Introducing Agile Portfolio Management to your organisation

It happens in almost every organisation: business management and IT projects are approached independently of each other, and it becomes near-impossible to keep track of what’s happening across the business. Or, there are too many teams and processes involved, and they don’t work together efficiently.

How do you take control of all your organisation’s different change initiatives? It can be difficult to get everyone on one page, working with the same strategy while staying flexible. But with Agile Portfolio Management, you can gain a stronger grip on your whole change portfolio using one cohesive approach.

What is Agile Portfolio Management?

With traditional portfolio management, the focus is on projects and budgeting. Requirements are fixed, and the timelines and costs can vary to accommodate those needs. But that means deadlines and budgets are often exceeded.

Agile Portfolio Management avoids this by putting the focus on development teams, who work in short, tightly timed sprints with a set budget. Working within those constraints means the organisation makes strategic decisions about which features are necessary, and adapts flexibly to changing requirements – unlike traditional methods.

Value streams and prioritisation

In traditional portfolio management, development is driven by individual departments or business units, which means projects aren’t always completed in the order that provides the most value to the whole organisation.

Agile Portfolio Management identifies value streams to organise projects – known as ‘epics’ – and decides the order to tackle them in using program increment (PI) planning. Regular PI sessions bring stakeholders together to agree on how to handle resource use, risk, and dependencies.

This increases collaboration throughout the organisation, and ensures development work is directed towards projects that will have a real impact.

The Agile Portfolio Management methodology aligns with our unique approach to helping organisations move from strategy to execution through our Business Transformation Framework.

The framework provides insight into how you can go from strategy to execution, eventually developing a change portfolio that establishes which epics or projects must be carried out to realise your goals.

The Business Transformation Framework can therefore be a great starting point for introducing Agile Portfolio Management into your organisation.

Outlining your APM roadmap

So how do you get started with Agile Portfolio Management?

We help our customers approach the transition to APM through a five-step process, working directly with clients to implement Agile techniques within their organisation.

In the image below, you can see each stage, and what organisations need to do to reach phase five – the stage where you can achieve the full control and added value the Agile method provides.

When you work with RHDHV Digital, our consultants can take the lead or support your leadership – whatever works for your organisation.

APM in action: Ymere

Ymere, a major housing association in Amsterdam, approached Novius, a company of Royal HaskoningDHV, to help its organisation adopt a more effective, collaborative way to handle its many business management initiatives.

Read the case study to see how Agile Portfolio Management helped Ymere to:

• Create a central overview of responsibilities, forecasts, business priorities, and value delivered
• Prioritise value by completing ongoing projects, making informed executive decisions, and iterating on successful MVPs
• Motivate employees by increasing ownership, accountability and coordination between teams

Take your first steps with Agile

If you want to make more decisive actions, take a more value-driven approach to your projects, and respond flexibly and efficiently to changing requirements and circumstances, Agile Portfolio Management is the ideal solution.

It gives you the oversight, control, and collaborative decision-making your organisation needs to make effective changes – and create a culture of development and innovation that lasts.

Our consultants have experience with APM, understand the best practices for implementation, and are ready to help you take your organisation’s first steps on its Agile roadmap.

Contact our experts Artëm Dembski, Etienne Lucas or Jessie Schuurman today to discuss how APM could fit into your organisation.