
• Focus on the Customer - market focus – continually asking about changes in the market
CHECKLIST

26. KEEP THE CONVERSATION GOING…
• Connect with our speakers on LinkedIn
• Check out Cprime upcoming webinars, read our blog, download
whitepapers/case studies & more:
• www.cprime.com/resources
• Share with us what topics you are interested in, ask us questions or
give us feedback!
• learn@cprime.com

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Share in the conversation & keep updated on
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on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, & YouTube

28. QUESTIONS?
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QUESTIONS?

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THANK YOU
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