Content uploaded by Paul Drews
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Paul Drews on Apr 18, 2019
Content may be subject to copyright.
Twenty-Seventh European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS2019), Stockholm-Uppsala, Sweden, 2019
AGILE PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT: DESIGN GOALS AND
PRINCIPLES
Research paper
Horlach, Bettina, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany, horlach@informatik.uni-
hamburg.de
Schirmer, Ingrid, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany, schirmer@informatik.uni-
hamburg.de
Drews, Paul, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Lüneburg, Germany, paul.drews@leuphana.de
Abstract
Digital transformation and the resulting volatile and unpredictable business environments challenge
traditional enterprises to continuously fulfill and surpass customers’ expectations. They need to be-
come agile in its organization by proactively sensing the unpredictable change and responding ac-
cordingly with speed and dexterity. While many organizations are quite advanced in realizing adaptiv-
ity at the operational level, strategic agility in general and in portfolio management in particular as
linking operations and strategy for satisfying the customer needs is in its nascence. To identify the
baseline for portfolio management for achieving agility, we derive four design goals for an effective
agile portfolio management system, six design principles on how to achieve these goals and show an
exemplary setup with design features. Our results are based on a research study with empirical in-
sights from six companies and theoretical input from thirteen existing case studies and eight frame-
works for scaling agility to the portfolio level. By deriving design principles for an agile portfolio
management system, our work closes a gap in existing research, which focuses on principles for adap-
tive IT portfolio management processes instead of proactive enterprise systems, insights on individual
portfolio practices or non-generalizable blueprints for an agile organizational setup without showing
alternative approaches.
Keywords: Agility, Portfolio Management, Design Principles, IT Governance.
1 Introduction
Digital transformation with its volatile and hypercompetitive business environments deeply changed
corporate reality. As the balance of power shifts to the customer, who predefines the problems to be
solved (Denning, 2010), enterprises need to become agile. Agility implies being able to be proactive in
sensing changes and responding with speed, innovation and dexterity to fulfil and surpass customers’
expectations (e.g. Sambamurthy et al., 2003). A corresponding organization affects the whole enter-
prise system and mind-set (Overby et al., 2006). With IT penetrating the core business processes, the
change ability deeply integrates business and IT capabilities (Nissen and Rennenkampff, 2017; Melar-
kode et al., 2004). Organizations foster agility on the operational level with self-organizing cross-
functional teams with short cycles for fast service delivery, improvement and innovation. However,
the paradigm shift also calls for a portfolio management to enable rapid response to change while link-
ing teams to the strategy, as they still need compliance to strategic and mandatory requirements (e.g.
legal demands). This not only involves scaling agile methods from operational level like Scrum from
software development, but also implies changes to existing project and portfolio practices.
The demand for agility imposes changes for portfolio management and governance (Luna et al., 2010;
Gill, 2007; Luna et al., 2016), but best practice frameworks for portfolio management (e.g. PMI) or IT
governance (e.g. COBIT or IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)) are rather suited for stable environments
and traditional command-and-control settings (Peterson, 2004, Luna et al., 2010). Existing approaches
Horlach et al. /Agile Portfolio Management Design Principles
Twenty-Seventh European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS2019), Stockholm-Uppsala, Sweden 2
for coordinating a multitude of agile teams via a portfolio like e.g. Scaled Agile Framework (Scaled
Agile, 2018) or Disciplined Agile (Disciplined Agile, 2018) address this need by providing rather in-
flexible blueprints as one size for all solutions, which might not suit every organization. Others pro-
vide insights into specific agile portfolio tasks like continuous portfolio planning (Suomalainen et al.,
2015), but do not embed them in an agile portfolio system with roles, structures, etc. Finally, first ap-
proaches such as Hoffmann et al. (2017) propose general design principles, but do not consider agili-
ty’s systemic and proactive nature. Furthermore, most approaches miss the discussion of the intertwin-
ing of business and IT logic (Horlach et al., 2018). Hence, our research is guided by the following
question:
Which principles do apply for an effective portfolio management system to achieve agility?
As contribution of our research, we derive design goals, design principles on how to achieve these
goals in general as well as exemplary design features for their application (Meth et al., 2015; Drechsler
and Hevner, 2018). We followed a design-oriented approach (Hevner et al., 2004) within two design
cycles to derive the final goals and principles: (1) an empiric-centric cycle based on interpretative
qualitative study with IT executives (CDO or CIO) of six organizations from different industries in
Central Europe and (2) a theory-ingrained cycle based on a literature analysis of theoretical concepts,
existing case descriptions, and frameworks addressing agility on portfolio level. For each cycle, the
goals, principles and the corresponding features were derived via an inductive approach following the
ideas of grounded theory (Strauss and Corbin, 1991) to gain broad insights instead of narrowing the
analysis by a distinct theoretical perspective. Each design cycle concluded in an evaluation with ex-
perts, either with the CIOs from the empirical study or with experts from four additional organizations.
