#portfoliomanagement

Project work and developing new products and solutions require a lot from the teams – there may be complex problems to be solved, challenges to get started with the new initiative, stretched timelines to meet, and different types of needs coming from many different stakeholder groups. But even though development work is often very demanding – the best teams still manage to have fun together and achieve a lot!

I am part of my workplace Grow training this autumn and got inspired by the psychological safety theme – here are some reflections on how psychological safety can help Development portfolios perform better!

Making things happen – and having fun in the team level

I am a big fun of Amy Edmondson – and her Creating a Fearless Organization. Based on Amy Edmondson, Psychological safety is not about being nice, avoiding conflicts or an excuse to complain, but creating an environment where development teams have high performance standards, but still feeling safe enough to speak up about mistakes and concerns – and being unafraid to bring up also ideas and questions.

Based on my experience, best performing teams make things happen, but also still manage to have fun. For me, it is always a good sign, when I hear laughter from the development team. When the team has fun together, is also easier to bring up difficult topics, and also find the solutions. Best teams have also fierce debates, as the aim is to find the best solutions. And not to forget wild ideas, which can be enhanced and enriched together as a team.

Inviting to participation – across the organization

When developing complex solutions impacting the work of different business units and end-to-end processes, a significant amount of communication and alignment across the organization is needed. Does the development team feel safe when introducing new ideas and concepts with the stakeholders? How is the feedback given and received?

As a lead of a strategic initiative, there may be many stakeholders groups to be alignment with – and a need to build new connections between the units, which have not been earlier collaborating actively. The way of working, terminology and tools used may differ, and there is a big risk of misunderstanding. Here it is important to keep the big picture, but also actively align with different stakeholder groups, listen and use the feedbacks actively to improve the final outcomes. Are your workshops safe environment to give feedback, bring up ideas and debate?

As a stakeholder of a strategic initiative, it is important to offer support for the development team, even though topic might be new to you, and you may feel uncomfortable to certain extend. Listening actively, and trying to connect the development vision to your own area of expertise is important – and to avoid starting with your own agenda first. Also, bringing up the potential development needs is important, as the development team may not have all the needed knowledge for end-to-end value chain. Are you giving the feedback in a constructive way, which are easy to take into consideration and invite to dive deeper into the topic together?

One of the clear trends I have seen in many companies, is to reduce the amount of steering meetings, and increase the amount of sharing via other means. Great practice widely used by agile teams is to organize demos and reviews – seeing concretely what has been developed helps everyone to understand the content, and bring up also development needs.

Psychological safety in portfolio level decision making

When I was quite fresh from the university, I was working for a large transformation program which had been ongoing for several years. The planned go-live was closing and many team members were really worried about the performance of the solution – as after go-live, the new system could risk the company continuity. When the performance issues were discussed, an experienced management consultant gave an advice: “Senior managers are like sheep, you don’t want to scare them off.”

Well, after all these years I still disagree with that – teams should feel comfortable bringing up also concerns and senior management deserves to get objective and data based understanding. In the end for that specific project, company internal controls worked as they should, and the performance challenges were addressed before the go-live. Oh, what a learning it was for all the stakeholders involved, and big emotions also involved!

Another big ERP implementation project, where I worked, faced a big challenge with technical environments one month prior to go-live. As a program lead, this was not an easy news to bring up, but as a team, we got the full support from the management and all the vendors involved, and the year end schedule was kept thanks to good team work. I think here psychological safety played a key role in that case – discussing openly about the challenge enabled also finding the solutions with all parties.

Here are few tips for portfolio managers and senior management to help the teams:

Encourage teams to share, organize demos and reviews with the rest of the organization – this helps to create alignment and get feedbacks early. Seeing is believing! Participate, sponsor and create a positive and encouraging atmosphere to these events!
No news is not always good news – encourage teams to share openly about their progress and seek for alignment – not only within gate approvals, then it might be too late.
Build flexibility into the decision making – can teams bring up key topics to decision making forum to inform senior management or when guidance is needed?
Don’t kill the messenger – when something goes wrong, don’t find who to blame, but think ways to support to solve the challenge!
Hearing laughter during team meetings is usually a good sign – the best teams have fun and also achieve a lot together!

