Decisions get a rationale
Each funded initiative carries a visible rank and a written reason tied to your goals, so leaders can explain the portfolio to a board or an oversight body.
Services
PPM4Agile Implementation
A PPM4Agile Implementation puts the four practices of the PPM4Agile operating system, Align, Focus, Deliver, and Learn, in place as the way your portfolio actually runs, inside your existing governance and alongside whatever framework your teams already use. Eric works through it with your staff, and your leaders own the decisions from the start.
- to set outputs, never billed hourly
- Scoped
- one connected loop
- 4 practices
- on site when it helps
- Zoom first
- set up for the people who use them, not replaced
- Your tools
What gets put in place
Which practices does the implementation cover?
All four, in order. Each practice produces artifacts the next one depends on, so the sequence matters more than the speed.
- 1
Align
Portfolio Development
Turn ideas and requests into an approved, prioritized portfolio, with the reasons written down.
Explore Align → - 2
Focus
Planning
Turn one approved project into a plan someone can actually execute.
Explore Focus → - 3
Deliver
Execution
Execute the committed slice and finish it, with a real hand-off to operations.
Explore Deliver → - 4
Learn
Evaluation, Value & Learning
Measure what shipped against the goals it was funded for, then scale, sustain, or retire it.
Explore Learn →
Timeline
How long does it take?
It depends on the challenges you agree to tackle. Each engagement is scoped around set outputs, not hours, and mostly runs over Zoom, with on-site visits at the start, middle, or end when they help. The stages below are the usual order.
Portfolio review
Eric works with your staff to get every active initiative, your real capacity, and your governance into one view. Output: a written picture of how the portfolio operates today.
Align
Eric works through Align with your leadership team, on your real portfolio. Output: a ranked portfolio and a written list of what you’re not starting.
Focus
The top-ranked project goes through Focus with the people who will deliver it. Output: a plan your teams agreed to, before execution starts.
Deliver and Learn
Deliver and Learn come online as that project moves into execution, and the cadence passes to your portfolio lead. The aim: a loop your own people run.
The shift
What changes for leadership?
Teams keep the framework they already use. What changes for leaders is how they decide, what they report, and what they are willing to say no to. What changes for everyone else is knowing their own inputs and outputs inside one shared framework.
Status is about outcomes
Reporting moves from percent complete toward flow measures like lead time and throughput, and whether released work moved the outcome it was meant to. Leaders learn to act on the numbers, not just read them.Plans hold long enough to execute
A decision is meant to hold long enough to carry it out. Changes still happen, but through the front door with evidence behind them, not around it.Saying no becomes part of the process
Deferral is a legitimate outcome of intake, with a place on the portfolio view and a date to revisit, so requests don’t slip into teams through the side door.
Is an implementation the right step for us?
A PPM4Agile Implementation fits organizations where too many initiatives are active at once, the plan is rewritten monthly, and leadership cannot show which outcomes the portfolio moved. Many leaders cannot say where the problem is when they call, and that is normal. It usually gets blamed on execution, or on planning, when the cause runs end to end. It requires an executive sponsor willing to rank work publicly and a portfolio lead or PMO ready to own a cadence. You don’t need a big program to start, or new tools. Many organizations already own tools like Jira, Rally, or VersionOne; the trouble is they aren’t connected. You do need one end-to-end framework that everyone works from, and Scrum, SAFe, Kanban, and stage-gate processes all keep running alongside it. It works through Align, Focus, Deliver, and Learn in that order, each producing something the next depends on. If you are unsure whether your organization is ready, a 60-minute Portfolio Clarity Session is the way to find out. You leave knowing what Eric thinks is going on and, honestly, whether an implementation would help.
Frequently asked questions
Do we have to stop using SAFe, Scrum, or our stage-gate process?
No. PPM4Agile runs end to end alongside whatever your teams already run. If you use SAFe Lean Portfolio Management, see how the two compare; they are more complementary than competing. If your teams want help doing agile better, team-level coaching can run alongside it.
How much of our leadership team's time does it take?
It depends on the scope you agree on. The executive sponsor and portfolio lead take part in the working sessions, and the people delivering a project join its planning sessions when it goes through Focus. Meetings are one of the six operational drivers, so part of the work is deciding which meetings make which decisions.
When do we start to see a difference?
Some of it can start right away. Bringing in someone who recognizes the symptoms and can trace them back to their causes can start a cultural shift, because people see that the organization values making improvements. That can be slow at first. The tangible part is the framework itself, which addresses the problems progressively as it goes in. What it depends on is whether the people doing the work are open to changing how they work, not only the leaders who asked for the change.
What happens when the engagement ends?
The aim is that your portfolio lead or PMO owns the cadence and runs it without us. That is the point: an organization that gets good at getting better on its own.
How is an implementation priced?
Engagements are scoped, not billed by the hour or as time and materials. We agree on the challenges to address and the outputs you get, and the fee covers that. Travel for on-site visits is billed separately, at cost, because how often and how long isn’t known until the work is under way.
Is the work remote or on site?
Mostly remote. Most of the work happens over Zoom. Eric comes on site when it helps, for example at the start, the middle, or the end, and there’s plenty of overlap across US time zones for working sessions.
Who does the work?
Eric leads every engagement. He coaches a few teams himself. For programs with many teams, he brings in coaches and trains them on the same framework, and he can help you interview contractors and shape the makeup of each team. Everyone works from one framework and connected tools, so nobody goes off and does it their own way.
Why start now instead of next year?
Because problems fester. The longer one persists, the bigger and more costly it gets, and the less value you deliver while it does. It works like a foundation: build on a crooked one and every extra story costs more to put up and more to put right. Defects behave the same way, costing more the later in the cycle you find them. Put it off, and you do it at your own peril.
Where do we start?
With a 60-minute Portfolio Clarity Session. It tells both of us whether an implementation is the right next step, whether the course would help, and where to begin.
You don't need more projects. You need one framework everyone works from.
Book a 60-Minute Clarity Session (opens in a new tab)
Start with a 60-minute conversation about how your portfolio runs today.