Portfolio WIP Crack
This week we introduced WIP limits to all our different portfolio columns, as well as reducing our in progress column by five (down to 45 from 50!):
The board is looking better, with three items moving to done this week — anything with a black line has moved forward as well…so getting there.
Whilst I recognise the WIP is still incredibly high, it’s progress in taking those first steps to optimising WIP for portfolio flow. We’ve set OKRs this quarter around reducing WIP and cycle time across all delivery channels by 10%, so this will help us on that incremental change path.
Budgeting Constraints
This week highlighted one of our biggest organisational constraints around budgeting, with it currently being driven via individual business lines.
A challenge we’re therefore facing is how to charge for work if you group teams around delivering a particular service (say Compliance) that covers multiple areas of the business (Tax, Advisory, etc.). In particular with our current context where IT has yet to prove a solid delivery capability it’s very hard to tackle that constraint head on (i.e. change the funding model) without the evidence as to why we should change, so this looks like being some cultural debt we will have to take on and potentially address longer term. It could be that we can group our services sensibly so that it doesn’t become an issue, but it certainly has me worried around scalability potential.
Certifications
This week I passed my Leading SAFe exam after getting my login details at the beginning of the week. You get unlimited attempts at a practice exam (same questions each time but shuffled order) before you proceed into the real exam, which is 45 questions over 90 minutes. I must admit, I found the exam pretty easy when compared to others I have taken (PSM, PSK and PSPO), which in turn will make me treat it with a pinch of salt when I see it on any future CV’s! I didn’t like the fact that even on the practice exam you didn’t get told which questions you answered incorrectly (just the topic area), as well as the fact that the PDF slides from the training are actually page scans rather than text, therefore you can’t CTRL+F a particular section if you’re stuck.
The best kind of certification 🤣
Certifications in general are obviously a touchy topic in the Agile world, with most practitioners recognising that in a market so saturated they aren’t really that valuable when assessing potential candidates.
For me I use them purely as a validation of my own knowledge and as a potential “in” for those who may doubt your credentials (rather than experience!) and look for badges as proof.
Obviously this isn’t ideal but like everything related to Agile, you have to meet people where they are and for some, that’s how they validate credibility.
One aspect I find interesting about certifications is when people include them on CVs, yet when you try cross-reference it with the certification body the same individual cannot be found. Now, most likely they’ve let it expire either knowingly or unknowingly but what if they’ve just made it up? There is no real way to validate it. I had this exact scenario with a candidate this week who had obtained their CSPO in 2011, but when I searched in the Scrum Alliance database they couldn’t be found.
Should this be something brought up in the interview? I’ve seen it a few times now with candidates we’ve had but never been quite sure as to how to bring it up in conversation. I think the next time I come across this scenario it I’ll give it a go to see how it lands with the candidate.
Next Week
I’ll be away from the office from this Friday all the way to the next, so likely to take a week out of writing these. Looking forward to a bank holiday weekend with lots of fun planned, before heading up to Scotland during the week to look at wedding locations and see family.