Of course, we love input. After all, that’s how we built the framework, one company, one proven idea, one added idea, one borrowed idea, one idea from wherever, at a time. The challenge with input is that when you learn something, you have to change something, so I’m “pleased” to announce a new version of the Big Picture (V0.98… almost ready for 1.0….).

The new version has two new icons, one role, the Epic Owner, one artifact, Metrics (which is really an artifact set), and one new label “Program Portfolio Management”. Each of these address (small?) holes in the framework story to date:

Metrics: Controversial or not, unintended consequences or not, you can’t survive an enterprise rollout without them. Fortunately, agile, and the framework instantiation, is replete with meaningful measures which we’ve highlighted in this new section. And we certainly have used many of these in rollouts, so we know they mostly work when properly applied. You can see the current, first draft, of Metric Abstract and Details here.

Epic Owner: the question arises “how do these cross -utting epic initiatives make their way into program backlogs? Do product Managers do that? Will they care to prioritize them, given they are likely to have a 200% backlog already? My answer is always, “well, we typically observe an important role, the Epic Owner, who typically takes much of that responsibility.” “So where is that person on the framework?”, they ask. Ooops. Done. Details to follow at some point.

“Program Portfolio Management” The “domain of concern or influence” of the label “Portfolio Management” was never crystal clear. With this change, we are making it clear that the Big Picture portfolio management function is concerned only with the collective set of programs (Release Trains and even waterfall programs, where applicable) below that level. Details to follow at some point.

Thanks to last week’s certification attendees for driving this additional clarity. I’m glad we added some work to your backlogs, too!