This page provides a summary and recap of the Webinar: âPractical Lean Portfolio Operations, Keeping Everything Runningâ, that took place on the 26th February 2025. It contains a video replay for anyone who missed it plus a transcription of the voice-over for detailed study. We hope you find it useful.
Webinar Synopsis
Practical Lean Portfolio Operations, keeping everything running.
Portfolio Operations - 3 meetings: Sync, Strategy and Participatory Budgeting, just do them and you’ll be fine! Is that it 3 meetings and it’s done? Join us in this webinar where instead of blindly accepting the proposed solution, we explore what’s the problem that needs to be solved? What does a Lean Portfolio actually own? What are the activities necessary to move the Lean Portfolio forwards? Then, and only then, is it possible to make an informed decision about how events themselves should be set up and scheduled.
Webinar Replay
Practical Lean Portfolio Operations, keeping everything running held on the 26th February 2025.
We hope you find the content useful and please do not hesitate to contact us if you need any help with your SAFe implementation.
Video Transcript
(best read whilst reviewing the webinar slides… download them using the form below)
Introduction
Whilst this webinar is anchored in the Scaled Agile Framework, the insight around Lean Portfolio is universally applicable; the Portfolio doesnât care what methodology youâre using; as long as it can negotiate work in and see results coming back what the teams are doing is the teamâs problem. This is not an introduction to Lean Portfolio Management; if you want that follow the link in the QR code in the corner. There will be more QR codes as we go; if you donât catch them now then once we neatened things up the recording will be posted on our website and YouTube channel. The presentation is just over half and hour there should be plenty of time for questions at the end.
Meetings
Whilst the Framework gets the structure of Lean Portfolio Management broadly right, there are a couple of bits of implementation advice that make me go âhmmmm?â.
One to these areas is Portfolio Operations.
Three meetings; Strategic Portfolio Review, Portfolio Sync and Participatory Budgeting, do them and youâre good to go! âHmmmmmmâ
Now, my suspicion is that whoever put that slide together was working in an organisation that was suffering from meeting overload and they were told in no uncertain terms to:
âminimise the number of meetings.â
So they did, itâs what you see in the slide before you. ButâŚ
Fixed Number of Decisions
I would posit that there are a fixed number of decisions that the Portfolio needs to make, and here comes the trade-off.
You could have a few big meetings. Each meeting would have to deal with a lot of decisions, to make those decisions you would need a lot of people. Not everyone present will be engaged for every decision being made. Some of their time is being wasted.
Or, you could have more smaller meetings. Each meeting would deal with a handful of decisions and the just the people necessary for those decisions would need to be present. They will be fully engaged for the full time.
Whatâs worse?
Only having a few meetings and risking people being uninvolved for part of the meeting?
Or having more meetings but full engagement.
Optimisations are often a trade-off; what do you want to optimise for, what are you willing to trade?
Explore the problem
Let’s explore the problem…
I would suggest that the number of meetings is irrelevant, itâs the quality of those meetings thatâs important. Condensing everything down into a few bad meetings, still means bad meetings.
How do we fix this?
We need to explore the problem and then construct a set of meetings to suit both the challenge and the organisation instigating Lean Portfolio Management. The one thing that I keep coming back to time and time again is Design Thinkingâs double diamond, separate problem from solution. Meetings are a solution to something.
We want to be here in the problem space understanding whatâs going on, not here in solution space blindly implementing solutions.
So, what is the problem we are trying to solveâŚ
The Lean Portfolio needs to make decisions about the things it owns. This in turn will lead us to activities that make those decisions, and in turn they can be scheduled appropriately.
What does a Portfolio Own?
Ok, so what does a portfolio own that it needs to make decisions about?
Now, I would suggest that a Lean Portfolio owns:
- A vision for where youâre trying to get to. The target destination.
- A set of Epics that are changing the organisation to allow the vision to be achieved, the way to reach the target destination.
- And a set of Value Streams that are getting things done, the motive power propelling towards the target destination.
You might have lots of artefacts, paperwork, that the portfolio is generating to support these three items, but essentially this is all a Portfolio owns.
Most of the detail should be decentralised out towards the edges, SAFe Principle #9, otherwise the Portfolio becomes an overloaded bottleneck. Take the Value Streams as an example, the Portfolio is responsible for the set of Value Streams, and ensuring that they are aligned with what the Portfolio is trying to achieve, but the day-to-day running of the Value Streams is delegated, decentralised, to those Value Streams.