The paper is structured as follows. Following this introduction, the second section describes the theo-
retical background on enterprise agility and portfolio management as strategy execution mechanism.
The third section covers the overall methodological design of our study in detail for each step. The
results of the state-of-the-art knowledge concerning principles for agility in the portfolio management
of enterprises are described in section four. The paper concludes with a discussion and brief conclu-
sion as well as an outlook for future research steps in our long-term research.
2 Portfolio Management for Organizational Agility
For thriving in the volatility of the market and hyper-competition in a digitalized world with its con-
stant changes, companies need the ability of organizational agility. Building on dynamic capabilities
(Teece et al., 1997), absorptive capacity (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990) and strategic flexibility (Hitt et
al. 1998) as theoretical references (Overby et al., 2006), agility involves the proactive and reactive
strategic moves (Sherehyi et al., 2007) with speed and innovation (Yusuf et al., 1999) by sensing the
environment (Sambamurthy et al., 2003; March, 1991) as well as the ability of continuous flexibility
and responsiveness, culture of change, and mobilization of core capabilities, processes and knowledge
(e.g. Lee et al., 2015; Goldman et al., 1995). The constant interaction with and scanning of the busi-
ness environment, especially customers and rivals, is primary target for agility (Sambamurthy et al.,
2003; Roberts and Grover, 2012; Liang et al., 2017). To reach the customer, close collaboration with
business partners in networks of strategic or extended partnerships or sourcing of assets and resources
(Sambamurthy et al., 2003) is key. Internally, agility requires adaptivity in orchestration of the organi-
zational system for the right services (Denning, 2017a) with continuously being willing to take risk
and act proactively and responsively in terms of scalability, (re)integration and (re)configurability
(Conboy and Fitzgerald, 2004; Lu and Ramamurthy, 2011). Adaptive processes and tools (Laanti,
2008; Roberts and Grover, 2012), a flexible mind-set and a corresponding strategic management
(Denning, 2017b) are essential (Doz and Kosonen, 2010) to balance continuity and change forces
through the strategic channels of divert, shift, partition, and integrate (Sushil, 2015).
The agile manifesto (Beck et al., 2001) and multiple methods like Scrum or Kanban propose various
solutions for satisfying the customer and welcoming changing requirements and delivering working
services frequently on operational level, at least for software development. Although solutions for
agility in portfolio management, traditionally conducted in a top-down centralized manner, in long-
Horlach et al. /Agile Portfolio Management Design Principles
Twenty-Seventh European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS2019), Stockholm-Uppsala, Sweden 3
term cycles and separated between business and IT (Jeffery and Leviveld, 2004), are also growing in
number (Stettina and Hörz, 2015; Ahmad et al., 2017), most limit their applicability to only few char-
acteristics of agility for embracing continuous change or a single portfolio management area like elici-
tation, selection, evaluation, and management. Common denominator for most solutions is however
speed (Frey and Buxmann, 2011), mainly for services, projects or assets (Young et al., 2011) against
business criteria like benefits, revenue or costs (Archer and Ghasemzadeh, 1999; Jeffery and Leviveld,
2004). This relies on business IT alignment as second key dimension in selecting (Fitzgerald and Stol
2017), allocating budget and improvement (Hope and Fraser, 2003; Bogsnes, 2009) in short cycles
instead of annual events (Krebs, 2009). In regard to elicitation of portfolio items, time dynamics (Dan-
iel et al., 2014) shall facilitate the timely, yet aligned delivery and evaluation via rolling wave plan-
ning with its detailed plans for early periods and vague outlines for later ones (Rickards and Ritsert,
2012), event-driven (Bogsnes, 2009) or continuous portfolio planning (Suomalainen et al., 2015). Cre-
ating transparency on item interdependencies with portfolio backlogs for all approved items (Poppend-
ieck and Poppendieck, 2003) and road mapping (Saad et al., 2006; Suomalainen et al., 2015) also
serves as facilitator in this regard. Self-organization on operational level regarding the scope of the
realized service, its methodological and technological base is also seen as key for agility (Sweetman et
al., 2014), as e.g. directly involving agile units in the strategic business decision-making process shall
uncover needed changes better (Fitzgerald and Stol, 2017; Bogsnes, 2009). Finally, product portfolio
management for e.g. new product development as alternatives (Cooper et al., 1999) or complementing
the project portfolio (Young et al., 2011) is proposed to include the customer’s perspective.
