Sometimes when we are busy with day-to-day work, it is not so easy to take time for thinking about development portfolio vision – what would bright future look like! However, if clear inspiring vision is missing, prioritization may be difficult as there are many potential future visions to look into. A common vision creates also motivation across teams – our development work will contribute to this cool future vision – it really matters in a big picture! And my contribution counts!
I will summarize couple of tips how to work on your development portfolio vision. These methods work well for transformation programs or large projects too! Or even for your personal development – why not?
The Bright Future Method
My former colleague Mirette Kangas has been teaching The Bright Future method, which is one of the great tools, I recommend getting familiar with. You can find lots of great content, also The Bright future materials Yle Lean Culture Toolkit 2.0, but here is a short summary of the method also in English:
The idea is simple, gather your team, and start to systematically think about what the bright future will look like.
Let’s jump into the bright future now!
Even though it is not always easy, this workshop should not focus on current state challenges, but focus on the bright future ahead.
For each round, it is good to start alone and ideate (writing items into post-its physically or via online white board). Next step would be the share the ideas in pairs, discuss and create more ideas together. The it is time to consolidate ideas within your group – share highlights and put post is to the canvas. If you are working with a large workshop, whole group can also have a short round table to share the highlights. Tip for facilitator – remember strict time boxing, to have time for each round!
Round 1: Thinking
- What kind of thinking and beliefs guide the creation and behavior of structures (and how does it differ from how people think today)?
Round 2: Structures
- What structures do we have in our bright future that enable and promote the activities and behavior we describe?
Round 3: Behavior
- How should we act (and how is it different from the current state) in order to produce the kind of results we describe?
Round 4: Ideas about the Results
- What value do we produce for our customers and other reference groups?
- What kind of outputs and services do we produce?
Summarize and prioritize development items into your roadmaps and backlogs
Summarize your results together to create an inspiring bright future vision!
And remember to use the workshop results actively – consolidate development ideas into backlog, and prioritize – do you have low hanging fruits, do you identify new development epics to reach your bright future vision? Also updating your future roadmaps to achieve the future vision is important – tips related to road mapping will be covered in the next blog post – stay tuned!
For me, a temptation is to skip rounds 1-3 and move directly to the Results part – however, thinking also about change of thinking, supporting structures and behavior are super important. So follow the process!
For Finnish speaking readers, strong recommendation to check out Yle Lean Culture Toolkit 2.0 by Mirette Kangas with the original materials for The Bright Future method – also lots of other great materials I recommend to look into!
Portfolio vision in Scaled Agile Lean portfolio management
Again, Scaled agile framework (SAFe) includes great tools for portfolio vision definition. Here are my favorite ones:
- Postcard from the future – wish we were here! You could use Postcard from the future to summarize your Bright Future workshop results.
- Portfolio Canvas (adapted from The business Model Canvas) – creating current state and future state portfolio canvases – good tool for portfolio managers working with agile or hybrid development portfolios!
- TOWS Strategic Options Matrix based on SWOT analysis – familiar idea for many of you, always a great way to summarize options
- Identifying portfolio epics and enablers based on the future vision – if this step is forgotten, it is unlikely to actually reach the future vision!
Making the bright future concrete via Objectives and key results (OKRs)
Objectives and key results are a great tool to setup time bound objectives – and are a great match to make vision concreate and measurable. Have a look at the tips related to OKRs via the previous blog post!
References
Yle Lean Culture Toolkit 2.0 by Mirette Kangas – also lots of other great materials I recommend to look into!
Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) Lean portfolio management includes great tools to support portfolio vision definition:
Strategic Portfolio Management 
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