For portfolio leaders and the shapers who serve them who want to increase the effectiveness and impact of their portfolio management approaches, Shaping Portfolio Agility is a podcast hosted by SAFe Fellows Mark Richards and Eric Willeke. It helps portfolio leaders expand their mindset towards lean portfolio management.The show kicks off with a seven-podcast arc covering our key mindsets on portfolios, how they fit in an ecosystem, and how they shape and respond to enterprise strategy. It continues with guest appearances from thought leaders and portfolio leaders. The show does not attempt to ”teach” LPM as a structured series of lessons. Rather, it is shaped to inspire healthy mindsets and approaches for growth.
Louise Higgins on leadership resilience and cultural integration
Louise Higgins joins Mark and Eric to explore what it really takes to lead large-scale transformation. From tech-finance partnerships to cultural integration, she shares candid lessons on empathy, pace, and executive presence. Whether navigating M&A or shaping the future of banking, Lou reminds us: it’s not just what you change—it’s how you lead through it.
3 Jan 2025
Evan Leybourn on the Vicious and Virtuous Cycles of Change
“Just as delegation is a skill that can get taught to leaders and often is, the ability to take ownership is a skill that needs to be developed in people, and organizations often do not invest in training that.” - Evan LeybournIn this episode, we are joined by Evan Leybourn, the founder and CEO of the Business Agility Institute. Evan has been a thought leader in the realm of Business Agility since 2008, advocating for organizations to rethink how they operate, lead, and govern to become...
1 Oct 2024
Natalie Field on Leading with Purpose, Clarity, and Accountability (#12)
“Often, there’s a real lack of clarity about where we are now. And it can be a very uncomfortable, painful set of truths that people don’t want to face. But to create progress, you need to face uncomfortable truths and understand where you’re starting from." - Natalie FieldIn this episode, we’re joined by Natalie Field. Nat recently commenced as CEO of Informed Decisions and has accrued a wealth of portfolio leadership experience over the course of her career. Highlights include serving as th...
18 Sept 2024
Karl Scotland on Strategy Deployment (#11)
"Real strategy deployment empowers teams to act on strategic intent with ownership and clarity." - Karl ScotlandWe’re joined by Strategy Deployment expert Karl Scotland in this episode. Karl helps businesses become Learning Organisations through outcome-oriented, continuous transformation, engaging everyone, everywhere.Over the last 20+ years, he has been an advocate of Lean and Agile approaches to achieve this, working with companies including the BBC, Yahoo!, EMC Consulting, Rally Soft...
28 Aug 2024
Navigating Change and Building Empathy - Christine Babowicz on the Path to Portfolio Agility
"So on any given day, I'm just managing those planes and flight patterns and trying to make sense and create that sequencing of road maps. Or at least highlight, hey, you're not going to achieve that, because this strategy over here in this portfolio isn't even thinking that way” - Christine BabowiczWhen we decided to start inviting guests to join us, we were passionate about finding people with real lived experience to share their hard-won insights and wisdom. We were very gratef...
21 Aug 2024
Luke Hohmann on Building Sustainable and Profitable Portfolios
“The right collective organization tends to have fewer blind spots, because, by definition, a team is a transactional memory system of sufficient predictive power that we can know how to work together” - Luke HohmannWhen we decided to start inviting interesting guests to join our portfolio conversations, Luke Hohmann was an obvious first choice. Luke is a four time author, three time founder, SAFe® Fellow, keynote speaker, and internationally recognized expert in Agile Software Developm...
16 Aug 2024
What to expect as a member of a portfolio 'going lean' (#8)
"The journey to get there isn’t easy. The outcomes, when it works, are pretty amazing and unbelievable, but you’ll find a whole new set of problems you never imagined could go wrong"Eric WillekeWith the initial arc complete, this episode adopts a new perspective triggered by our conversations at the SAFe Summit in Berlin. We step into the shoes of portfolio members, embarking on a lean journey. The conversation begins by exploring how their first steps into lean portfolio management will look...
29 Apr 2024
Applying a Lean Lens to Portfolio Operations and Governance (#7)
"You get a mad underspend in Q1; then you spend Q2 and Q3 trying to catch up on the questions about your Q1 underspend. This is variation waste, and causes massive issues in terms of the ability of the system to absorb the work" - Mark Richards
In this episode, we turn our attention to the application of lean to Portfolio Operations and Governance. Eric focuses on improving flow, while Mark wants to reduce waste. We start by looking at aggregating and analyzing patterns from portfolio members. Discussing moving from PMO to VMO is a prelude to exploring the lean evolution of portfolio events and governance.
We cover:
(00:00) Intro
(2:16) How does the systems view of the portfolio help you find points of leverage?
(10:31) What happens when you aggregate and analyze problem data from portfolio members?
(15:10) Why are standards so important to portfolio insights?
(19:38) What typical patterns does a portfolio-level view of Inspect & Adapt events reveal?
(23:51) How can you learn from analyzing escalation patterns?
