Portfolio management is a key aspect of organizational performance. The ability to visualize upcoming projects, projects in progress, the process of value creation, the dependencies, the ability to share a common vision and to throttle the work in progress based on organizational capacity are all contributing elements to the effectiveness of an organization.

Unfortunately, the shared vision of a portfolio is too often buried in a tool shared with too few people and does not help the organization build a global and cohesive plan of action.

But when we think about it... Value chain, limiting work in progress, transparency, flow... have you ever thought about using Kanban for portfolio management? Seems like a great idea!

Create alignment around what delivers value to your end-users, use cadence to move forward, help shape a new organizational culture, support innovation, continuous improvement, and leadership and unite people around a shared mission, that is what Kanban at the strategic level can bring.

As agility spreads across organisations, the agile practices regarding execution have grown more mature and reliable. The inception phase of projects, however, remains challenging to many agile practitionners. For a long time, we pursued balance between a reckless all-in approach or a long and tedious path through stage gates and chains of approval. As a solution to these concerns, we came up with a path we refer to as the Fast Inception. This path, built with a dense and intense agenda collaborative workshops, is bound to provide a both shorter and safer way to bootsrap your project.