Clone of Organization Process
Organization Timeline in Months
The Organization Holon refers to a suite of products or technological capabilities owned by a given organization. Many small to medium businesses have one portfolio, where many large enterprises have the difficult task of coordinating more than a dozen portfolios, with upstream and downstream impacts/dependencies to manage. Maintaining internal alignment with the Enterprise Vision, while externally aligning with other portfolios is one of the greatest challenges we face today and requires excellent coordination and collaboration.
Values & Goals
Clear Portfolio vision
Accountability to my team
Agile mindset
Willing to learn & grow
Flexibility
Committed to vision
Attention to results
Customer focused
Adaptable
Accountable, responsible
Environmental Responsibility
Product & Impact
Define portfolio offering
Annual OKRs
Prioritized healthy backlog
Product feedback loops
Marketing plans
Training plans
Leadership working agreement
Predictable delivery
Roadmaps
Leadership & Culture
Portfolio Values & Culture
Shared vision/goals
Market Perception
Trust, transparency & safety
Servant leadership culture
Conscious Leadership culture
Continuous improvement culture
Listen to all perspectives
Clear communication of goals
Top to bottom and back collaboration
Strong LPM team
Development of future leaders
Sense & Respond culture
Markets & Environment
Systems
Value Streams
Roles & Responsibilities
Effective Agile process
Effective architecture
Collaboration space
Collaboration tools
Effective Business processes
Sales pipeline
Sufficient funding
Portfolio structure
Aligned incentive structure
Product Coordination (once per sprint)
Values & Goals
Commitment to improvement
Servant leader mindset
Proactive, not reactive
Value focused
THINK, DECIDE, COMMIT
Product & Impact
Portfolio Kanban
Raise impediments
Raise discovered work with context
How are my teams doing?
What is our plan moving forward? (Leadership guidance)
Release burn up per ToT & overall
Update leadership Kanban board
Leadership & Culture
Coordination
Provide updates
Focus on root causes
Trust & safety
Taking things offline
Ask for help
Accountable & responsible
Markets & Environment
Impediment resolution
Product governance
Annual Lean Portfolio Management
This session defines the portfolio strategy for the year - what is the impact we want to have on the world, and how can we continue to evolve our culture? This session will differ depending on whether you are a small to medium business or a large enterprise with multiple technology and business portfolios.
Small - Medium Business
The first order of business will be to define both the Long Term (3+ year) and annual objectives (or OKRs). Once these objectives are set, conversations about investment, allocation, and everything else necessary to meet those objectives can effectively take place.
Enterprise
In a large enterprise, the goal will be to align annual objectives with the Long Term objectives set by the enterprise as a whole. It is also critical for each portfolio to align with each other to ensure everyone is pulling in the same direction.
Values & Goals
Long term vision (3+ years)
Annual Vision
Portfolio purpose
Innovation mindset
Willing to take risks
Continuous improvement
Product & Impact
Define 1year OKRs
Define 3year OKRs
Training plan
Pro Forma Income statement (P&L)
Define initiatives
New product approval
Update Customer Journeys & Experience
Portfolio Kanban Board
Leadership & Culture
Assess portfolio culture
Leader development
Feedback from employees
Open channels of communication
Top to bottom alignment of purpose/vision
Customer relationships
Sense & Response culture
Celebration of successes
Markets & Environment
Lean Budgeting (CapEX OPEX)
Reorganize teams to enable optimal flow
Update value stream map if necessary
Hiring/talent acquisition
Systems/equipment/real estate procurement/dissolution
Promotions
Understand market conditions
Define Run, Grow, Transform %
Target markets
Quarterly Lean Portfolio Management
Quarterly LPM sessions are designed to get feedback from leading and lagging indicators set by the annual objectives. The quality and speed of the response to new information will be a key differentiator in competitive advantage, both internally and externally. This includes but is not limited to: prioritizing new features, shifting capacity where its needed, changing people’s experience at work, and any necessary team or cultural shifts to ensure alignment and maintain or improve morale.
Values & Goals
Vision for the quarter
Aligned to purpose
Innovation mindset
Willing to take risks
Continuous improvement
Product & Impact
Quarterly OKRs
Define Features
Prioritization
Metrics
Feedback loops
Update roadmaps
Benefits realization (QBR)
SOWs
Leadership & Culture
Maintain or improve portfolio culture
Leader development
Feedback from employees
Open channels of communication
Top to bottom alignment of purpose/vision
Markets & Environment
Capacity plan
Explore flow improvements
Sequencing of ToT execution
Hiring/talent acquisition
Systems/equipment/real estate procurement/dissolution
Promotions
Understand market conditions
Retrospective (once a month)
Retrospectives at this level are simultaneously focused on the health and success of the leadership team as well as the many people they both lead and impact. The creation of a continuous improvement culture starts with leaders leading by example, and uses the collective feedback from their colleagues to create the kind of working environment that enables people and the systems they work with to achieve their full potential.
