When we think about improving effectiveness we often focus on team level. The sources of ineffectiveness, however, are often rooted on a different level - in project portfolio. Too many concurrent projects, little knowledge about available capabilities and lack of discussion on cost and value often result in a situation where main decision factor is a gut feeling. Common approaches to solve the problem are heavy-weight and strongly formalized. On the other hand Portfolio Kanban is a low-friction method that allows tackling the issue steering change at PMO level. As with every Kanban implementation there is little, if any, changes at the very beginning and changes are steered in evolutionary manner. The picture isn’t rosy though. As long as you can say that there are standard approaches to introducing Kanban on a team level, there are no for portfolio level. As long as the method itself is easy to operate, its implementation is going to be anything but obvious and simple.

1. Portfolio Kanban
Low-Friction Method to Improve
Organization’s Effectiveness
Pawel Brodzinski
@pawelbrodzinski

2. Hi, I’m Pawel
Lunar Logic
Chief cook and bottlewasher
http://llp.pl

3. I’ve been
supervising
multiple
concurrent
projects for
8 years...

4. ...and it
sucks

5. Excel frenzy

6. Goal: Find
meaningful data

7. You’ll make it!

8. Give me
more!

9. Oh, there are
just too many
of them!

10. It doesn’t come
for free

11. Cost of context switching
Source: Gerald Weinberg, Quality Software Management:
Vol. 1 System Thinking

12. Zeigarnik Effect:
Tendency to experience
intrusive thought about
an objective left
incomplete
Source: S. Greist-Bousquet, N. Shiffman: The effect of task
interrupton and closure on perceived duration

13. Cost of task switching is
rooted in interference
from thoughts about the
task your are not doing
Eyal Ophir

14. Time to market

15. Lower
quality
Source: E. Ophir, C. Nass, A. Wagner:
Cognitive control in media multitaskers

17. Don’t we
know the
cure already?

18. Portfolio Kanban
Story

19. Where would you start?

20. Variability stupid!

21. Stalled board

22. WIP limits? Oh...

23. Side note:
There are
exceptions

24. Two-tier board

25. Few have such
comfort though

26. Non-standard
board designs

27. Alternative design

28. Team-level

29. Individuals

30. Total capabilities

31. Different capabilities

32. Free capabilities

33. Commitments

34. Concurrent engagements

35. Planned time span

36. Types of work

37. Future commitments

38. Planned work

39. Unavailability

40. Show me
that here

41. Low hanging
fruit

42. What about WIP
limits then?
5O

43. Free capabilities

44. WIP limits by
conversation

45. Finally,
data from
other
sources

46. What’s in
it for me?

47. A system of local optima
is not an optimal system
at all; it is a very
suboptimal system
Eli Goldratt

48. Processing the waste
more effectively is
cheaper, neater, faster
waste.
Stephen Parry

49. If you are doing the
wrong thing you can’t
learn, you will only be
trying to do the wrong
thing righter.
John Seddon

50. Problem we tend to ignore

51. Low-friction
method

52. Thank you
Pawel Brodzinski
blog.brodzinski.com
llp.pl
@pawelbrodzinski