Frameworks covering the whole portfolio management process for responsiveness while governing the
perfect mix of portfolio items within the organization’s capacities, capabilities and constraints (Jeffery
and Leviveld, 2004; Martinsuo and Lehtonen, 2007) and maximizing the business value and alignment
(Cooper et al., 1999; Reich and Benbasat, 2000) are increasing, but mainly yet scale agile practices
from software development and IT operations (Krebs, 2009; Poppendieck and Poppendieck, 2003).
For example, the Scaled Agile Framework (Scaled Agile, 2018) or Disciplined Agile (Disciplined Ag-
ile, 2018) provide scaled blueprints with self-organized teams that autonomously elicit and prioritize
their work aligned to the strategic objectives via a common portfolio process and value-oriented work
packages in the portfolio (e.g. themes and epics). The portfolio is derived by common meetings with
business and IT throughout the multiple organizational levels in short planning and feedback cadences
to enable systems thinking (Scaled Agile, 2018) and reduce cost of delay (Disciplined Agile, 2018).
The most general approach is provided by Hoffmann et al. (2017), who derived goals and principles
for sustainability in IT portfolio management via adaptivity and effectiveness in its operations and
strategic business IT alignment, mainly in the portfolio process. However, they assume that a central
portfolio management team and cascading down items exists, which contradicts with agility’s nature
of pulling work by teams. This thinking also leaves out the underlying system for enabling agility. In
addition, the link to practices on how to realize the principles is missing. This still leaves companies
challenged on how to establish their portfolio system and what agility requires in this regard.
3 Research Methodology
To develop the baseline of portfolio management as one part for achieving organizational agility, we
follow the recommendations by Gregor and Jones (2007) and Drechsler and Hevner (2018). They pro-
pose design principles as desirable design knowledge, being the general blueprint of requirements,
which then serve as foundation for the instantiation(s). As the requirements need to be understood in
terms of the environment in which they operate, we also developed design goals to define the purpose
and scope of the developed theoretical base as well as its boundaries (Gregor and Jones, 2007; Meth et
al., 2015). The set of design goals and principles are inductively developed along two design cycles
(Hevner et al., 2004) following the ideas of the grounded theory approach (Strauss and Corbin, 1991).
With agility being multi-faceted in nature and its blurry boundaries to other theoretical concepts like
dynamic capabilities (Teece et al., 1997) or absorptive capacity (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990), theories
would be blinders to our analysis (Truex et al., 2011) and prevent from grasping agility in its entirety.
Horlach et al. /Agile Portfolio Management Design Principles
Twenty-Seventh European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS2019), Stockholm-Uppsala, Sweden 4
The first set of two design goals – customer centricity, timeliness of decisions and alignment - and six
principles were derived based on broad and in-depth empirical knowledge to not be influenced by a
specific theory, approach or framework, which mainly propose certain practices and methods as ‘ag-
ile’. Therefore, we conducted a qualitative cross-industry study with IT executives (CDO or CIO)
from six organizations, which are actively attaining agility on the enterprise level by reshaping both
(parts of) business and IT from the operational to strategic level (see Table 1). We used multiple
methods for data collection to gain a systemic perspective by conducting semi-structured interviews
and a focus group discussion for an overall view on the approaches towards agility in portfolio man-
agement and its environment. We also reviewed public and private documentation for the further
depth on certain components of such a portfolio management system like e.g. role models, architectur-
al documentation or process specifications, while using marketing brochures and training material to
enable triangulation of results on the overall approach if possible. The participating organizations were
identified and selected according the following criteria: (1) the organizations are (becoming) agile in-
cluding the portfolio level, (2) participants hold a position with insights on the portfolio system, and
(3) willingness for cooperation and open information sharing along the participants and with the re-
searchers. We conducted the interviews within a four-month period from November 2017 to February
2018. Each interview session about the individual agile setting took approximately 60 minutes and
was audio-recorded and transcribed. As a second step, the approaches were enriched through tran-
scripts from a one-day focus group workshop (Krueger and Casey, 2014) with all six organizations in
spring of 2018, where the participants discussed in multiple group sessions their approaches to e.g.
prioritization of content, resource allocation and validating its progress and success.
