Effective management of a software portfolio is a challenge that many companies ignore, avoid or fail to follow through because it is too hard. Many approaches to portfolio management get so complex that decisions fail to get made. In this hands-on tutorial we explore “barely sufficient” portfolio management and introduce a simulation game where participants make decisions about which investments a company makes. Participants will learn about product, project, and portfolio management issues tying decisions to strategy and purpose in order to optimize overall return.

For almost a decade our community has claimed that agile is a risk-driven approach. Yet there is very little published material on agile risk management. Traditional risk management is based on avoidance of external variations. While, traditional project scheduling treats tasks homogeneously from a risk perspective. Lean pull systems and Real Options Theory provide new means to manage overall business risk in technology projects. This tutorial describes 3 techniques that evolved in the kanban community that increase sophistication of risk management and provide improved business agility.