The Agile Executive

Pictured above is a screen shot from the forthcoming Rally implementation of Apropos – the end-to-end Kanban system unveiled by Erik Huddleston, Stephen Chin, Walter Bodwell and me in the Lean Software and Systems conference last April.

Pictured below is Stephen Chin presenting the forthcoming product in the recent JavaOne conference:

The commercial version by Rally builds on the four pillars of the original implementation of Apropos at Inovis and the subsequent open source version:

• Stakeholder Based Investment Themes
• Business Case Management
• Upstream and Downstream WIP Limits
• Dynamic Allocations

These four pillars enable Apropos users to dynamically adjust their plans as needed in accord with the realities of end-to-end execution. Agile portfolio planning and actual execution truly run alongside each other as depicted in the following figure:

Adjustments to allocations can take place in either in the plan or in execution. Here are two typical examples of stakeholders’ dialogs:

• In planning: “In response to the quick growth of the sales funnel, we decide to increase the % of time allotted to tactical sales opportunities from 35% of the total R&D budget to 40%.”
• In execution: “The introduction of product Pj will be delayed by three months due to lack of qualified professional services resources. During this period, the affected R&D resources will be reassigned to help with multi-tenant aspects of a SaaS version of product Pk.”

Recommendations: Consider using the open source version of Apropos for a small-scale pilot as part of your 2011 planning/budget cycle. If the pilot proves a good fit with your needs,  switch over to the commercial version in the 2012 planning/budget cycle.

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Considering end-to-end Agile/Kanban roll-out? Let me know if you would like assistance in planning and implementing a roll-out which focuses on continuous value delivery. Click Services for details.

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