Organization Roles
- Values & Goals
- Committed to the portfolio vision
- Demonstrates commitment & responsibility
- Proactively acts & communicates
- Willing to learn & grow
- Challenges the status quo if appropriate
- Economic & Customer focused
- Conscious Leader
- Leads by example & mentorship
- Systems thinking
- Product & Impact
- Design & discovery prototyping
- Metrics for competitive advantage
- Contributes to OKRs & prioritization
- Enrich investment opportunities
- Contributes to roadmaps
- Leadership & Culture
- Shares responsibility toward portfolio goal
- Embodies portfolio culture
- Creates a feeling of safety
- Shares best practices
- Innovation & Growth culture
- Business & tech partnership
- Supports people emerging needs
- Empowers and enables
- Markets & Environment
- Lean budgeting
- Improves portfolio standards
- Enables optimal flow
- Evolves roles & responsibilities
- Follows market trends
- Incentivizes performance & collaboration
- Systemic innovation
The LPM team integrates a broad range of perspectives to refine objectives, product strategy, execution plans, system health/growth, and customer management. It is composed of the subject matter experts and stakeholders empowered to make swift, well informed decisions. It can take a few iterations to strike the right balance between the number of people and perspectives - nobody wants a 40 person LPM team. The main focus of this team is to focus portfolio prioritization on achieving broad objectives, defining and measuring short and long feedback loops and dynamically steering into emergent opportunities and away from threats.
Portfolio Owner
The Portfolio owner is the captain of the ship, taking in all perspectives and making key decisions to lead the organization to successfully achieving the portfolio objectives. Deep partnership and trusting relationships are essential with their technical and operational partners, and their Lean Portfolio management team as a whole. The Portfolio owner owns and embodies the vision and inspires others to invest their full talents and energy. In a large enterprise, Portfolio Owners work with other Portfolio Owners to align objectives to enterprise OKRs during annual and quarterly planning.
- Values & Goals
- Result Oriented
- Rapid decision making
- Collaborative
- Deep understanding of the market & customer needs
- Inspirational Leader
- Motivator
- Visionary
- Creative
- Challenges status Quo
- Entrepreneurial mindset
- Product & Impact
- Defines/approves products
- Owns KPIs - OKRs ROI, etc.
- Creates Initiatives with their team
- Manages Portfolio Kanban
- Defines the vision and the who
- Owns Portfolio results
- Prioritize towards strategic deadlines
- Owns Profit and Loss
- Responsible for legal
- Leadership & Culture
- Coordinate with other Portfolio Owners
- Inspires people to take on the vision
- Mentoring
- Listens to Ideas
- Integrates multiple perspectives
- Gives and receives good feedback
- Accountable to shareholders
- Markets & Environment
- Identifies Market Needs
- Focus on competitive advantage
- Owns the Business Value Streams
Portfolio Architect (Director of Operations/Value Chain)
If the Portfolio Owner is the captain of the ship, the Portfolio Architect is the Chief Engineer. The PA is responsible for the health and integrity of the systems through which value flows, and ensures all other engineers both follow and can contribute to architectural standards as new technologies and customer needs emerge. As technology leaders in their organization, it’s important to have open, frequent communication with other architects and create a culture of trust and empowerment to decentralize decision making. Portfolio Architects continuously walk a tightrope, balancing the needs of their platforms with the current and future needs of their business partners.
- Values & Goals
- Result Oriented
- Rapid decision making
- Collaborative
- Familiarity with market & customer needs
- Inspirational Leader
- Motivator
- Visionary
- Creative
- Challenges status Quo
- Entrepreneurial mindset
- Systemic design thinker
- Flexible
- Root cause focused
- Product & Impact
- Defines systems
- Owns Performance & Standards
- Creates Initiatives with their team
- Prioritize towards strategic deadlines
- Ensure Quality
- Owns architectural runway
- Owns system KPIs
- Leads the effort to solve problems/outages
- Leadership & Culture
- Mentors
- Train/teach the team
- Provides clarity/confidence/guidance
- Provides feedback
- Collaborates/Aligns with other SMEs
- Articulates future state
- Markets & Environment
- Identifies Market Needs
- Focus on competitive advantage
- Owns the Development Value Streams/Chains
- Allows freedom within guard rails
- Talent allocation/strategy
- Manage budget
- Defines uplift strategy
- Manage tech debt
- Automation
- Integration of subsidiary systems
- Responsible for compliance/regulatory
Portfolio Operations
Much like the purser of a ship, Portfolio Operations is accountable for the financial and legal strength of the portfolio. This may be a single person in a smaller organization or a team of people coordinating multiple portfolios in a large enterprise. These individuals possess deep knowledge of the budgetary, legal and vendor management processes for the overall organization and have built partnerships across functional lines the enable them to quickly address issues. They proactively manage the flow of money and resources to the portfolio and work closely with HR to meet staffing requirements.