These items have a lifecycle, a sequence of states that they go through. There are activities to progress them through their sequence of states. So, stick a great big weekly meeting in the Outlook calendar, invite everyone and their dogs, and get those items progressedâŚ
Do you really think that that is going to work?
The giant meetings are what weâre trying to avoid so letâs look at each item in turn, look at itâs lifecycle and determine what to do from there.
Vision & Strategy
Vision is where this Portfolio wants to be in the future, and the means of measuring towards that vision.
Strategy is how we intend to get to that future, the changes that need to be made. Which, ultimately, will manifest as a set of Epics that are initiating change. Weâll get to them in a moment, but vision first.
Not much of a lifecycle:
- it gets created
- weâre doing it
- hopefully it is achieved, or more likely superseded by a new vision.
The main activity here is creating it.
SAFe suggests using a set based approach; gather together small groups, cover the disciplines, skills, etc⌠and get each group to create a vision for the future.
Do those groups need to collaborate?
No; I donât think that they do. The whole premise is that they are creating a vision independently so that we can inspect those visions at the end and take the commonality and or the best bits from those visions. The process needs to be completed with a degree of expediency so that the inspection can occur, but the development of the visions could be done ad-hoc, no need for a great big scheduled meeting.
There may be benefits from having a great big scheduled meeting, namely forcing everyone to focus on developing a vision rather than being distracted by the trivialities of running an organisation, which should have been decentralised anyway. But benefits are not necessity, there is choice in how the vision development is scheduled.
Whilst the data collection can happen as needed, the point where the Lean Portfolio Management, the decision makers within the portfolio, agree that this is The Vision, that does need to be an officially scheduled meeting. Itâs the Strategic Portfolio review; or at least the vision part of it.
Itâs an event that we know weâll need to schedule so weâll put it to one side and come back to it a little later once weâve got the set of events.
The vision provides insight into candidate Epics, ideas for changes that could achieve the vision. We should look at an Epics lifecycle next.
Epics
Epics have a lifecycle they are:
- Requested
- Forecastable
- Ready
- Approved
- Viable
- Extracting
- Successful
Note that the states that an Epic progresses through are separate, and distinct from the process to move it through those states, as visualised by the Portfolio Kanban. The states tend to be immutable, whereas the process will change as you evolve it. For more insight into the Lifecycle of an Epic follow the QR.
Requested comes from the Vision activities, or ⌠as a result of retrospective activities within the teams and trains; the great ideas for improvements that are bigger than an ART alone can handle.
Weâve already captured the Strategic Portfolio Review, so lets move on through the Epics lifecycle.
Forecastable : The Epic Hypothesis statement and initial estimates for use in Road Mapping and Budgeting.
Ready : Development of the Business Case ready for approval. Do we need officially scheduled meetings for the preparatory work? No; it happens as needed on an ad-hoc basis, often when the Epic owner can secure time with the people that need to provide input.
But, what we will need to do is to check that the Epic owners are preparing their Epics. This is where the Portfolio Sync comes in; part of it is checking that the Epic owners donât have any impediments and if they do that actions are being taken to resolve them.
Weâll capture Portfolio Sync for Epics ready to schedule as an event later. And, For more insight into Writing Better Epics follow the QR code to a webinar from last year.
Vision
Back to Vision & Strategy. Previously we had dealt with the Vision, the destination that we are aiming for. Whatâs the strategy for how we get there? Well, itâs the set of Epics that are in play. We have candidate Epics ready for Approval.
Approvals happen in the Strategic Portfolio reviewâŚ
âŚexcept it canât all happen at once.
You canât set out your strategy and then approve Epics in the same meeting because it takes time to develop the business case for the Epic. Strategic Portfolio review needs to be split into two. Vision and strategy in one meeting, then Epic approval in another.
Cancellation then Approval; deliberate phrasing. Itâs a fixed capacity machine, if you want to do something new then you have to create space, either by completing, by cancelling or by deferring Epics that are already in play. Only then can you start to approve Epics to fill the space. For more insight into Epic approval and how itâs not as simple as âI like the business caseâ follow the QR.