Values & Goals
How do I feel about how we’re doing?
Individual accountability
What can I do differently?
Am I aligned to the vision?
Open, humble mindset
Value/impact focus
Product & Impact
What’s going well?
What’s not going well?
How is delivery going?
Measurement of growth item impact
Leadership & Culture
Ask for help
How can we improve?
Open and honest intent
Celebration of successes
How are we perceived as leaders?
Markets & Environment
Growth Item backlog to improve/respond
Portfolio acknowledgement/celebration
Process Governance (once a month)
Ok, let’s change the tone here… has anyone in any role had a look at current processes and thought to themselves: “This is amazing! This is the most efficient and pleasurable, combination of process and tooling that strikes the perfect balance between clarity and accuracy of information, and ease of communicating and formatting said information? No, no one has ever said that sequence of words in any working environment. Process governance is all about taking an informed guess as to what will best suit a transparent, collaborative and accountable working environment, and tuning the process and tooling based on feedback from every role in your organization.
Values & Goals
Process objective
Alignment to Vision/Future Search
Subject matter expertise
Focus on simplicity
Focus on value add
MVC (Minimal Viable Change)
Systems thinking (avoid silos)
Focus on enabling flow
Product & Impact
Choice of tooling
Training sessions
Test/Pilot new processes
Work progress metrics
Team health/productivity metrics
Score cards
Leadership & Culture
Consult, coach, train & mentor
Understand company cultural goals & values
Support team’s success
Continuous improvement
Take and respond to feedback
Empowerment
Celebration of successes
Knowledge Sharing (succession plans)
Markets & Environment
Establish processes & systems
Establish best practices
Deploy process experts to instruct (coach)
Focus on enabling flow
Make impediments & dependencies easier to navigate (impact of problems)
Establish guard rails
Allow for flexibility in the process
Development value streams to reduce waste
Design follows needs
Enable Quality
MVC Journey
Systems Governance (once a month)
Balancing the immediate needs of the business with new capabilities that will be needed in the future with emergent technological advances while staying focused on delivery deadlines is quite the tightrope to walk. The purpose of this session is to define the architectural runway for the portfolio as a whole while taking in feedback from the teams to refine the strategy based on its application. Choosing and adapting the best technologies to enable the optimal flow of value requires an emergent, flexible design structure.
Values & Goals
Alignment to Vision/Future Search
Subject matter expertise
Focus on simplicity
Focus on value add
Customer centricity
Product & Impact
Architectural runway
Choice of technology
Systems training
Pilot new ideas (POC)
Reporting (outcomes)
Reporting (systems)
Leadership & Culture
Train & mentor
Understand company culture
Support team’s success
Continuous improvement
Take and respond to feedback
Markets & Environment
Reference architectures (best practices)
Avoid silos
Establish guard rails
Allow for flexibility in design (emergent)
Focus on enabling flow
Deploy system experts to instruct (coach)
Central document repository
Design follows needs
Appropriate robustness & performance
Envisioning & Elaborating Initiatives (DoR)
This process typically kicks off in earnest after annual objectives are set, and there’s a clear idea about the overall strategy for the upcoming year. After the list of ideas has been trimmed to a set that will fit into the known budget/capacity, initiative owners, their business teams, and their technology partners can get to work elaborating the solution. This often involves multiple design sessions, rapid prototyping to get early feedback, the testing of new technologies, establishing your key feature set (MVP), and the creation of a loose roadmap with an impact analysis. The objective is to bring the initiative to an established Definition of READY, where there’s general comfort and consensus around the value to be delivered, who needs to be involved, and the relative effort.
Values & Goals
Vision for the portfolio
Empowered product team
Commitment to improvement
Properly skilled and resourced
Proactive, not reactive
Value focused
THINK, DECIDE, COMMIT
Focus on Objectives
ROI focused
Lean MVP mindset
Product & Impact
ROI
Business case
Prioritization
Engaged Portfolio Owner
Roadmap
Create shell features
Pricing strategy
Portfolio Kanban
Create personas
Success criteria
Pirate metrics (ARRRR)
Leadership & Culture
Aligned to portfolio vision
Meaningful to the product team
Product & tech perspectives
Coordination
Trust & safety
Ask for help
Accountable & responsible
Connected with the customer
Markets & Environment
Performance ranges
Market conditions
External & Internal competitive analysis
Marketing strategy
Sales strategy
Legal & Compliance
Architectural/Systemic needs
Dependency mitigation
Improve refinement practice plan
Establish training where necessary
Explore possible need for technical uplift
Impediment resolution