Portfolio Backlog, Portfolio Cycle Backlog & Portfolio Kanban

The top level of the Backlogs of the P4 framework, the Portfolio and Organizational level , describes Applications and market variants of the Systems and Products. Each of these variants is described by a set of System Requirements (feature set).

In this way, the products (= Portfolio Backlog elements) can be estimated against each other both with regard to the Benefits (or added values) and the Effort to be invested . This is done by using the Upswing Gravity Field.

Portfolio Backlog

Each Organization has exactly one Portfolio Backlog for its area of responsibility and tasks . It is broken down into the elements of the Cluster Backlogs of all Clusters, ie for products, systems and applications of the Organization. The Portfolio Backlog is the responsibility and prioritization of the Cluster Product Owner Group (CPOG). The Cluster Product Owner Group consists of the Cluster Product Owners and the Portfolio Owner of the Organization. A large part of the Portfolio Backlog is derived from the business strategy by the Cluster Product Owner Group and the Cluster System Engineer Group.

The other part of the Portfolio Backlog consists of work and measures that the Organization carries out to improve the quality of work and results, e.g.

Quality measures and improvement of the organizational process
Maintenance of the products, systems and Modules responsible for the Organization
Maintenance and servicing of tools.

In order to make the work speed of the Organization more predictable, the proportion of backlog entries derived from the Organization vision should be relatively stable over time.

Portfolio Cycle Backlog

The Cycle Backlog reflects the work of an Organization for a currently running Cycle. The estimated work, ie Backlog elements, are pulled from the CSEG into the Portfolio Cycle Backlog in the Cluster Planning and thus scheduled for the next Cycle (forecast).

Portfolio Kanban

If the Organization works in Kanban-mode, it uses a Portfolio Kanban Board instead of the Portfolio Cycle Backlog. The first column corresponds to the Portfolio Backlog and the last column to the status “Done”. All other columns are defined by the Organization’s Cluster Scrum Master Group, according to the Organization’s internal work process.