Presented by Arlen Bankston 2013 ATT Forum Atlanta

1. The Agile PMO
From Process Police to Adaptive Leadership
Presented by Arlen Bankston
Arlen.Bankston@LitheSpeed.com
@lithespeed

2. Meet your Presenter
Arlen Bankston
• Co-Founder of LitheSpeed, LLC
• User experience & product
development background
• 14 years of Agile experience
• Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt
• Lately 40% training, 20% each of
coaching, product development &
management
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3. 3
Agenda
1. Agile Adoption Snapshot
2. Setting up the Agile PMO
3. From Process Police to
Adaptive Leadership
– Project Prioritization & Selection
– Portfolio Tracking
– Resource Management
– Sustainable Agile Adoption
4. Q&A
Adaptive Leadership
Adaptive leadership is the
collaborative, flexible and
learning-based
management of programs
and portfolios.

4. Agile is an umbrella term for a group of iterative and
incremental software development methods.
4
Agile Adoption Snapshot
Source: 2011 The State of Agile Development Survey
Kanban

5. 5
State of Agile Adoption
Agile teams are doing well, but we need to raise our
game to overcome systemic problems…
State of Agile Development Survey, http://www.versionone.com

6. Showtime!

7. 7
Two Visions for the PMO
“An organizational unit to
centralize and coordinate
the management of
projects under its domain.
A PMO oversees the
management of projects,
programs or a combination
of both.”
A group of project leaders who achieve these results:
• We increase return on investment by making continuous
flow of value our focus.
• We deliver reliable results by engaging customers in
frequent interactions and shared ownership.
• We expect uncertainty and manage for it through
iterations, anticipation, and adaptation.
• We unleash creativity and innovation by recognizing that
individuals are the ultimate source of value, and creating
an environment where they can make a difference.
• We boost performance through group accountability for
results and shared responsibility for team effectiveness.
• We improve effectiveness and reliability through
situationally specific strategies, processes and practices.
A Guide to the Project Management Body of
Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide), Third Edition ©
2004 Declaration of Inter-dependence, http://pmdoi.org [©2005 David Anderson, Sanjiv Augustine,
Christopher Avery, Alistair Cockburn, Mike Cohn, Doug DeCarlo, Donna Fitzgerald, Jim Highsmith, Ole
Jepsen, Lowell Lindstrom, Todd Little, Kent McDonald, Pollyanna Pixton, Preston Smith and Robert
Wysocki.]
How best can a PMO aid in delivering business value across multiple
projects, programs and portfolios?

8. 8
An Agile Role for the PMO
Agile PMOs consider Scrum teams
to be their customers, and support
them in:
• Bringing lean discipline to project
prioritization & selection
• Guiding & tracking project portfolios
using Agile reporting techniques
• Moving towards a stable teams model
of resource management
• Scaling and sustaining agile adoption by
supporting and empowering Scrum
teams
Adaptive Leadership
Adaptive leadership is the
collaborative, flexible and
learning-based
management of programs
and portfolios.

9. SettinguptheAgilePMO

10. Intense collaboration via:
1. Face-to-face
communication
2. Generalizing
specialists
3. Self-discipline and
decentralized control
Traditional Silos Customer BA Designer DeveloperPM
Core
Team
(EXAMPLE)
BA /
Tester
BA
Tester
Product
Owner
Developer
Designer
Developer /
BA
SM
Release
Manager
Capacity
Planner
Prod.
Architect
Tech
Ops
Business
Sponsor
Risk
Assessor
Security
10
A Sample Agile Team
BAAnalysts
DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper
Designers Tester
The Core Project
Team ideally
consists of 5-9
dedicated members
(7 +/- 2).
The Extended
Team can contain
many additional
members, each
playing an
important role,
but they are
typically not
dedicated to the
effort.
TesterTestersDevs

11. 11
Network of Small Teams
“…for a large organization to
work it must behave like a
related group of small
organizations.”
- E. F. Schumacher , Small is
Beautiful
Scaling may require, at
certain levels:
• Chief ScrumMasters
• Strategic Product Owners
• Tactical Product Owners
• Lightweight Agile PMOs
serving as a “guiding
coalition”
Accelerate! By John Kotter, HBR, November 2012

12. 12
Organizational Structure
• Encourage face-to-face dialogue across levels
• Create overlapping management with “linking pins”
• Run the Lean-Agile PMO as an Agile project team
Source: The Lean-Agile PMO, Sanjiv Augustine and Roland Cuellar (Cutter Consortium 2006)

13. ProjectPrioritization&
Selection

14. 14
The Typical Project Portfolio
• Too much Work in Process (too many in-flight
projects)
• No project prioritization by business value
• Resource over-utilization
• Dangerous variation (large batch sizes,
unregulated demand, irregular rate of service)
Source: The Lean-Agile PMO, Sanjiv Augustine and Roland Cuellar (Cutter Consortium 2006)