(32:10) What’s the difference between a PMO and a VMO?
(38:01) What happens when you apply the classic lean waste definitions to portfolio operations and governance?
(46:42) How does monitoring and governance change in a lean world?
(51:41) How do you improve the data that supports effective operational governance?
(1:02:04) Is empathy still important for strategic portfolios?
Cast:
Eric Willeke (http://linkedin.com/in/ericwilleke)
Mark Richards (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amarkrichards/)
Book References:
Lean Product and Process Development (https://amzn.asia/d/4azOl6S) – Allen Ward
From PMO to VMO (https://amzn.asia/d/3tLzvYR) – Augustine
22 Apr 2024
Generating Portfolio Insights that Lead to Effective Interventions (#6)
"In most cases, the portfolio itself is under a fog of war. You can't actually see what's going on unless you take your telescope and really zoom in on an area" - Eric Willeke
This episode concludes the initial six-part arc laying the foundations of lean portfolio management. The first five episodes were devoted to building a clear picture of your portfolio ecosystem. Picture in hand, we explore the insights it might yield and the ensuing interventions they should trigger. The conversation dwells primarily on strategic insights, exploring the concept of 'acting this fiscal year' with operational interventions and preparing to activate strategic interventions next fiscal year.
In this episode, we cover:
(00:40) Episode Intro
(01:56) How do you avoid just having great conversations?
(05:14) How do you pick the right interventions and get support to act on them?
(16:13) Why start with strategy? What are some typical insights, what kind of interventions do they yield, and how does the fiscal year influence things?
(33:26) How do you leverage operational interventions to act on strategy insights?
(38:24) What happens when you focus on portfolio-level strategy insights rather than the ecosystem?
(51:13) How do you move from executive hunches to data-driven insights and interventions?
(58:05) What about outcome-based insights?
(1:03:51) Wrap
Cast:
Eric Willeke (http://linkedin.com/in/ericwilleke)
Mark Richards (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amarkrichards/)
Show Notes (https://www.shapingagility.com/blog/shaping-portfolio-agility-e6)
15 Apr 2024
Healthy Portfolio Patterns (#5)
"It's common for people to say they have a platform strategy that doesn't necessarily resemble a platform strategy so much as a center of dependency hell" - Mark Richards
In Episode 3, we explored the influence of Moore's Zone to Win model on understanding the portfolio ecosystem. Episode 4 explored the role of purpose, context, and structure in modeling the ecosystem you have and starting to look at it through Lean eyes. In this episode, we combine these ideas with the portfolio examples defined in the SAFe Portfolio article Eric contributed to last year. This sets the stage for exploring leveraging the examples to make sense of the portfolio ecosystem you have today and begin to think about the one you'd like to have tomorrow.
In this episode, we cover:
(00:39) Episode Intro
(02:51) Why is understanding the portfolio ecosystem so important?
(05:31) What was the thinking behind SAFe's Portfolio examples?
(15:49) What is the Single Portfolio example, and when is it too simplistic?
(26:37) Which portfolio examples live in the Performance Zone?
(54:10) Why are the Productivity Zone examples so useful?
(01:06:31) How do you avoid the misconception that an Innovation Portfolio is the only place where innovation happens?
(01:13:07) Why do none of the examples naturally map to the Transformation Zone?
(01:18:43) Wrap
Cast:
Eric Willeke (http://linkedin.com/in/ericwilleke)
Mark Richards (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amarkrichards/)
Show Notes (https://www.shapingagility.com/blog/shaping-portfolio-agility-e5)
Book References:
Zone to Win (https://amzn.asia/d/8wQRXYY) – Geoffrey Moore
Other References:
SAFe Portfolio Article (https://scaledagileframework.com/portfolio/)
8 Apr 2024
Discovering, Designing, and Evolving the Portfolio Ecosystem (#4)
"Create the visualizations that are going to be useful, do some cleanup work to create the space for people to think a little more deeply, and then make sure you don't waste their time so they can put some wins on the board" - Eric Willeke
With our love of strategy off the leash in Episode 3, we continue down the path this episode. We explore why strategy matters so much to portfolio design. This provides a bridge to understanding how portfolios evolve and change over time, the critical characteristics to clarify early, and the questions that might emerge. It's no use having interesting questions if you have no time to wrestle with them. We conclude the episode by examining some of our favorite approaches to creating space for critical conversations.
In this episode, we cover:
(00:39) Episode Intro
(1:38) Why is understanding the portfolio's role in the ecosystem important?
(10:27) How does strategy influence the internals of the portfolio?
(16:51) What's the best way to begin 'becoming lean'?
(33:49) Why are purpose, context, and structure essential to clarify?
(48:09) How do you create space for executives to have conversations that matter?
