The map / Portfolio / Portfolio Retro
Portfolio Retro
Leadership inspects how the portfolio itself works.
01What it's for
The Portfolio Retro looks at the portfolio as a system: how fast decisions are made, how much work is in progress, whether the guardrails help, and whether the QBR produced the decisions it should.
It is the same discipline we ask of teams, applied to the level with the most leverage.
02What it turns into on the old system
It is skipped, or replaced by a lessons-learned document at the end of a project that nobody reads. The unspoken rule is that retrospectives are for teams.
03How you notice
- The same portfolio problems return every quarter.
- Leadership asks teams to improve while the portfolio process stays the same.
- There is no improvement item on the portfolio backlog.
04How to make it work
Use data: lead time from idea to decision, Epic WIP, number of Epics stopped, predictability of the ARTs.
Choose one or two improvements, give them an owner and capacity, and review them at the next retro.
Include what the ARTs raised at Inspect & Adapt that only the portfolio can fix.