More blog posts related to portfolio governance available here: Development Portfolio Governance.

References

Amy Edmondson – Creating a Fearless Organization – Youtube video

Why is portfolio data needed?

Clarify why portfolio data is collected, where is it needed, and by whom and when in your organization. Smart stakeholders working with development teams are more willing to maintain the data, when they understand why it is important!

Here are some key reasons relevant for many organizations:

Creating transparency across organization – portfolio views are needed in enterprise business, and unit levels as well as for different stakeholder view points

Communication – portfolio roadmaps, business cases and status updates are important tools to communicate about team plans to a wider group of people. If this data is hidden in slide decks, it may be difficult to manage dependencies across projects and portfolios.

Data driven decision making – enabling better decisions, when seeing the big picture, understanding business case, risks and dependencies. Decision making is often needed in project, portfolio levels, and solid data is helping out a lot!

Master data related to projects, continuous development and other work as well as strategic initiatives and programs is important – data, such as project name, should not vary across the systems.

Balancing demand and capacity – when all demand and work across organization is visible, it is easier to plan capacity and also make better prioritization decision.

Finances and planning – it is important to be able to forecast and follow up on actions and plan also future horizons (budgeting, long range planning). When portfolio data is up-to-date, budgeting and mid-term or long range planning is just updating plans, not collecting everything from the scratch.

What is truly valuable for your organization?

Often portfolio data sets may grow over time, as a new field is added every now and then – over the time portfolio templates may grow to be too complex – and no-one actually knows why a certain data field is needed today.

When defining portfolio data, start with a simple intuitive data set. If too many data fields are required, practitioners start to get overwhelmed, don’t know what fill in and may give up. Think, what is truly valuable, and what data is followed up and used actively.

If you have existing portfolio data, check out if different fields have been filled by practitioners, and if these data fields are actually used by someone. Be brave while leaning your data model! Simple is beautiful! No-one likes a project template filled with unnecessary details, which are nice to have.

Note! If you need to do special portfolio analysis, you can also collect data separately; no need to have a huge amount of data fields, which you might (or might not) need one day.

Who updates the data and when?

Portfolio data has only little value, if it is not systematically maintained. Roles and cadence for data updates is important.

Start with the definition: who maintains the data? Clarify the roles!

What is the cadence for maintaining portfolio data? Many organizations have monthly cadence, but some fast moving areas may need weekly cycles. Also quarterly cadence may make sense, if organization does not have all portfolio management roles filled and if quarterly cycles are natural for the organization.

Follow up – this is especially important at the beginning, when getting started with your portfolio data. Regular reminder and practical support sessions may be helpful, when getting started!

Use portfolio data actively – think about different use cases!

Data should not be only for reporting purposes, it should be used actively – to create transparency, communicate about progress, to have feedback loops on objectives, balance demand and capacity, follow up on benefit realization and plan for the next steps.

Learn what works best for your organization – hear out what needs different stakeholders have!

Think about different use cases and different roles using data – how to create transparency and different portfolio views?

Avoid extracting data to static reports as it gets outdated fast – use tools and reporting capabilities as much as possible.

Avoid having the same data in many different systems or tools, unless they are integrated, and one of the the systems is master. It is really difficult to maintain the data in many sources!

Learn from data – how could we improve?

Once basics are in place, it is possible to learn a lot and analyze portfolio based on the collected data.

How could we do better? Do we have challenges in portfolio execution or managing our idea funnel?

Are we achieving our objectives as planned?

Is our benefit realization on track? Are we achieving our objectives as planned?

Do we need investments in new areas? Is our portfolio balanced, or do we focus too much on keep the business running activities?

I would love to hear your pro tips how to make portfolio data easier to keep up-to-date and more helpful for different stakeholders!

Do You Hear Laughter? Tips for Creating Psychological Safety for Development Teams