In a historically project-based organization, a Project/Program Management Office (PMO) is often chartered to track and coordinate the delivery of projects, initiatives, and programs an organization may have in flight at any time. A different set of values, mindset, and practices are required when implementing SAFe, which requires the move from temporal projects to long-lived products and from a start-stop approach to flow-based value delivery. The label of Value Management Office (VMO) has been applied to create focus on this change in approach, and the VMO enables this new way of working.
The brand new Value Management Office extended guidance article describes this group’s critical role in optimizing the flow of strategic value and implementing SAFe across multiple value streams. Specifically, the VMO is responsible for facilitating the Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) process and for fostering operational excellence and lean governance as part of a Lean-Agile transformation.
Many SAFe transformations will find the need for a VMO as they begin to apply LPM practices, and VMOs will often emerge from the existing PMO, ready to embrace the mindset, values, and principles that a Lean-Agile approach requires. The new extended guidance article outlines the key responsibility areas of the VMO, as shown below.
A well-functioning VMO can provide a number of benefits to an organization implementing SAFe, including:
- Helping the organization to focus on delivering value to customers more quickly and efficiently.
- Helping to identify and eliminate waste, improve efficiency, and reduce waste.
- Helping the organization to become more agile and responsive to change.
- Helping break down silos and improve communication and collaboration across the organization
Read more about the VMO in this new extended guidance SAFe article!
Happy reading!
—Rebecca Davis and the SAFe Framework Team