Yesterday, I published a blog post about using Kanban for portfolio management on my company’s blog.
http://open.bekk.no/kanban-pa-portefoljeniva/
It’s in Norwegian, so here’s a brief summary for my English speaking audience.
I work closely with my customer’s project department, and I believe they could benefit from using Kanban for project portfolio management. Here’s an example of a project portfolio board.
They could start by adding two simple steps (in addition to what they’re already doing):
1) Map current process to a Kanban board
2) Meet regularily for stand-ups
By visualizing the process and meet face-to-face more often, all people involved get a deeper understanding of how their process works. Bottlenecks gets exposed more easily, and this could plant a seed, nurturing continuous improvement.
I also suggest adding a WIP limit for ongoing projects, based on their current capacity. This could be a tool to manage individual workload and reduce stress, and could be used as an input for overall staffing questions.
Anyhow, I stress the fact that this is an evolutionary process, don’t try changing all at once. Start by visualizing the process and introducing stand-ups.
Disclaimer: This blogpost was originally published on a different platform. Formatting may be incorrect, links may be out of date.
Jørn Hunskaar 
