“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.  It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives – choice, not chance, determines your destiny.” 

Aristotle

With respect to a process that most certainly raises the hackles on many folks, I couldn’t think of a better way to describe the intent behind why having a Portfolio Review & Governance process is so important than this quote from Aristotle.

As an organization, we align around a certain set of goals every year to help drive the business forward. Not every idea makes the final cut, but this painstaking process is necessary to focus everyone on the core set of major work initiatives to bring about the biggest impact. These major work initiatives are often aligned by business lines, product lines, geographic lines, etc, and get broken down into distinct blocks of work delivered over the course of due time via an agreed upon product roadmap.

Sounds simple enough, right? What could possibly be so difficult in delivering against what we said was so important? Well, as Product Management leaders I am quite certain you have experienced some of these … competitive disruptions, acquisitions, a new major customer/partner, a leadership change inside the organization, a critical system failure, a pandemic, etc. I’ve personally experienced changes due to all of these and I’m certain this is not an exhaustive list.

What is critical is not managing towards an expectation of preventing change, but rather having the confidence to manage through the change WHEN it does occur. Not if, when.

When I was reading various materials regarding the Portfolio Review & Governance process, these are just a few of the descriptions/definitions I found:

• Software governance provides organizations with a structure for aligning their development strategy with the overall business strategy, using a formal framework to enable tracking and measuring performance against specific strategic goals.
• Portfolio governance management supports how project stakeholders exchange relevant and reliable information in a timely manner.
• Portfolio governance management will also serve as guide for investment analysis to:
  • Identify threats and opportunities
  • Assess change, impacts and dependencies
  • Achieve performance targets
  • Select, schedule and prioritize activities

This is good guidance. And when I align this input against the quote from Aristotle, the intent then is to provide a framework (high intention) by which all project decisions are made (sincere effort); to engage key stakeholders for informed decision making (intelligent execution); and to ensure alignment with respect to changes to existing plans (wise choices)​. 

Everything we do should be predicated on remaining focused as an organization on our most important priorities (portfolio review), while allowing for the agility to adjust as the organization requires (governance).​

• Portfolio Level – key stakeholders across the organization should have a consistent view of the most important priorities from an investment and planning perspective, as well as a transparent view into the status/progress of those priorities at a given point in time.
• Product/Program Level – all work should be agreed upon amongst the cross-functional teams and communicated broadly via the product roadmap, and specifically with respect to the current PI planning cycle.
• Product Team Level – key organizational priorities and product planning will guide the sprint & release planning efforts to ensure alignment of work.

Regardless of whether a pending change is represented in the earlier list, or something entirely different, it should always be evaluated through these lenses. Changes to prior committed work (organizational key priorities and/or PI planning commitments) must be agreed upon across major stakeholders.

I had a colleague once who put it this way … I’ve got a can that holds 100 beans. We previously agreed as to which 100 beans would fit in the can. You’ve just given me 3 more beans, but they don’t fit. So which 3 beans should I take out in order to put the 3 new beans in?

Again, it is not a matter IF changes occur, it is a matter of WHEN. The question every Product Management leader should wrestle with is whether or not you have the necessary framework in place to manage through the change.