Agile Portfolio Management (Paperback)

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Key Phrases: project portfolio management, agile software development, asset portfolio management, Measuring Portfolios, Portfolio Management Using Scrum, Agile Alliance (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Find out how your company s full project portfolio can benefit from the principles of agility from an expert on agile processes. Agile software development is now more popular than ever, but agility doesn t need to stop there. This guide takes a big-picture look at how portfolio managers and project managers can make use of proven agile development methods to increase organizational efficiency.

It can be difficult for companies to manage multiple development teams and to ensure that they are in line with evolving corporate strategies. Agile project-management methods help you build more flexible processes that invite feedback and collaboration, adapt to change, and gain better project insights. They enable project teams to execute corporate strategy and top-level managers to make sound decisions. This guide delivers practical, real-world strategies for implementing agile methods across your organization. Learn best practices for reassessing your company-wide processes; successfully coordinating multiple software teams without imposing a rigid, top-down structure; developing clear roles and responsibilities; and transitioning to an agile enterprise.

Key Book Benefits:

Delivers practical, real-world guidance on bringing agile software development methods to your entire enterprise Provides specific suggestions for improving processes, developing clear roles, and making decisions Features a survey of popular agile project management methods

About the Author

Jochen (Joe) Krebs is the responsible subject area manager for agile development practices at Bear Stearns in New York City. He spearheads the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN) and is an organizer of the Agile 2008 conference. He recently published the articles Managing an Agile Portfolio and The Agile Pyramid.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Microsoft Press (June 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735625670
• ISBN-13: 978-0735625679
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #197,720 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Full of misunderstandings with some insights, August 15, 2008

By	Bas Vodde (Singapore) - See all my reviews

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I was looking forward to this book! An important hole in the current agile literature and a book only on this subject. Finally... but ... I'm extremely disappointed.

Jochen Krebs' Agile Portfolio Management consists of 3 parts. Part one is called "Agile for Managers", part two is the things about portfolio management and part three is *other* called organization and environment.

The first part consists of three chapters. The first chapter consists a general motivation for agile development and responding to change. The second chapter is a short introduction to Agile development and the last chapter an introduction to project management. This takes up 1/4th of the book. The explanations are poorly written and full with misunderstandings. To give a concrete example, on page 27 Jochen is suggesting that in Scrum you can not have any other meetings except for the daily Scrum. A recommendation which I've never heard before and I'm pretty sure he didn't actually mean that!

Part two consists of about 125 pages and is the main subject of the book, though it starts with three somewhat introduction chapters called Foundation, Metrics and Return of Investment. These chapters don't show too much experience from the author. The suggestion that TDD and Continuous Integration finds defects early so that one of the main quality metrics is open defect count is absurd and goes directly against advise of great agile literature like "Art of Agile development" or "Sustainable Software Development". It gives the feeling the author simply forgot to learn about agile development before he wrote the book. The explanation of story points was vague, the explanation of Use Case points unnecessary. The talk about return of investment forgot to give actual tools for doing so.

After the first 100 pages, I almost threw away the book and was pretty sure I would rate it 1 start. Though, luckily it started to improve. If you buy this book, I recommend to skip the first 100 pages :)

Chapter 7, 8, and 9 cover three portfolios: Project, resource and asset. The project portfolio covered some good ideas like increasing the portfolio decision frequency, using agile metrics and making other decisions than go/kill. The resource portfolio chapter was poor and doesn't talk much about resource management. The asset portfolio chapter is short but covers some important topics not covered frequently in other places.

Part three just consists of two chapters. The first one uses Scrum to become a portfolio management process. I found the idea interest and absurd. Especially the daily portfolio meeting and the portfolio master seen a sure sign of misapplication. The chapter is speculative, the real story about the real situation is missing. It made me doubt the author has actually done this. The second chapter of part three is a chapter about the PMO. I very strongly disagree with the suggestions from the author, especially making the PMO larger for Agile organizations.

In other words, I only thought that part two was worth my time (and only half of that) thats about 50 pages... Next to this, the writing and editing of the book was poor. Some constructions seem very German and sentences are constructed poorly making me sleepy while reading. I wonder if Microsoft Press did any editing at all or supported the author at all. Quite disappointing.

