Organising the portfolio as if you wanted to succeed

About this Workshop

Come and learn how Skype managed a portfolio of work owned by nearly 200 product owners. This workshop will allow you to experience the actual training that all Skype product owners attended to learn how the system worked. The output is an organisational backlog and an understanding of where your constraints are.

We will start by creating an organisational backlog. You will learn the first problem to solve is getting business executives to agree on the priorities. We will then estimate the backlog of work using SWAGs (or Sweet Wild Ass Guesses). Finally we will create a portfolio based on the constraints in the organisation. If we have time, we will show you some tricks to manage those constraints using a skills matrix.

About the Speakers

Chris Matts

Chris is an agile transformation coach. When he finds out what that means, he will let you know. He co-created the GIVEN-WHEN-THEN format for acceptance criteria with Dan North back in 2004. Since then, he has done some stuff with real options, staff liquidity and now capacity planning and IT risk management frameworks. He wrote a book with Olav Maassen and Chris Geary, which is really a graphic novel - but it sounds more impressive to say "a book".

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Nick Poulten

Nick is an agile coach working on the transformation of a major UK high street bank. Over the past 2 years, he has trained over one thousand people in agile as risk management - ranging from scrum masters to senior executives. He is a passionate advocate of training from the back of the room and designs training that is fun, interactive and engaging.