Take the right steps in scaling Agile
Being an agile enterprise means you’re fast, flexible and ready to respond to the unexpected. But as Agile development intensifies across your company, how can you be sure it stays in line with business goals? The secret to your success is strategic portfolio management - a guide for your agile enterprise framework.
Find out why in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Strategic Portfolio Management.
How "agile" are you?
Discover how to use strategic portfolio management (SPM) to effectively scale Agile development to the enterprise level. Margo Visitacion—Principal Analyst at Forrester Research—and Dr. Ulrich Kalex—SVP at Software AG—discuss best practices on SPM competencies, organizational planning and delivery aligned with corporate priorities.
Lean portfolio,
fat returns
For many organizations, Lean portfolio management is the key to aligning product investments with business strategy. But to go Lean, you need to have the right tools in place. In this playbook, we look at how EA and IT portfolio management make Lean portfolio management possible.
Go Agile by integrating strategy & execution
In today’s rapidly changing business environment, agile delivery of services and products are essential for business success and dependant on methods for scaled Agile delivery of IT solutions such as the Scaled Agile Framework framework (SAFe). However, gaps in the chain between strategic priorities and software delivery can seriously undermine delivery efforts if priorities change. Fortunately, integrating EA and SPM systems using Alfabet can help close these gaps and keep digital innovation going.
Core capabilities for strategic portfolio management for the Agile organization
Strategic portfolio management enables you to confidently govern digital innovation throughout the enterprise. This will be critical as you move to scale Agile across your organization. With the right strategic portfolio management capabilities, you’ll know your teams are focused firmly on corporate priorities and making the best possible decisions on digital business change.
Strategic business planning
Your strategic business planning capabilities should enable a clear line-of-sight from high-level goals to the strategic themes (IT initiatives) that implement those goals. They should also ensure that you can plan business outcomes at the strategic theme level and measure outcome achievement. As your business and operating models change along with the delivery of new digital products and services, capture these changes and use them to drive IT portfolio transformation.
Strategic portfolio management
Your strategic portfolio management capabilities should support alignment of the IT portfolio with the digital business strategy. They should provide many and varied insights into the IT portfolio to ensure you make the best possible decisions on change. Implement assessment functionality that allows you to evaluate the current portfolio and desired changes based on aspects such as risk, resources, architectural impact, impact on asset portfolios and the constraints set by the Agile budget. Be able to prioritize decisions on investment into strategic themes based on their contribution to goal achievement, strategic alignment, risk and Agile budget size.
Road-mapping
Develop an IT road-mapping capability that supports all aspects of Agile portfolio management including definition and management of strategic business and product roadmaps, and the ability to juxtapose different roadmaps and expose dependencies. Roadmaps should cover a broad range of strategic and operational milestones such as outcome fulfilment, deliverables (capabilities, organizations, services, applications, products, etc.), programs, Agile release trains (ARTs), epics, demands and resources. Be able to simulate change in a roadmap to understand the impact on deliverables and outcomes.
Agile financial management
Build capabilities for IT financial management that will support planning and allocation of funding for Agile products. Adopt a financial model that supports Agile planning including the assignment of Agile budgets to strategic themes, and their management within the context of those themes. Complement strategic theme-based planning with asset portfolio funding for development and optimization of existing products and other assets including delineation of funds for CapEx and OpEx. Funding review cycles should be on a regular cadence, ideally automatically triggered.
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