Defining opportunity portfolio management practices made product development even smoother. This international software company committed to scale up their Agile ways of working using the SAFe Framework. Jira Align was introduced by one business unit, and by then rolling it out across the enterprise, improvement followed everywhere.
The growth of an international software company had long been stable but moderate. New customers had been acquired from several continents, but the burden of product development to support old customers and product versions had increased while new product development had slowed down. Decentralized work, supporting both customer- and market-specific implementations consumed resources with no clear opportunity for growth in sight.
Contribyte (now part of Eficode) was assigned to develop idea portfolio management. The assignment was divided into three phases: the first phase focused on the way the idea portfolio was currently being managed, the second phase focused on making suggestions for improvement based on the phase one analysis, and the last phase was to refine the implemented operating models.
The first phase of portfolio analysis was conducted by getting to know the company’s processes, attending product and portfolio management meetings, and interviewing eight stakeholders.
The analysis revealed that different parts of the company had conflicting goals, an unclear portfolio strategy, and no a systematic way to deal with new business opportunities. In the absence of a clear strategy and guidance to address new business opportunities, more urgent but less important issues took precedence in product development. New ideas and opportunities were addressed on an individual, case-by-case basis, and not compared with other, resource-intensive opportunities.
Contribyte made five proposals for action including:
Once different types of development needs were divided into different baskets, it became clearer how resources should be allocated, resulting in more bandwidth and predictability for new product development.
As a result, the management team gained a clear vision of why their product development had been blocked and what could be done about it. Sales better understood why their needs did not always progress and how they should take their hopes forward in future. And product development understood business calculations and pricing more clearly.
However, the main benefit was that this software company gained a new process for evaluating, selecting, and forwarding opportunities.