- Values & Goals
- Organized
- Strong Analytical skills
- Discipled dynamic and flexible
- Adaptable
- Value/Impact mindset
- Systemic mindset
- Proactive communicator
- Knows how the system works
- Product & Impact
- Utilization planning/projections
- Documentation
- Reporting
- Facilitates transactions
- Rapid decision making
- Leadership & Culture
- Negotiates with vendors
- Guides people through the process
- Collaborates to achieve enterprise goals
- Educates others
- Establishes working relationships with SMEs
- Shepards people through the process
- Markets & Environment
- Manages budget
- Vendor management
- Compliance obligations
- Contractual obligations
- Owns financial and legal standards
- Efficiency and process improvement
- Stays ahead of new regulations
Stakeholder
Stakeholders working with the Portfolio Holon are very different from the stakeholders working with the holons below. At the Team and ToT Holons, the stakeholders tend to have a direct stake in the product or service being developed and (assuming they’re not external to the company) are often a part of the same Portfolio. When multiple Portfolios work together it becomes almost impossible to take any action without affecting the fortunes of other organizations across the enterprise. Involving impacted stakeholders from other Portfolios in the planning process is critical for avoiding friction and re-work down the road, and incentivizes them to involve your organization in areas that impact your success. This is a key element to softening silos and optimizing the flow of value across the enterprise.
- Values & Goals
- Engaged in the Agile process
- Customer focused
- Clear of purpose & direction
- Value/Impact mindset
- Systemic mindset
- Proactive communicator
- Product & Impact
- Aligns OKRs
- Rapid decision making
- Invited to Demos
- Provides artifacts (roadmaps, etc.)
- Leadership & Culture
- Collaborates to achieve enterprise goals
- Gives constructive feedback
- Trusts the Portfolio team
- Negotiates to focus on highest value
- Contributes knowledge
- Markets & Environment
- Uses long feedback loops to course correct
- Stays ahead of the market
- Aligns with enterprise objectives
- Develops cross-portfolio strategies
Portfolio Coach
The coach working with the Portfolio Holon is focused primarily on achieving flow of value. This requires systematically mapping and observing the full system - people, teams, process and results - and focusing on areas where flow is impeded or stopped altogether. Resolving those impediments can be very challenging, in many cases the issues that need to be addressed can be deeply rooted in organizational culture and might have existed for years or even decades depending on the age of the organization. Working with leaders to make the incremental changes needed to achieve transformational results requires patience and understanding, and the support of other coaches (team & ToT) and other change agents throughout the portfolio.
- Values & Goals
- Servant Leader Mindset
- Coach, Enabler
- Agile expertise
- Adaptable & flexible
- Systems thinking
- Proactive problem solver
- Highly Organized
- Negotiation/Conflict resolution
- Responsible, accountable
- Product & Impact
- Initiative Intake
- Empirical Observation of progress & improvement
- Manages & configures the Agile tool
- Promotes achievement mindset
- Leads by example
- Responsible for reporting
- Leadership & Culture
- Creates trust relationships with the team
- - Safe, Collaborative environment
- - Accountability & Integrity
- Visibility & Transparency - Team & business
- Motivates & inspires
- Facilitates Objective (OKR) realization
- Markets & Environment
- Owns the process/methodology
- Clear Impediments
- Schedules & Facilitates meetings
- Helps reorganize teams to promote flow
- Creates an environment of success
- Value Stream Mapping
- Systemic transparency
- Facilitates Lean Budgeting
Lean Portfolio Management Team
The LPM team integrates a broad range of perspectives to refine objectives, product strategy, execution plans, system health/growth, and customer management. It is composed of the subject matter experts and stakeholders empowered to make swift, well informed decisions. It can take a few iterations to strike the right balance between the number of people and perspectives - nobody wants a 40 person LPM team. The main focus of this team is to focus portfolio prioritization on achieving broad objectives, defining and measuring short and long feedback loops and dynamically steering into emergent opportunities and away from threats.
- Values & Goals
- Committed to the portfolio vision
- Demonstrates commitment & responsibility
- Proactively acts & communicates
- Willing to learn & grow
- Challenges the status quo if appropriate
- Economic & Customer focused
- Conscious Leader
- Leads by example & mentorship
- Systems thinking
- Product & Impact
- Design & discovery prototyping
- Metrics for competitive advantage
- Contributes to OKRs & prioritization
- Enrich investment opportunities
- Contributes to roadmaps
- Leadership & Culture
- Shares responsibility toward portfolio goal
- Embodies portfolio culture
- Creates a feeling of safety
- Shares best practices
- Innovation & Growth culture
- Business & tech partnership
- Supports people emerging needs
- Empowers and enables
- Markets & Environment
- Lean budgeting
- Improves portfolio standards
- Enables optimal flow
- Evolves roles & responsibilities
- Follows market trends
- Incentivizes performance & collaboration
- Systemic innovation