I would not recommend this book to anyone. It's probably better to read some traditional portfolio management book (e.g. Coopers Portfolio Management for New Products) together with some basic Agile books and especially Mike Cohn Agile Estimating and Planning (which covers much of the ROI and value calculation, but explained better). If you read all of these and want some insights and ideas from this book, just read chapter 7, 8 and 9 and skip the rest.

I still rated this book three stars, which is probably too high. After the first 100 pages, I was sure it would not be higher than 1 star. But some chapters contained some insights and that made me decide to give it 2 stars. I switched to three stars simply because I applaud the attempt. This is a new area, there is no existing material and it is great Jochen took this opportunity and tried to fill a gap. Though, a different book is probably needed.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great C-Level intro to Agile, September 8, 2008

By	Stewart Whitman "slw2_00" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As an IT leader in a large financial services firm I appreciated Mr. Krebs' bringing an introduction to Agile to someone with little or no background on the subject.

The book is very approachable and is built for senior managers with very little time (or need) to invest in detailed understanding of Agile.

This book has given me the basis I need to understand where I need to take my organization over the next three years - chucking the old, outdated, mainframe version of software development to a methodology that can meet my business partners need to be more flexible.

I highly recommend this for any IT leader who sees the needs to build a more responsive software development organization.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great coverage for a topic rarely discussed, December 17, 2008

By	Alan Bustamante (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Overall Jochen's book provides a very good introduction to a topic that is rarely addressed in the agile community. Portfolio management has typically been a function that is connected directly to the executive level of an organization because its primary purpose is to link corporate strategy to the projects that are underway within the organization. Many projects will be strategic in nature, but some will not and the goal is to find the balance that makes sense for the organization. It is as much an art as it is a science.

I disagree with the reviewers point on skipping the first 100 pages, because he does not set the expectation that the first section is for readers not familiar with agile software development. As Jochen, clearly states, "The first part of this book is intended for managers who would like to learn more about the benefits and motivations for agile software development." Having worked with many large organizations I can relate to the challenges associated with educating senior and executive level management on the benefits of iterative development. Senior and executive level managers should get a lot of value out of the first section, which covers at a high level, a review of agile software development, how agile ties back to project management, and a justification for the role of agile in an organization. This coverage ends on page 47, not 100. Again, it is high level which should be great for the executive. Any readers wanting a deep dive into the various topics discussed can find plenty of additional supplemental material out there.

The second section introduces Portfolio Management. Here the reader will find the bulk of information on Portfolio Management. No matter what the reader's level of expertise with agile software development, they should walk away with something valuable from this section. I especially liked Chapter 6 on Return on Investment and Chapter 7 on Project Portfolio Management. Chapter 6 will give the reader an idea of how short iterations can quickly build value for the organization and in many cases, return investment dollars much sooner than projects with longer release cycles. Chapter 7 discusses what Jochen calls the "project funnel" for evaluating projects in the pipeline; as well as, the bubble diagram, which readers who are familiar with IBM's Rational Portfolio Manager might recognize. All useful tools when managing the project portfolio

The third section introduces the concept of Portfolio Management using Scrum; as well as, how agile software development impacts the Project Management Organization (PMO). I think the Portfolio Management using Scrum concept is a nice attempt at tying Portfolio Management back to a familiar and popular agile framework such as Scrum. One reviewer pointed out that "It made me doubt the author has actually done this". I think the reviewer needs to understand that this is a PROPOSAL. In fact, Jochen even highlights that "These sections present the Scrum process in the light of portfolio management and PROPOSE how Scrum principles can be elevated to the enterprise level." It is meant to get the reader to read with an open mind, think critically about the subject, and to draw their own conclusions based on their experience and the needs of their organization. Personally, I thought this was a bold step because, as I said earlier in the review, this topic is rarely discussed in the agile world. It leaves Jochen open to a lot of criticism (as it is often very easy to criticize).


I do agree with one of the reviewers that the editing on the book could have been better, on various accounts. However, understanding that this is a first printing, I can be a little more lenient as these types of things usually get weeded out with subsequent printings. That said, the content is good and I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking to understand how agile practices will help them get more bang for their buck from their organization's IT project portfolio.