15. 15
Portfolio Realignment
• 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
Business Goals
& Strategy Production Sunset
Cycle Time =
Backlog
WIP
Completion
Rate

16. PortfolioCoordination

17. Example Visual Management Systems
Simple tools can facilitate deep conversations.
17
Columns
are Sprints
Rows are
Feature
Streams

18. Showtime!

19. 19
Portfolio Alignment Wall

20. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/05/18/business/delta-northwest-merger-graphic.html
An Established & Proven Pattern

21. 21
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

23. Who Should be Involved?
A portfolio management team might include:
• Chief ScrumMaster to lead the creation,
maintenance, and facilitation of the portfolio
management system.
• Team ScrumMasters or Project Managers
will provide insight into dependencies and
blockers, as well as highlight process
improvement and collaborative
opportunities.
• Team dependency representatives will be
nominated by each team, changing as
necessary each sprint, to provide insight into
specific technical and process issues.
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24. Who Should be Involved? (cont.)
• Stakeholder dependency representatives must attend
when called upon by the teams. They will generally
represent key customers and affected departments,
such as sales, marketing, and operations.
• Product owners will collaborate between themselves to
optimize realization of their value propositions,
adjusting scope and workloads as appropriate.
• One strategic product owner will be responsible for
facilitating high-level tradeoffs, ensuring smart release
strategies across the teams and outbound
communication to interested stakeholders.
24

25. Portfolio Management Agenda
A typical session agenda:
• Review action items from previous meetings
• Update visual management system, ensuring
that each team’s sprints are updated to
reflect completed and planned items
• Review status and roadblocks by major
feature set
• Review new scope or action items that have
been identified or suggested
25

26. Value Card Examples
• Data interface design for Renewal by product category report service
(Dependency - Data Team)
• AppScan for Sales Service Platform (Sales Service Team)
• Usability Testing Session (Mobile Team)
• Stub Data service for Renewal by product category report (Dependency -
Data Team)
• Skeletal Renewal by product category report - Consuming stub data
service (Mobile Team)
• Final Data service for Renewal by product category report
• Mobile Platform - Final Renewal by product category report (Mobile Team)
• Sales Service Platform - Final Renewal by product category report (Sales
Service Team)
Feature
Finalizer
Non-code
milestone
Incremental
Delivery
26

27. ResourceManagement

28. 28
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

29. 29
Costs of Task-Switching
0
20
40
60
80
100
1 2 3 4 5
PercentofTimeon
Value-AddingTasks
Number of Assigned Tasks
Source: Managing New Product and Process Development, Clark and Wheelwright, p. 242, 1992

30. 30
Stable Teams
• 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)

31. 31
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

32. SustainableAgile
Adoption

33. 33
Sustaining Agile Adoption
Agile PMOs should support
and empower their teams by:
• Instilling a culture of process
discipline
• Raising individuals’ capability to
enable team empowerment
• Helping teams with continuous
improvement

34. 34
Culture of Process Discipline
• Standardize high-level process
steps, deliverables, tools and
artifacts
• Agree on process audit
procedures
• Develop standard process
metrics
The Six Sigma Paradox
To attain six sigma performance, we must minimize process
variability, slack and redundancy by building variability, slack and
redundancy into our organizations.
Create a defined and reliable process:

35. 35
Team Empowerment
• Decentralize authority
for freedom
• Focus on helping raise
team capability
• Help build a culture of
continuous
improvement
Empowerment = Freedom * Capability
Situational Leadership® – Paul Hershey and Ken Blanchard

36. Continuous Improvement
The useful way to do “Lessons
Learned:”
• Periodically take a look at
what is and is not working in
your process
• Typically 15–30 minutes
• Done after every sprint
• Whole team participates
• Generates action items to
continuously improve
project execution
Working Well Not Working Well
Automated unit
testing
6am Daily Standup
Customers highly
satisfied
Testing team
availability
Retrospectives have
improved process
Build cycle time
Estimates are
stabilizing
Product Owner
availability
Action Items
Set SLA with QA
team
PO delegates to
proxy during Sprints
8am standup

37. 37
Introducing Sensei
http://www.senseitool.com

38. 38
In Summary – An Agile Role for the
PMO
Agile PMOs work by:
• Bringing lean discipline to project prioritization &
selection
• Tracking project portfolios using Agile tracking techniques
• Moving towards a stable teams model of resource
management
• Scaling and sustaining agile adoption by supporting and
empowering Scrum teams

39. 39
Contact Us for Further Information
Arlen Bankston
Managing Partner
Arlen.Bankston@LitheSpeed.com
On the Web:
http://www.lithespeed.com
http://www.senseitool.com
"I only wish I had read this book when I started my career in
software product management, or even better yet, when I was
given my first project to manage. In addition to providing an
excellent handbook for managing with agile software development
methodologies, Managing Agile Projects offers a guide to more
effective project management in many business settings."
John P. Barnes, former Vice President of Product Management at
Emergis, Inc.