Agile Portfolio Management makes the companies grow

The world is changing fast, as well as customers and market demand. The pace of change has prompted businesses to invest a lot in digital transformation and agile framework implementation. But to stay on top, it’s crucial not only to get used to Agile frameworks and their values in the team but to scale them and successfully use them across the whole organization. 

What is Portfolio Management? 

Portfolio represents all projects that the company is working on, and these projects may not be related to each other. For smaller companies it isn’t much hard to manage 1-2 teams with several large projects, but what if the number of projects grows? 

As a company grows, it becomes difficult for project managers to follow up with all working processes and details about each of the projects. And if the teams don’t manage to release the end-product successfully, the progress of the company stops. 

Using Agile Methodology

There are many books and articles on how to implement a project management system in a company. The key thing here is to keep the company safe from complete chaos, and sometimes it isn’t clear enough what agile methodology to choose and how to use it in the company.

First of all, Agile is about teams and the soft skills of any team member. People are always more important than working processes and means.

When the company starts going through agile transformation roadmap, the C-level managers often don’t see their role clearly, as agile methodologies don’t use hierarchical approach. Still, the leader’s role is to define the business development strategy and keep an eye on all company projects, encouraging the whole company to adopt the agile culture.

When we deal with Agile teams building and digital transformation, first we approach stakeholders to learn business objectives, pains, processes, and decision making. Here, we get support from the executives and define teams to pioneer Agile. Then we create a transformation strategy with a focus on Agile mindset, evolving circumstances, and selected Agile tools and frameworks.

Main Steps of Making Portfolio Management Agile

Portfolio audit

At this step, it’s essential to collect all data about any project you have in the company and think of its value. 

At Polontech, we help our clients get a big picture of their projects: analyze all resources the company has and their capabilities to meet their portfolio demand. Together with the stakeholders and product owners we focus on the most valuable and effective projects that can meet the business goals, and then plan their complementation during the year. 

By this, you’ll have all cards in your hands and get to know what to do exactly with the projects. 

Making it Agile

While implementing Agile into Portfolio Management, it’s essential to use core Agile principles: 

• Iterative approach. We recommend using equal sprints to plan all working steps in each project and divide tasks between the team members. The long-term planning allows the teams to collaborate more with other teams and provide others with feedback. Leave for the teams an opportunity to choose what working approach it’s better to choose, what is the optimal workload for each of the teams. This also encourages you to better resource allocation and management. Such an iterative approach makes it possible to make all working processes agile and focus on the value that every team brings to the company when finishing projects.
• Knowledge sharing culture. Sharing knowledge about the projects helps find a fresh solution for problems, and provides collaboration between the teams. Organize team meetings to build trust and respect among colleagues from other teams. When everyone in the company has a sense of shared responsibility, it smooths transparent work across the organization.
• Make releases shorter. When having detailed information about every project, the teams use consistent sprint cycles, create a reliable API, automated testing chains and product deployment.

Implementing Agile principles, we make sure our clients get their Agile portfolio focused on the minimized cost of delay, business goals, funding options, and alignment with a strategy.

Launching Agile portfolio

When providing Agile portfolio management service, we also train strong teams to manage cross-cutting initiatives on a portfolio level, match them with capacity, and decide on implementation. Our Polontech experts align goals, sprint cycles, testing, and deployment across value streams, considering interdependencies between teams and programs.

It’s also essential to choose the right software. For our clients, we provide Jira Align integration and support for Agile portfolio management. We launch tools, implement the methodology, and introduce best practices for Agile portfolio to ensure that each initiative is aligned with the value to customers and the market.

Why we implement Jira Align for Agile portfolio management:

• It provides you with real-time connected roadmaps to visualize all projects;
• Helps with resource allocation and management for each product, team, or team member;
• It provides Agile frameworks support;
• Helps with finance management, allocating all investments to strategic themes and epics needed by the business to deliver financial results.

Conclusion

Portfolio management provides you with a clear image of the company path. Agile Portfolio management helps you see the ways of how to optimize it according to company values, customer demands, and how to ensure the growth of the organization. Bringing Agile at the corporate level ensures the optimal resource allocation, and helps set the right priorities for the company.