A Lean Approach to Managing the Project Portfolio

Whether you've been agile for a while or are thinking about it, you have one thing in common with every other software team I've encountered. You have too much work to do. One way to organize your work is with a project portfolio. But if your portfolio is an "as desired" portfolio, you still haven't solved the problem of too much work. Fortunately, taking a lean approach to managing the portfolio helps make those problems of "desired" and "too much work" transparent. Johanna Rothman discusses the several choices you have in managing the portfolio. She presents a project portfolio plan at the highest level and the lowest level, and describes how to apply rolling wave planning to your project portfolio. Johanna discusses ways you can evaluate the projects in your portfolio, whether it's a kanban board, a fixed queue, a fixed timebox, or other evaluation approach.