Portfolio Leadership
To scale daring leadership and build courage in teams and organizations, we have to cultivate a culture in which brave work, tough conversations, and whole hearts are the expectation, and armor is not necessary or rewarded.
-Brené Brown, Dare to Lead
Definition:
Definition: Portfolio Leadership is the team with the highest level of decision-making and financial accountability for the products and solutions within a SAFe Portfolio.
Summary
Portfolio Leadership is a team of business, technology, and finance leaders. They use Lean-Agile principles to govern a SAFe portfolio and ensure business outcomes are achieved. Portfolio Leaders are responsible for creating a portfolio vision and strategy that aligns with the organization's strategy. They maintain the portfolio roadmap and backlog. They fund value streams, mitigate risks, foster innovation, and support the Value Management Office (VMO) in transitioning the Portfolio to continuous value delivery. Portfolio Leaders model lean-agile behaviors, including decision-making agility and encouraging collaboration and open communication.
What is the role of Portfolio Leadership?
Portfolio Leadership plays a crucial role in overseeing Lean Portfolio Management and ensuring that the portfolio’s work aligns with its strategic themes and financial goals and those of the broader organization. Despite their different titles and roles within the company, they all aim to make sure the portfolio's value streams help the company achieve its goals efficiently and effectively. Their job as a team is to ensure that the company's efforts in developing products or services lead to success. Portfolio leaders also have a responsibility to modernize portfolio management practices. They adopt Lean-Agile principles and help organize ARTs around the value stream to enable them to deliver the portfolio strategy.
Portfolio leadership is generally a team of people across business, technology, and finance. In smaller organizations with a single portfolio, this team is often the executive team. In larger organizations with multiple portfolios, the team is often made up of the senior leaders accountable for each portfolio.
As shown in Figure 1, Portfolio Leaders collaborate to guide the portfolio to successful outcomes. As described in the LPM Core Competency article, the group of people who participate in and support Lean Portfolio Management is broader than the Portfolio Leadership team. These collaborations are described in more detail below.
- Strategy and Investment Funding requires Portfolio Leadership to work closely with Enterprise Executives, Business Owners, and Enterprise Architects. This group helps Portfolio Leadership define the portfolio's strategy, make investment decisions, and focus on improving portfolio flow.
- Agile Portfolio Operations requires Portfolio Leadership to work closely with members of the VMO (Value Management Office), the LACE (Lean-Agile Center of Excellence), and various COPs (Communities of Practice). This group coordinates and supports decentralized ART execution and fosters operational excellence.
- Lean Governance requires Portfolio Leadership to work closely with the VMO, Enterprise Architects, and Business Owners. This group supports oversight of spending, audit, compliance, expenditure, measurement, and reporting.
Note: This article describes the specific responsibilities of the Portfolio Leadership team, the behaviors the Portfolio Leaders exemplify, and how to form the Portfolio Leadership Team. The related Lean Portfolio Management article provides information on the techniques and practices for operating a Lean Portfolio, including the additional roles mentioned above.
Read more about the Lean Portfolio Management core competency of SAFe: