For large enterprises, successful Lean-Kanban development teams produce a huge amount of strain on the organization. The fast cycle time and rapid pace of change exposes dysfunctions in surrounding departments and exacerbates the need for traceability of requirements through the entire flow. In this presentation, we will show a practical application of a Product Portfolio Kanban to achieve the following: * Executive visibility into the product development flow * Strategic allocation and botteneck avoidance * Full cycle mapping of delivered functionality back to requirements and revenue targets * Results-based prioritization

1. Lean Software &
Systems 2011
Full Cycle Traceability
via a Product Portfolio
Kanban
Stephen Chin, Erik Huddleston, Israel Gat & Walter
Bodwell

2. The Presentation Team LSSC 2011
¡ Stephen Chin ¡ Israel Gat
Chief Agile Methodologist Director, Agile Product & Project
at GXS Management Practice at Cutter
Consortium
@steveonjava @agile_exec
¡ Erik Huddleston ¡ Walter Bodwell
Chief Technology Officer CEO at Planigle, LLC
at Dachis Group
@ehuddleston @wbodwell

3. Development in
the Fast Lane
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shinkansen_tokyo.jpg

4. Development in
the Fast Lane
¡ Dramatic Productivity Increases
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shinkansen_tokyo.jpg

5. Development in
the Fast Lane
¡ Dramatic Productivity Increases
¡ Engineering Time Reduction
Source: David Joyce; Kanban Results Part 3; Lean and Kanban; November 4 2009
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shinkansen_tokyo.jpg

6. Development in
the Fast Lane
¡ Dramatic Productivity Increases
¡ Engineering Time Reduction
¡ Increased Release Frequency
Source: David Joyce; Kanban Results ; Lean and Kanban; October 24 2009
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shinkansen_tokyo.jpg

7. Marketing Caught
in a Tornado
A new release is out before the
Marketing campaign on the
previous release has even started.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:F5_tornado_Elie_Manitoba_2007.jpg

8. Product
Management is
Swept Away
Product Management can’t keep
up with the deluge of stories
being developed by the teams.

9. Support Can’t
Support…
Customers ask about new
features that Support had no idea
even existed.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/evilerin/3796279865/

10. Change Manager
Meltdown
Change managers used to
processing 50 changes per month
get 900 changes constantly.

11. Professional
Services Tremors
The software changes faster than
a new customer implementation
can be completed.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chuetsu_earthquake-earthquake_liquefaction1.jpg

12. Unstoppable
Prospect Fires
Sales has no input into
prioritization, so every sales deal
becomes a fire drill.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38449766@N03/3602195819/

13. What is wrong with this picture?
Sales Marketing
Product
Development Operations
Management
Professional
Support
Services

14. http://commons.wikimedia.org/
wiki/
File:Train_wreck_at_Montparnass
e_1895.jpg

15. http://www.flickr.com/photos/orcmid/3880057716/
The Secret Sauce – Kanban
Why not apply the same Lean/Kanban principles that work on
the teams to solve the organizational traceability problem?

16. Adapting Kanban to
Portfolio Planning LSSC 2011
• Hierarchical Requirements
• Stakeholder based investment themes and business
case management
• Theme-based Prioritization
• Provide executive control and visibility into resource
constraints
• Dynamic Allocations
• Reallocate resource on the fly to prevent blockages
• Upstream and Downstream WIP Limits
• Surface hidden constraints that exist throughout the
organization

17. Hierarchical Requirements
LSSC 2011
Investment
Themes
Epics
Features
Stories

18. Theme-based Prioritization
LSSC 2011
Allocate Prioritize Team Draft

19. Full Cycle Traceability
LSSC 2011
Validate
Sales
Adopt Enable
Marketing
Proposed
Product
Roadmap Schedule Development
Develop Operations
Deploy
Management
Bottleneck
Validate Adopt Enable Professional
Support
Services

20. Product Portfolio Kanban
Kanban Stages LSSC 2011
WIP Limits
¡ Propose ¡ Benefits:
¡ Biz Case
WL ¡ Roadmap • Alleviate the “Agile Train Wreck”
Capacity ¡ Long Term Roadmap
based WL ¡ Schedule and Achieve Flow
WIP
limits ¡ Committed Roadmap
WL ¡ Develop • Expose and Route Around Political
¡ Software development method in
use
Roadblocks and Priority Alignment
Item/slot WL ¡ Deploy • Focus Organizational Value Return
based
¡ Release Management
WIP
limits WL ¡ Enable
¡ Collateral, Training
¡ Adopt
¡ Marketing
¡ Usage
20

21. http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/3660169591/
Stratus – An LSSC Success Story
• Internal planning tool developed at GXS (formerly Inovis)
• Open-sourced for LSSC 2010
• Adopted by Rally Software
• Under active development by JavaFX guru, Jim Weaver
• Available in private beta
• Contact Catherine Conner <cconner@rallydev.com>

22. Moving the Needle LSSC 2011
¡ Apply these practices at your own organization –
you don’t need fancy tools (although they can
help)
¡ Let us know what is working in your organization –
this is what has worked for us, your experience
may differ
¡ Blog and talk about your results…
Chad Holdorf Check out my Scaled #Agile
Portfolio Planning video
@chadholdorf http://bit.ly/eirKR0.

23. Lean
Software
& Systems
2011
Thanks for Attending!
@steveonjava @agile_exec @ehuddleston @wbodwell