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Planview Customer Success Center

Value Stream Funding

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Value Stream Funding

The Value Stream Funding enablers include Value Stream Planning, Lean Budgeting, and Financial Targets. Each capability within the Planview Capability Framework has a distinct set of features and functionality, business processes, best practices, and analytics and reports that deliver value to customers in the form of specific business outcomes.

Enablers and Business Outcomes

Value Stream Planning

Supports organizations that have made the product shift. It allows them to organize their funding model around value streams that develop and operate their products, systems, and services. Resulting business outcomes include:

  • We can define, describe, and categorize the value streams that our organization requires to realize our strategic plan and develop/operate the products, systems, and services that deliver value to our customers.
  • We can define how the value stream and associated epics and features will deliver products, systems, and services.

Lean Budgeting

Set time-phased financial budgets for each value stream, against which planned and current investments can be analyzed and approved. Resulting business outcomes include:

  • We can shift our funding model to organize around the value streams that are delivering value to our customers.
  • We can capture the costs of our stable team of teams against the relevant value stream.
  • We can set the overall value stream budget, providing the context for analyzing and prioritizing epics.
  • We can adopt an iterative approach to budgeting, adjusting funding based on changing business priorities and outcome-driven indicators.

Financial Targets

Set time-phased financial targets for value streams in the form of benefits and revenue, against which planned and current investments can be analyzed. Resulting business outcomes include:

  • We can define benefits and revenue targets that the value stream must yield., providing the context for analyzing and prioritizing epics.

Best Practices

Create lean business cases

As a first step toward more continuous planning cycles, lean-agile organizations use lean business cases to make investment decisions within value streams. Lean business cases are meant to articulate the expected results of an initiative/epic, as well as what it will take to achieve those results with speed and accuracy.

Prioritize and sequence lean business cases

Choose a weighted shortest job first (WSJF) approach, which determines that epics with the highest cost of delay for their size should be completed first. This is a helpful starting place, especially for groups and people new to lean budgeting. To truly optimize investments and resources throughout the portfolio, organizations will run different scenarios to test the logistical feasibility and practicality of various sequences.

Give each value stream a budget

Within the portfolio, define spending policies, guidelines and practices for each value stream. With these “guardrails” in place, each value stream should have autonomy, flexibility and the speed to execute their own budget.

Enagee stakeholders in planning

Stakeholders are a great resource to help with funding allocation of value streams. They serve as a critical guardrail that ensures that the priorities of the portfolio are being met. Bring them in during PI Planning key activities to get their input.

Allocate funding strategically

Organizations must ensure the right investments are made within each budget. They must set politics aside, review business cases objectively, ascertain their potential business impact, and fund the top value streams incrementally to reduce financial risk.

Embrace how value streams can evolve

Remember as organizations evolve, the shape of their value streams often evolve too. Regardless of how an organization chooses to define its value streams, the purpose of organizing by value stream is generally the same: to deliver products and solutions beyond potentially disjointed project-based delivery. By aligning work and funding to delivery, value is created and managed more effectively.

Use PI planning to coordinate value streams

PI planning can help the teams within each value stream match demand to capacity, assess funding allocation, and ensure teams know the most valuable work to focus on. This is also a good time to align lean budgeting practices to a cycle or cadence.

Monitor and measure progress through OKRs

Define and align around OKRs will help to link organizational and team goals in a hierarchical way to measurable outcomes, ultimately connecting spend to outcomes through lean budgeting. OKRs creates a regular opportunity across the portfolio to adjust investments in various value streams based on real-time performance metrics.

Processes and Reports

conceptual image_value stream funding.jpg

Value stream funding provides a mechanism to define the value streams that will realize their strategic plan. This capability allows organizations to set financial targets in terms of projected benefits and revenue and provides a financial baseline for future investments.

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Value Stream Planning Process Steps 

           

value stream planning.jpg
Value stream planning process flow

           

Process Step Description

Define organizational strategic goals and missions

 The Strategy structure is used to manage the initiatives and epics that will deliver the strategic plan of the organization. Customers typically define the strategic structure based on the strategic objectives and goals of the organization.

Create value stream

Create a record of the new value stream entity in Planview Portfolios.

For more information:

Describe and categorize value stream

 After creating a new value stream, complete any configuration-specific description and categorization attributes as determined by your organization's data and information needs.

Associate to relevant products

Create an association between the value stream and new or existing product or products.

For more information:

  

           

Lean Budgeting Process Step

           

Lean Budgeting.jpg
Lean budgeting process flow

           

Process Step Description

Create/manage value stream budget (ART/Team costs)

 Create the value stream budget. The Financial Planning Detail screen inputs financial planning, budgeting, and forecasting data. Roll up financial data from work and strategy to outcome and product.

           

Financial Targets Process Steps

           

Financial Targets.jpg
Financial targets process flow

           

Process Step Description

Create/manage value stream financial targets (benefits/ revenue)

 Capture the revenue targets and benefits of launching the value stream, against which actual costs can be compared later. All appropriate data should be populated in the financial planning detail screen for the value stream.

Baseline value stream financial plan

 Following the input or roll up of financial planning budgeting and target data, a financial baseline for the financial plan should be taken to compare and track variances on the value stream financials through time.

     

Related Capabilities

Supported Solutions