Advanced Agile Portfolio Governance and Delivery Training Course

Course overview

Enterprise agile delivery often fails at the portfolio level rather than the team level. Teams may use Scrum, Kanban or SAFe practices effectively, yet investment decisions remain opaque, strategic themes are poorly translated into funded initiatives, dependencies emerge too late, and executives receive status reports that do not support intervention. PMO leaders and portfolio managers need governance that protects control, compliance and financial accountability without recreating stage-gate bureaucracy around agile work.

This course equips participants to design and operate an evidence-based agile portfolio governance model. Participants work with portfolio Kanban systems, strategic themes, lean business cases, participatory budgeting, capacity allocation, value-stream funding, dependency management and portfolio-level risk controls. They learn to define decision rights, establish portfolio metrics, build outcome-oriented dashboards, forecast delivery using flow and throughput data, and run governance reviews that focus on value, risk, investment and delivery confidence rather than activity reporting.

Teaching is built around a realistic multi-product transformation portfolio. Participants analyse competing initiatives, apply weighted shorted job first and cost-of-delay techniques, create a portfolio Kanban design, develop governance cadences and build an executive portfolio dashboard in Power BI. Each participant leaves with a practical Agile Portfolio Governance Playbook: a tailored set of decision forums, portfolio metrics, funding rules, escalation paths, reporting templates and a 90-day implementation plan that can be adapted for their own PMO or transformation office.

The course is best suited to experienced PMO, transformation, delivery and product leaders who must connect strategy, investment and delivery across multiple agile teams, programmes or value streams.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Design a portfolio Kanban system with explicit intake, review, approval, delivery and benefit-realisation policies
• Translate strategic themes into measurable portfolio objectives, outcome hypotheses and investment guardrails
• Apply weighted shortest job first, cost of delay and capacity allocation to prioritise competing initiatives
• Build lean business cases that define expected outcomes, assumptions, leading indicators and funding decisions
• Establish portfolio governance decision rights using a RACI matrix and escalation thresholds
• Create flow-based portfolio forecasts using throughput, work-in-progress limits, cycle time and Monte Carlo ranges
• Construct an executive portfolio dashboard in Power BI using delivery, financial, risk and outcome measures
• Produce an Agile Portfolio Governance Playbook and 90-day implementation roadmap for a live portfolio context

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Heads of PMO and EPMO — who must modernise governance while retaining investment control and assurance
• Portfolio Managers — who prioritise, fund and oversee delivery across multiple programmes or value streams
• Transformation Directors — who need a repeatable operating model for enterprise agile change
• Senior Delivery Managers — who must surface dependencies, risks and delivery confidence across agile teams
• Product Portfolio Leaders — who balance product investment, capacity and measurable customer outcomes
• Programme Directors — who need to align complex initiatives with portfolio decisions and governance forums

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical experience working in a project, programme, PMO, product or transformation environment and be familiar with core agile concepts such as backlogs, iterations, Kanban, product ownership and cross-functional teams. Experience with portfolio reporting, business cases, budgeting or governance boards is strongly recommended. Participants should be able to interpret basic delivery data, including milestones, risks, capacity and budget variance. Familiarity with Jira or a comparable work-management platform is useful, but advanced configuration skills are not required. No coding, statistical modelling or prior SAFe certification is required.

Training methodology

The course combines instructor-led portfolio governance briefings with facilitated analysis of a multi-value-stream enterprise case. Participants work in small groups to rank initiatives, create lean business cases, model capacity constraints, map dependencies and define governance decision rights. Guided tool demonstrations show how Jira Align, Planview AdaptiveWork and Power BI can support portfolio visibility and reporting. Daily workshops build components of an individual Agile Portfolio Governance Playbook, culminating in a peer-reviewed implementation plan for the participant’s own organisational setting.

Course outline

Day 1: Portfolio governance for agile enterprises

• Limits of traditional project portfolio governance in adaptive delivery environments
• Agile portfolio operating model: strategy, investment, value streams and delivery
• Strategic themes, portfolio objectives and outcome hypotheses
• Portfolio governance principles, guardrails and minimum viable controls
• Decision rights across executives, portfolio teams, product leaders and delivery teams
• Portfolio Kanban workflow stages and explicit entry-exit policies
• Governance cadences for strategic review, portfolio review and delivery review

Workshop: Participants diagnose a case-study portfolio and produce a target operating model with governance forums, decision owners and portfolio Kanban stages.

Day 2: Investment, prioritisation and funding

• Lean business case structure and hypothesis-driven investment proposals
• Cost of delay calculation using user-business value, time criticality and risk reduction
• Weighted shortest job first scoring and sensitivity testing
• Strategic alignment scoring and investment guardrail design
• Participatory budgeting and capacity allocation across value streams
• Project funding versus product and value-stream funding models
• Portfolio intake controls, approval thresholds and stop-or-pivot criteria

Workshop: Participants rank competing initiatives, allocate constrained funding and produce a defended portfolio investment recommendation.

Day 3: Flow, forecasting and portfolio controls

• Portfolio flow metrics: work in progress, throughput, cycle time and ageing work
• Capacity planning across teams, products, programmes and shared specialist functions
• Monte Carlo forecasting for initiative completion ranges
• Dependency mapping with programme boards and portfolio dependency matrices
• Risk aggregation, systemic risk indicators and escalation thresholds
• Benefits realisation measures and outcome metric baselines
• Control design for audit, regulatory, procurement and architecture assurance

Workshop: Participants create a dependency-and-risk heat map and develop a range forecast for the case-study portfolio.

Day 4: Portfolio data, dashboards and review meetings

• Portfolio data model linking initiatives, epics, objectives, budgets and outcomes
• Jira Align portfolio hierarchy, strategic roadmap and dependency views
• Planview AdaptiveWork portfolio demand, resource and financial views
• Power BI executive dashboard design for outcome, flow, risk and spend measures
• Leading versus lagging indicators for delivery confidence
• Portfolio review meeting agendas and decision logs
• Narrative reporting techniques for executive intervention decisions

Workshop: Participants design an executive portfolio dashboard and run a simulated portfolio review using evidence packs and decision logs.

Day 5: Implementing and improving the governance model

• Portfolio governance maturity assessment and improvement priorities
• Stakeholder mapping for finance, delivery, product, risk and executive sponsors
• Transitioning from stage-gate controls to lean governance policies
• Adoption risks, resistance patterns and communication approaches
• Portfolio metrics ownership, data quality controls and reporting standards
• Ninety-day implementation sequencing and quick-win selection
• Continuous governance improvement through retrospectives and portfolio health reviews

Workshop: Participants complete and peer-review their Agile Portfolio Governance Playbook and 90-day implementation roadmap.

Tools & standards covered

Jira Align, Planview AdaptiveWork, Microsoft Power BI, SAFe Lean Portfolio Management

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions