Practice 2 of 4
Focus is the PPM4Agile practice that turns one approved project into a plan someone can actually execute, tested against the people you actually have before anyone commits to a date.
Focus asks whether the plan can survive reality, and it works on one approved project at a time. Align decided what matters. Focus proves you can deliver it. Skip it and the pattern is familiar: a date agreed in a meeting, a plan built on the org chart instead of the people who are actually free, and a dependency nobody owned until it broke. Later it turns into rework and blame. Focus brings the business, technology, operations, and change management into the plan early, while problems are still cheap to fix. You finish with an MVP everyone agreed to, a plan built on the people you actually have, and dependencies with owners before work starts. Whatever the plan cannot back up becomes a short, honest risk list instead of a surprise. Module 2 of the course walks you through how, with a case study to follow.
Inside Focus
Focus starts from what you already have: the ranked portfolio from Align and the constraints you already know about. None of it needs to be perfect. This is what you finish with.
A plan built on the people you actually have
An MVP everyone agreed to
Dependencies with owners before work starts
This page tells you what Focus gets you. The course shows you how to run it.
The steps, in order, with the templates to go with them
A case study that shows it done well before you try it yourself
Your own version, built for your organization as you go. No exam: the proof is the playbook you walk away with.
Context
Focus is the practice behind phase 2 of the course, Planning. Each practice feeds the next, and Learn feeds Align to start the cycle again.
The project owner, the business and technology experts, and your delivery leads. No new titles. These are the people whose decisions it depends on, so they take part in it rather than reviewing a summary afterwards.
In short: a plan built on the people you actually have; an MVP everyone agreed to; and dependencies with owners before work starts. None of it is produced once and filed away, and Deliver starts from it. The course module shows how to produce it.
You can, but Focus works best when Align has already done its part; without it, you have to rebuild that starting point by hand. If you want help putting the practices in one at a time, that is the implementation service.
Start here
60-Minute Portfolio Clarity Session
One paid conversation over Zoom about your portfolio and your constraints. You leave knowing what Eric thinks is going on and what fits next.
What you get
