ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces some of the main challenges that organizations face when applying executive-level, strategic decision-making to a business value-driven software development group. It presents a new approach to portfolio management. It also illustrates the sort of portfolio Kanban system that can be used at the portfolio level to prioritize new software development investment. The chapter intends to suggest techniques that should be applied to the Waterfall and Agile methodologies. A key principle of lean is to remove from the process any activities that do not add value. There is a major difference between the development and application of lean principles in manufacturing and their application to software development. The glue that holds together the prioritization process from the portfolio level down to the team level should be explicit business value. The organizational structure in large enterprises most often consists of business units organized around functionality, or business units organized around products and services, or business units organized around customers/geographies.