This Strategic Portfolio Review (Epics) is another thing to capture. Now weâve got the Epics weâre starting to make ProgressâŚwith the Vision.
Having just approved an Epic the Lean Portfolio Management are going to expect someone to start work on that Epic real soon. But, to make progress on the Epic, we are going to need some people to do that work.
Value Streams
Value Streams, specifically Development Value Streams.
There is a lifecycle here as well. The value stream is:
- Identified, we know that it will be needed to get something done
- Formed, itâs staffed either directly with our own people, or indirectly by employing contractors
- Collaborating, the people within are working together, and working towardsâŚ
- Performing, where they can get stuff done efficiently
- Eventually all things must end, the Team will be Adjourned. Although, given that we tend to set Value Streams up for the long term; that could be years, perhaps even decades into the future.
First step in the lifecycle is to Identify the Value Stream. Usually through some form of Value Stream and ART Identification Workshop, the complexity of which is dependent upon your particular circumstances. You might be doing a full blown, workshop mapping out how your organisation works and rearranging to support that way of working, or you might just go âthat group of people there; they work together thatâs good enough!â These workshops, whilst you do need to come back and re-run them reasonably regularly to keep track with how your organisation is now operating, given that it will evolve over time, theyâre not something that it is worth putting into the recurring schedule that we are trying to develop to keep a Lean Portfolio operating. Schedule them as needed.
For more insight into Organising Around Value and conducting Value Stream and ART Identification workshops follow the QR code.
Formed, or perhaps staffed. And staff want paying, so we need budget. What allocates the money? Participatory Budgeting.
You donât have to do Participatory Budgeting, you could just pay people. What the budgeting process does is try to line up the investment in your people and what they are supporting, based upon the changes you think you would like to make in the future.
Separate budgeting from spending. Remember that the money is the slowest loop running. Changing the money will take months to have an effect, itâs hiring and firing, or retraining if weâre being socially responsible; itâs bringing onboard new suppliers. And, even once youâve got the people into the company, getting them up to speed on your technology, your system landscape, and where to find the coffee and toilets, that can take months.
We should capture Participatory Budgeting, it does happen on a regular basis.
Now that we have people, they need to be collaborating to get things done.
Approved Epics will be trying to negotiate Features into the backlogs of the Value Streams.
The value streams will release improved increments of the solutions they are responsible for.
The releases of the solutions should result in changes to the Leading Indicators or Business Outcomes of the Epic, metrics being gathered. All of this happens as needed, Epic Owners collaborating with Product Managers, creating Features, Prioritising. Decentralise all of that, the Portfolio empowers the Epic Owners and Product Managers to get on with it, but every time that the decentralisation occurs, we have to check that itâs working, that there arenât problemsâŚ
Weâve already captured that Epic Owners should have a Portfolio Sync to ensure that they are able to develop an Epic, and now that weâre in the process of getting the Epic done, we should extend that Portfolio Sync to cover negotiating Features in and collecting Metrics back. We should also check that Value Streams themselves arenât having any impediments; that they are able to collaborate with each other. This is a different perspective to Epics, itâs doing the of work.
Lean Portfolio management is not a fractal scaling of the Teams and Agile Release Trains pattern, it behaves very differently but there are some similarities.
My two proposed Portfolio Sync events are a mirror of the sync events within Agile Release trains. Portfolio Sync for Epics and PO Sync for Agile Release Trains are both concerned with understanding whatâs valuable and checking that value is delivered. Portfolio Sync for DVS and Coach Sync for Agile Release Trains are both concerned with the process of getting value delivered and making sure that delivery is running smoothly. That itself is an embodiment of SAFe Principle #2 systems thinking and the fact that there are two systems in play, the system being built which is the value Epic Owners, Product Managers and Product Owners care about, and the system building the system, the set of teams and processes that the Value Management Office, Release Train Engineers and Scrummasters care about.
Capture it, weâll need to Schedule it.
Performing, the Value Stream is doing everything just mentioned but better because itâs self-improving. They should be empowered to do that, itâs a problem for the Value Stream, other than encouraging it, itâs not a Portfolio concern. Any impediments to self-improvement should be raised through the meetings that we have just captured.
The rest of the lifecycle of Value Streams, of the Epics, is just more of the same. Participatory Budgeting withdrawing funding adjourns Value Stream. Strategic Portfolio Review deciding to complete or cancel an Epic moves it into its final state. I think weâve got everythingâŚ
Develop The Solution
Time to move into solution mode.
Now that we understand the problem, the set of events necessary to move the portfolio towards its visions, we can start to solve the scheduling challenge.
A couple of 10 week planning intervals, with their constituent iterations.
There are already activities in play at the ART level that will influence the Portfolio scheduling, namely PI Planning, and the Inspect & Adapt.
Lets get the events that we are interested in back out.
The most important thing is the PI Planning event, that event needs a Vision that itâs aiming for and a backlog of Features to fulfil that vision. Whilst the Agile Release Trains can, and should, create Features locally, there will be features that are contributing to Epics, so it needs to know what Epics are in play.
The event that decides on the Epics in play, is Strategic Portfolio Review (Epic Cancellation & Approval). There is a balancing act here. You want to approve things as late as possible to minimise the time between approval and action; but getting from approval to action takes time, those Features donât magically appear fully formed, they need to be developed.
Might I suggest it goes shortly after the midway point of the Planning Interval to give time for developing features before PI Planning
And itâs recurring every planning interval. Participants? Itâs the triad at Portfolio level and the Epic Owners. So the triad is:
- Lean Portfolio Management, The executive, the people truly responsible for business decisions. The buck stops here because there is nowhere else for it to go.
- Enterprise Architecture, responsible for enterprise wide technical strategy, which will inform the vision and need Epics to enact the change.
- Value Management Office, facilitating. Not the whole office, just someone from the Value Management Office.
- And the Epic Owners of both existing Epics and new Epics. They have to make the case for existing Epics being allowed to continue through presenting the Business Outcomes and Leading Indicators, or make the case for new Epics being approved by presenting the Business Case.
How do we know what Epics to prepare? And to steer decisions about which Epics should be in play? We need a vision?
Thatâs the other half of Strategic Portfolio Review (Vision). Agreement on the Vision canât happen at the same time as Epic Cancellation and Approval because the Epics you want to achieve that vision will take time to develop.
I would stick it early in the planning interval, so that insight from the Inspect & Adapt and Planning processes can inform how the vision should evolve, but with enough time to prepare any new Epics, approve them and get Features into the next PI Planning events.
And itâs recurring every planning interval. Participants? Itâs just the triad at Portfolio level
- Lean Portfolio Management responsible for the business decisions.
- Enterprise Architecture responsible for enterprise wide technical strategy, which needs to be part of the vision.
- And the Value Management Office, facilitating.
They need to agree on the vision. You might have involved lots of other people to help build that vision, possibly through the set-based approach, but ultimately the decision lies with Lean Portfolio Management. Once agreed the Vision will need to be communicated to actual, and potential, Epic Owners afterwards so that they can make sensible decentralised decisions about the Epic or Epics they are responsible for.
Next, we need to check that the business cases for the Epics are being developed, and for approved Epics that they are able to negotiate Features into Value Streams.
Portfolio Sync (Epics) The official advice is monthly. On moment please whilst I have another âhmmmmmâ.
I appreciate that executives work in calendars months and financial quarters, but that doesnât line up with what the rest of the âagile systemâ is doing. I would have thought Planning Intervals and Iterations would be a better alignment? Is this another case of the organisation that the slide creator was in not wanting to âfully adoptâ agility and so they decided it wasnât a fight worth having and thus kept with calendar months? I can understand that from an implementation perspective but as the canonical advice from the framework, I think it should be iterations and planning intervals, then compromise from there.
Iâm going to go on a per-iteration basis.
And itâs recurring every iteration Participants?
- The Epic owners
- Value Management Office facilitating
Do you need Lean Portfolio Management there? Maybe, maybe not. If there are any impediments, then the Value Management Office can convey them to Lean Portfolio Management to get a resolution.
Thatâs the progress of the work, but we also need to check that the Value Streams doing the work arenât struggling with impediments.
Portfolio Sync (Development Value Streams) Official advice is monthly, we could have the monthly discussion again but that would be repetition, so letâs have a different discussion. Letâs talk about Scrum@Scale.