(01:04:58) Wrap
Cast:
Eric Willeke (http://linkedin.com/in/ericwilleke)
Mark Richards (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amarkrichards/)
Show Notes (https://www.shapingagility.com/blog/shaping-portfolio-agility-e4)
Book References:
Zone to Win (https://amzn.asia/d/8wQRXYY) – Geoffrey Moore
26 Mar 2024
Strategy Partitioning with Portfolios (#3)
"I don't want to have a minnow next to a minotaur because the minnow is never going to feature in the conversation" - Mark Richards
This is the first episode where we deep-dive into strategy. Whether your portfolio is shaping a strategy or deploying one shaped elsewhere, you need tools to contextualize it in the overall enterprise. We take horizon-based investment and Geoffrey Moore's Zone to Win model and explore what happens when you use it as a conceptual model for your portfolio ecosystem.
Along the way, we discuss our belief that you should be able to take an overall enterprise strategy and model your portfolios as logical pieces of it. Each should have a clear purpose and context, and collectively they should add back up to the whole. Our conversation explores the implications of each of Moore's four zones and the insights and implications that emerge when you leverage them to characterize your portfolios.
In this episode, we cover:
(00:39) Episode Intro
(3:00) Why partition your strategy?
(7:01) What is horizon-based investment?
(14:38) How does Geoffrey Moore's Zone to Win model help us understand portfolios?
(24:56) What is the Performance Zone and how does it apply to portfolios?
(38:31) What types of portfolios live in the Productivity Zone, and what are the strategy implications?
(49:04) What is the difference between general "innovation investment" and the Incubation Zone?
(55:41) When does the Transformation Zone come to life, and what kind of strategies play out there?
(1:05:02) Wrap
Cast:
Eric Willeke (http://linkedin.com/in/ericwilleke)
Mark Richards (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amarkrichards/)
Show Notes (https://www.shapingagility.com/blog/shaping-portfolio-agility-e3)
Book References:
Your strategy needs a strategy (https://amzn.asia/d/dRMc11f) – Reeves, Haanaes, Sinha
Zone to Win (https://amzn.asia/d/8wQRXYY) – Geoffrey Moore
26 Mar 2024
What makes a portfolio lean, and what are its jobs to be done? (#2)
"In nearly half of the cases I can think of, the things that the teams most hate providing to governance are the same things the governance team doesn't actually want and doesn't know how to tell the teams to stop providing" - Eric Willeke
This episode dives into the 'Lean' aspect of lean portfolio management. It begins with a brief exploration of lean and systems thinking and their focus on optimizing the whole, improving flow, and reducing waste. We then 'put our lean hats on' to explore lean’s relation to strategy, operations, and governance.
Treating these elements as a portfolio's 'jobs to be done,' we stress the importance of taking the portfolio in your line of sight and understanding its mandate for each job. We share common patterns and variations of mandates we've seen and typical ways in which lean thinking generates positive change.
In this episode, we cover:
(00:39) Intro
(01:34) Where do you start with lean portfolio management?
(16:45) What are the first questions you ask?
(25:47) What are the primary jobs of a portfolio?
(29:50) How do the mandates typically vary for these jobs?
(36:56) Governance is often a dominant mandate. How does lean shift the governance mindset?
(42:00) What are the significant opportunities with lean operations?
(46:14) How do strategic mandates vary, and how does this affect your initial lean focus?
(54:07) What are the most common first steps in the lean governance space?
(58:13) Wrap
Cast:
Eric Willeke (http://linkedin.com/in/ericwilleke)
Mark Richards (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amarkrichards/)
Show Notes (https://www.shapingagility.com/blog/shaping-portfolio-agility-e2)
26 Mar 2024
Portfolios: What are they, and what really matters
"Start with questions that paint a picture of today before you try painting a picture of tomorrow" - Mark Richards
In this podcast's first episode, we lay the foundations for exploring Lean Portfolio Management. We start with a high-level overview of portfolios and their uses and share our stories of first encountering them. From there, we dig into the few key definitions and elements we feel are critical to setting the stage for the show's arc before diving into the tensions, trade-offs, and recurring definitional pieces.
We stress the importance of being aware of your naturally inherent bias and the criticality of your starting stance: seeking first to understand. The first questions we pose in pursuit of understanding relate to the nature of the portfolio, the mandate, its context in the ecosystem, and its relationship to strategy, portfolio operations, and governance.
In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Podcast Overview and Origins
(02:06) Episode Intro
(02:58) Our stance on SAFe's lean portfolio management content
(04:33) Where did our journey with portfolio management begin?
(15:59) A Portfolio of what?
(27:15) What lens do you look through?
(33:37) Where do you draw the line between defining and steering the investment and operating the portfolio?
(40:31) How do business strategy and business operations interact?
(45:25) What key themes recur when considering a portfolio within the enterprise?
(1:01:30) Wrap
Cast:
Eric Willeke (http://linkedin.com/in/ericwilleke)
Mark Richards (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amarkrichards/)
Show Notes (https://www.shapingagility.com/blog/shaping-portfolio-agility-e1)
Book References:
Your strategy needs a strategy (https://amzn.asia/d/dRMc11f) – Reeves, Haanaes, Sinha
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Podcast Authority Score: 44 / 100
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