2. WEBINAR Use Portfolio Management To Build Resource Agility
Margo Visitacion, Vice President, Principal Analyst
May 24, Call in at 12:55 p.m. Eastern time

4. Agenda
Traditional resource management concepts and challenges
Optimization: Resources are your portfolio.
Building transparency

5. Agenda
Traditional resource management concepts and challenges
Optimization: Resources are your portfolio.
Building transparency

6. Resource management: today’s biggest challenge
Source: Forrester’s Q Global State Of Strategic Planning, Enterprise Architecture, And PMO Online Survey

7. Resource management concepts
Efficient and effective deployment of an organization’s resources when and where they’re needed
Definition
Estimation of required resources for planned work
Forecasting
Assigned and secured at the start of initiatives
Considers current needs
Allocation
Monitoring capacity
Reassignment as needed
Management

8. Resource management challenges
Efficient and effective deployment of an organization’s resources when and where they’re needed
Made inefficient and ineffective due to lack of process and automation
Definition
Estimation of required resources for planned work
Disconnected forecasting creates dependencies and bottlenecks.
Forecasting
Assigned and secured at the start of initiative and considers only current needs
Reactive responses throw plans into disarray and long-term impact is often disregarded.
Allocation
Monitoring capacity and reassignment as needed
Lack of visibility creates cascading issues down the road.
Management

9. Old school reality Resources get locked down. More demand comes in.
Test
Demand
Problems
Change requests
Project
PMs
Ops
Dev
Resources get locked down.
More demand comes in.
People get overallocated. UX BA EA $
Exec management chokes on the total cost.
Budget wars reach a
“negotiated settlement.”

10. New school reality Highly autonomous workforce
26% telecommute at least once a week.
35% work at a client site at least a few times a month.
Highly autonomous workforce
70% collaborate directly with customers, clients, or patients.
14% collaborate with coworkers in other countries.
Event driven with diminished predictability
Information workers leverage an average of eight applications per day to perform their job.
Multitasking
Source: Forrester’s BT Apps And Collaboration Survey, 2014

11. Hybrid approaches need to align
Traditional project and task planning
Agile, iterative, and hybrid life cycles
Low
Plan
Analyze
Design
Code
Test
Implement
Churn/change = $$€££
Certainty
High

12. Agenda
Traditional resource management concepts and challenges
Optimization: Resources are your portfolio.
Building transparency

13. Five best practices to improve resource management
Strive for throughput, not utilization.
Deliver in small batches.
Dedicate teams to release trains.
Minimize handoffs, maximize flow.
Eliminate overhead.
+1 more: Practice transparency.
Base: 600 IT professionals with app development responsibilities from the US, Canada, the UK, France, and Germany; Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of IBM, May 2014

14. Cross-functional organizations are common in the age of the customer
Source: “Improve Customers’ Experience By Improving Employees’ Effectiveness” Forrester report

15. Agile release train — program approach

16. ARTs focus teams on delivering value2 1 3 5 4 6 7 $$
Project 1
Project 2 $$ $$
Month 2 1 3 5 4 6 7 $$
Project 1
Project 2 $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$
Month

17. Smaller batches of work = faster speed, more feedback, and less failure
much better than

18. Dedicated teams in shared services environment
Planning teams
Senior product/program owner
Development leader
PPMO supports t t t t
Squads
Architect/UX leader t t t t t t t t
Scrum master
Shared services
Dev
Ops
ePMO
CoEs
Arch.
Test
DevOps
Arch/dev
PCOE

19. Minimum valuable product (MVP) = identify needs and commit
. . .
. . . R1 R2 R3 R4 R5 R6 R7
Deliver MVP quickly — improve based on feedback.

20. Use value streams to help prioritize
FUNDING VALUE STREAMS, NOT PROJECTS
Sales and marketing
Human resources
Finance
Logistics
Call center
Time to delivery
Budgeting
Value stream
Can value stream give me a clearer understanding of costs?
Can this help align with strategic objectives?
Will this help with faster, better decision-making and problem resolution?

21. Identify value streams to reduce waste/eliminate bottlenecks
Idea
Understand needs
Develop
Test
Deploy
Customer value
1 day
3 days
5 days
5 days
3 days
7 days
4 days
9 days
10 days
Process time
Lead time
Total = 47 days
Lead time ladder
Source: “Application Delivery In The Modern Age” Forrester report

22. Agenda
Traditional resource management concepts and challenges
Optimization: Resources are your portfolio.
Building transparency

23. Portfolio management controls complexity of increased scale
Sequencing sprints
Release planning
Consistent cadence for monitor/reporting
Image source: Craig Larman (

24. The living road map: continuous planning cadence
Strategic themes captured in strategic/capability planning tools
Strategic road map
Yearly plans for initiatives
Budget and resources captured in portfolio management tools
Release planning by quarter Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
Sprint planning captured in Agile project management tools
DevOps
Road map review
FY planning
Portfolio update
Continuous execution/performance feed back loops

25. Recommendations Focus resources around programs.
Organize by capabilities.
Establish teams as units, and associate resources by tagging.
Manage WIP.
Forecasting for nondedicated resources:
Never forecast at 100% — take their day
job into account.
Allocate at 100% — no switching.

26. Recommendations (cont.)
Capture all the work.
Everything is on the backlog — strive for just enough information to help you make a decision.
Measure for velocity.

27. But what about time tracking???
Tracking project time:
By milestone
Tied to a deliverable
Per Agile sprint
Features delivered — regular work week
Waterfall activity
Project management
Requirements
Design
Coding/unit testing
Testing
Release management
Documentation
Training
Deliverable
Make it simple.
Important to focus on ETC
Percentage complete — cannot be a swag.

28. Margo Visitacion