Jeff Sutherland, creator of Scrum and Scrum@Scale, had been studying the Chaos Report produced by the Standish Group, and he thought he saw in the data, a very strong correlation between speed of decision making and success. In Scrum@Scale he advises lining up the daily standups so that one can feed into the next. An impediment at team level can be raised to team-of-teams, the Agile Release Train level, at the next meeting, i.e. in the next hour. If the team-of-teams canât solve it, it can be escalated up to the next level in the next hour. Therefore, an impediment can get from team to executive, who are running a daily standup, in just a few hours. SAFe Fellow Ian Spence was talking just yesterday about decision making latency and how this very trick can be used to overcome it, I canât provide a link because it hasnât been published yet, it was just yesterday, so youâll have to track it down yourselves.
Could we do the same in SAFe? Yeah, absolutely no reason why not, other than institutional friction, and that isnât a SAFe problem thatâs an institutional problem. You always want to try and solve the problem at the lowest level possible, empower the edges to take control of their own destiny, but have this mechanism in place for those things that canât be solved out towards the edges and get resolutions back rapidy to avoid unnecessary delays.
Daily then? It can be a hard sell, but as regularly as you can.
The resolution of Power Point limits me to visualising it as once per Iteration, personally Iâd push for weekly, I just canât show that on the slides. Participants?
- RTEâs from the Value Streams
- Facilitated by the Value Management Office and the Value Management Office can carry any impediments that this group canât solve to the Lean Portfolio Management.
So weâre left with Participatory Budgeting.
There is no point doing this more than once per-Planning Interval because the money can really only move at Planning Interval boundaries. Even then once per-Planning Interval is a significant stretch on resources, most organisations seem to do this once or twice per year, to map out where they want the money over the course of the year; the money ascribed to individual value streams may still change at PI boundaries as part of the budgeting plan. Therefore, it can go anywhere, it doesnât need to be part of the schedule in the same way that the other operational events are. It doesnât decide on the work being done, it creates a constraint on what can be done, because it defines how much value streams have available to spend, and therefore their capacity, but it doesnât directly inform day-to-day operations.
Timeline
Itâs all very pretty, but does it make sense. Letâs look to the information flow and check that itâs flowing in the right direction.
Given that itâs cyclic, we only need to look at one planning interval, so weâve zoomed in on a single Planning Interval.
Inspect & Adapt informs PI Planning. Agile Release Train level, not really our concern butâŚ
Both Inspect & Adapt and PI Planning together inform Strategic Portfolio Review (Vision), given what has been seen in the demonstrations at the Inspect & Adapts and what got planned in the PI Planning events, how does the Vision need to change?
An updated vision informs what Epics are being created. The work to create those Epics is happening, as necessary, but the Portfolio Sync for Epics, is checking the Epic owners are not struggling with impediments.
Epics feed back up to Strategic Portfolio Review (Epic Cancellation & Approval) which determines the set of Epics that should be in play.
We use the Portfolio Sync (Epics) to check that Epic Owners arenât impeded from negotiating with the Development Value Streams, but Feature creation happens as necessary.
Features from Epics form for part of the backlog going into PI Planning.
That all seems to check out, weâre not trying to send information back in time, and Iâve always found that it helps if processes donât violate the laws of physics because physics always wins.
Conclusions
To sum everything up.
Donât take the Framework too literally, apply some critical thinking and question whether itâs the right thing to do. This is especially important with the Portfolio Level because unlike Teams and Agile Release trains where there is lots of experience to draw upon and distil best practice from, there just isnât as much data on Lean Portfolios and you can accidentally distil bad practice if you havenât got any way of rationalising what good should look like. Whilst the overall concepts of Lean Portfolio management are good, I feel Scaled Agile with some of their practical advice have observed incorrect practices that donât stand up to logic when you think them through. Theyâll work it out eventually but if everyone starts copying bad practice itâs going to end up messy. Of course, what Iâve presented here is just one option. You might evolve your own, you should. Work through the logic yourself, for your situation.
Actually, thatâs the one thing that I do want you to take away. Not how to operate a Lean Portfolio, but the technique of understanding the problem space, of asking
- What do we own and need to progress?
- What do we need to do to progress those things we own?
Then, and only then, are you in a position to properly set up events, schedule them and get the correct participants.
Next Webinar
In two weeks time weâll look at Epic Failures, what can go wrong with Lean Portfolios, the anti-patterns to watch out for and how to avoid them. We might even change the names of the guilty to protect them, we might not. Youâll have to come along and see.