Portofolio Kanban, The Art of Being Loosely Coupled and Highly Aligned
summary
Many agile orgs ship features but not value; a midsize marketplace runs a company-level system combining Portfolio Kanban, OKRs and Flight Levels to force choices. A physical portfolio Kanban board shows rows as ranked strategic initiatives across columns (ideation → evaluation → development → measure & adapt → done), magnets represent team capacity, weekly operations review plus quarterly 1–2 day strategy workshops coordinate ~30 teams (200–300 people). Team sizing targets 5–11 people, ~70/30 internal/external split, and limiting WIP cuts strategic cycle time by over 50%, with only ~1/3 of experiments actually delivering value.
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chapters (14)
- 0:00Introduction and speaker background
- 1:10Why portfolio Kanban matters
- 4:21Autonomy as the secret source
- 8:37Two-pizza teams and dependencies
- 11:53Balancing autonomy and alignment
- 13:15Flight levels and strategic alignment
- 17:13Portfolio Kanban in practice
- 22:09Cadence and decision-making
- 27:44Enterprise Kanban board deep dive
- 33:04Prioritizing strategic initiatives
- 35:57Limiting work in progress
- 38:29Leadership responsibilities
- 39:34Recommended resources
- 40:18Q&A session
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