“The Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) workshop was incredibly useful for our implementation of SAFe at Travelport. The format and structure of the workshop enabled us to create our LPM implementation roadmap, and depart the workshop with next steps clearly articulated and actionable. I highly recommend this workshop for any organization implementing lean portfolio management practices at scale.”
—Hilla Knapke, Director, Agile Practice Office and SAFe Enterprise Transformation, Travelport

When we launch new courses here at Scaled Agile, we frequently conduct empathy interviews to understand our customer’s problems and test early versions of our courseware in ‘alpha’ classes to validate that the content, flow, and exercises we’ve designed are hitting the mark. We received the feedback above after the workshop I conducted at Travelport for our newest course, Lean Portfolio Management (LPM). Needless to say, I was elated. And when I combined that feedback with additional insights from previous alpha classes, as well as this week’s beta session, I’m confident the LPM course is just what enterprises need to successfully align strategy with execution—and to merge the insights of executives, product managers, business owners, and Agile teams into a new, Lean-Agile way of working.

Everyone seems to have enjoyed the video on strategy and all the interactive exercises, including developing strategic themes, developing the current and future state portfolio canvases, and participatory budgeting.

We all know that agreeing on strategy isn’t simple—opinions abound and important stakeholders don’t always agree. But clearly, misalignment on strategy has an unacceptably high cost. An enterprise can only achieve its strategic business objectives when it invests in building the right things. Through our Lean Portfolio Management course, we aim to teach enterprises how to implement Lean, Agile, and systems thinking approaches to strategy and investment funding, Agile Portfolio Operations, and Lean Governance. These collaborations give the enterprise the ability to reliably execute existing commitments and better enable innovation.

This three-day, interactive course offers attendees the opportunity to capture the current and future state of their portfolio using the Portfolio Canvas, and identify important business initiatives for achieving the future state. Using the Portfolio Kanban, participants learn how to establish portfolio flow and prioritize initiatives for maximum economic benefit. You can read more about the course and view prerequisites here.

An enormous amount of thought and effort went into developing this course. Many thanks to all those who contributed: The entire Framework team: Dean, Inbar Oren, Steve Mayner, Harry Kohnemann, Luke Hohmann, Isaac Montgomery (Advisory Services). The Learning and Certification team: Tedy Dimitrova and Kade O’Casey. Scaled Agile Partners and customers who participated in the alpha workshops. And a special thanks to Travelport who hosted a private LPM Alpha course for their entire SAFe transformation team.

“The Scaled Agile Inc. SAFe® LPM (Beta) was great! This is going to be a powerful course for executives and leaders who want to weave strategy and execution together into a single way of working.”—Phil Gardiner, Enterprise Lean Agile Coach, SAIC

Registration is now live for the June course in Boulder, Colorado. Go here for details and to sign up. Additional LPM course dates and locations are coming soon.

Stay SAFe,
—Richard Knaster