SAFe Agile Lean Portfolio Manager (5.1) Questions and Answers

SAFe Agile Lean Portfolio Manager (5.1) Questions and Answers Three essential collaborations of LPM - ANSWER- 1. Strategy and investment funding 2. Agile portfolio operations 3. Lean governance How does the LPM Competency align strategy with execution – ANSWER By applying Lean and systems thinking approaches to strategy and investment funding, Agile portfolio operations, and governance. What are the seven core competencies? - ANSWER- Organization Agility Lean Portfolio Management Agile Product Delivery Team and Technical Agility Continuous Learning Culture Enterprise Solution Delivery Lean-Agile Leadership What are the two primary aspects of a Lean-Agile Mindset - ANSWER- Thinking Lean with the SAFE House of Lean Embracing Agility with the Agile Manifesto What are the components of the SAFE House of Lean? - ANSWER- Respect for people and culture Flow Innovation Relentless Improvement What are the 4 components of the Agile Manifesto? - ANSWER- Individuals and interactions over process and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan Which lean-agile principles apply to the Lean Portfolio Management? - ANSWER- Take an economic view Base milestones on objective evaluation of working systems Visualize and limit WIP, reduce batch sizes and manage queue lengths Decentralize decision-making Organize around value What are the components of take an economic view? - ANSWER- Delivery early and often Operate within Lean Budgets and Guardrails Understand economic trade-offs for Solutions Leverage Suppliers Sequence Jobs (Epics) for maximum benefit Empower local decision-making How do you calculate WSJF? - ANSWER- Cost of Delay divided by the Job Duration (Job Size) What are PI System Demos used for? - ANSWER- Deliver objective progress, product, and process metrics What are the three keys to implementing flow to visualize and limit WIP? - ANSWER- Visualize and limit the amount of WIP to match demand to actual capacity Reduce the batch sizes of work. Manage queue lengths to decrease delays, reduce waste, and improve predictability of outcomes Which decisions should be centralized? - ANSWER- Infrequent, long lasting, and have significant economies of scale? Which decisions should be decentralized? - ANSWER- Frequent, short term, and closer to where work is performed How do Lean Budget Guardrails help decentralize decision making? - ANSWER- Create alignment for decentralized decisions with appropriate controls What are the elements of Lean Agile Leadership? - ANSWER- Core Values Lean-Agile Mindset SAFE Principles Implementation Roadmap SPC (SAFE Program Consultant) What are the results of project cost center budgets? - ANSWER- Slow, complex budgeting process Leads to utilization-based planning and execution Low program throughput Moves the people to the work What are three challenges to functional silos? - ANSWER- Value delivery in silos is inhibited by hand-offs and delays Political boundaries can prevent cooperation across silos Communication across silos is difficult What is a better alternative to organizing by projects? - ANSWER- Organizing around the portfolio's development value streams that create solutions - products and services - used by customers Why are solutions one of the central concepts in SAFE? - ANSWER- Customers do not buy features or capabilities. Rather, they buy whole product solutions that deliver desired outcomes. What is the resource from the SAFE community platform to build a high performing team and identify the development value streams within a portfolio? - ANSWER- SAFE Value Streams and ART Identification What builds, supports, and maintain solutions within a development value stream? - ANSWER- Agile Release Trains ARTs What is a benefit for fixed cost per PI? - ANSWER- Lean budgets are not affected by Feature overruns or changing priorities What are the two value streams in SAFE? - ANSWER- Operational Value Stream Development Value Stream What is the sequence of activities needed to deliver a product or service to a customer? - ANSWER- Operational Value Stream What is the sequence of activities needed to convert a business hypothesis into a technology enabled solution that deliver customer value? - ANSWER- Development Value Stream What are the key benefits to organizing around value? - ANSWER- Enables long-lived stable teams Enables faster learning and shorter time to market Contributes to higher quality and more productivity Supports leaner budgeting mechanisms What is a SAFE Portfolio? - ANSWER- Collection of Development Value Streams How do traditional project portfolio approaches inhibit the flow of value? - ANSWER- Project cost accounting Annual planning and rigid budgeting cycles Perpetual overload of demand versus capacity Phase-gate approval processes that fail to mitigate risk Overly detailed business cases with speculative ROI What's the advantage to organizing people into value streams/ARTs? - ANSWER- Organizing around value and applying cadence-based planning aligns all teams to a shared mission and vision. What inhibits the flow of value and innovation in the Enterprise? - ANSWER- People organized in functional silos What's the advantage of funding development value streams, along with budget guardrails? - ANSWER- Enables faster delivery while maintaining financial and fitness for use governance What's the advantage of rolling wave planning and budgeting? - ANSWER- Enables adapting to change What increases flow through the system?> - ANSWER- Matching demand to capacity What are the advantages to incremental development? - ANSWER- Delivers working solutions faster and earlier Learning is continuous and adjustments can be made incrementally each iteration What are lean business cases (MVP)? - ANSWER- Provide just enough detail to establish viability, a definition of a MVP with a business outcome hypothesis and deployment impact What ensures the entire portfolio is aligned and funded to create and maintain the solutions needed to meet business targets? - ANSWER- Strategy and Investment funding What are the elements of establishing a portfolio strategy and vision? - ANSWER- Connect the portfolio to Enterprise strategy Maintain a portfolio vision Realize portfolio vision through epics Establish lean budgets and guardrails Establish portfolio flow Who are involved in connecting the portfolio to the enterprise strategy? - ANSWER- Enterprise Executives Enterprise Architect Business Owners How is strategy development bi-directional? - ANSWER- Strategic themes and lean budgets are outputs of enterprise strategy formulation.