The second iteration involved the theoretical validation and extension of the goals and principles based
on existing research in order to achieve rigour of our results next to impact, utility and relevance from
the first cycle. Therefore, we (1) used the agility concept from the existing theoretical debate (e.g. Lee
et al., 2015; Sambamurthy et al., 2003; Chakravarty et al., 2013) as well as existing principles from
practice like the agile manifesto (Beck et al., 2001) and (2) enriched the theoretical base with existing
approaches for agile portfolio management from theory. For the first, IS, management and organiza-
tional journals and conferences served as theoretical input. For the second, we conducted a literature
search (Vom Brocke et al., 2009) in academic databases ACM, AIS electronic library, EBSCOHost,
Google Scholar, IEEE explore, Springer Link and Web of Science. We also conducted a Google
search, as agility is currently one main trend in practice so that practice may provide deeper and
broader interesting insights and additional approaches not addressed in research. For the conducted
searches, we used the respective search functionality with variations of the search string ((agil* OR
lean OR continuous) AND “portfolio management”). We examined the abstracts and titles to gain rel-
evant publications, which address at least parts of portfolio management in relation to agility. This
resulted in 18 contributions, which explicitly address practices for agility in a portfolio system. For
these articles, we conducted a forward and backward search to identify further cases, which resulted in
11 additional articles. Out of those, 13 articles describe existing individual approaches in form of, of-
ten short and high level, case studies. During our search, we also identified general frameworks for
scaling agility towards the portfolio level, which resulted in eight additional agile portfolio systems
from a list provided by Horlach et al. (2018). We decided to include these frameworks as additional
sources for good practices for agile portfolio management, as experienced agile practitioners with pre-
sumably in-depth insights on a plethora of organizations developed those.
We conducted an inductive qualitative analysis including the three coding stages from grounded theo-
ry (Strauss and Corbin, 1991) in the analysis tool MAXQDA. The first author first assigned codes line
by line like “rolling wave over annual planning”. Second, we compared the codes based on the area(s)
of portfolio management to see the part(s) of the portfolio system that are addressed. Then, we induc-
tively compared codes within an area based on how they address agility’s main assumption of “em-
brace continuous change“. This resulted in consolidated codes like e.g. “flexibility in planning pro-
cess” based on the identified common character of flexibility. We then iteratively consolidated the
codes between areas based on their commonalities in relation to agility to attain the resulting design
goals and principles. The coding procedure for the second iteration follows the same rules and finally
Horlach et al. /Agile Portfolio Management Design Principles
Twenty-Seventh European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS2019), Stockholm-Uppsala, Sweden 5
merges with the first set by constant comparisons between the derived principles and goal. In case of
conflicts, the authors discussed different perceptions until they arrived at a joint assessment.
Case
Size (‘000) employees
#Agile Teams
Scope of Agility (Present)
Operation
Position
BankCorp
50-100
400
Enterprise
Global
CIO
InsureCorp A
1-5
10
IT and Digital Unit
Global
CIO
InsureCorp B
1-5
10
Enterprise
National
CIO
ManuCorp
10-25
5
IT and Digital Unit
Global
CIO
PublicCorp
1-5
2
Digital Unit
National
CDO
RetailCorp
50-100
50
Enterprise
Global
CIO
Table 1. Participating organizations of the cross-industry empirical study
We evaluated both goals and principles in both cycles for validity and generalizability (Benbasat and
Zmud, 1999). The first set was evaluated by all participants of the focus group within a shared tele-
phone conference. The experts provided comprehensive qualitative feedback by breaking down the
results’ structure, utility, level of completeness and detail and applicability (Hevner et al., 2004). For
example, the goals should include the allocation flexibility, as it is one underlying agility dimension
instead of merely acting as guiding principle for execution. In addition, the proactive side of agility
with the link to innovation management needed to be addressed more. In the second iteration, we used
a summative evaluation to gain a rather concluding judgement from expert interviews with three man-
agement consultants, experienced in agile transformations, and one IT manager, whose organization is
also transforming towards agility on the enterprise level. Interviewees had to assess the results con-
cerning their relevance, completeness applicability and the inter-relatedness between goals and princi-
ples. As instrument for highlighting the degree of agreement, we used a five-point Likert-scale, rang-
ing from 5 for “Fully agree” to 1 for “Fully disagree”. We also requested qualitative feedback to iden-
tify further design goals, principles and inter-relations to refine our results once more. However, the
results showed that our results are comprehensive, which is reflected by only needing minor revisions
in phrase and style like e.g. refinement of principles’ descriptions. We however shifted requested pat-
terns on concrete recommended actions to our next research cycle.
4 Design Goals and Principles for Agile Portfolio Management
In the following, we describe (1) the design goals as necessary requirements for achieving agile port-
folio management, (2) the design principles as the underlying logic of an effective agile portfolio man-
agement system and (3) the resulting design features based on an exemplary instantiation of an agile
portfolio management system for showing their utility. In regard to the presentation of our results, we
follow the recommendations of Legner and Löhe (2012) and Meth et al. (2015). Our design goals and
principles are independent from a specific organizational setup in agile organizations, so that portfolio
changes can be realized in various way, e.g. via (agile) projects or via stable (cross-functional) ‘prod-
uct teams’ with end-to-end focus on providing services for particular customer objectives.
4.1 Design goals as requirements for agile portfolio management
Design goals as the ‘causa finalis’ are an essential correspondent to design principles by defining me-
ta-requirements of applicability or exclusion (Gregor and Jones, 2007), which means the requirements
that are needed for agility in portfolio management. This does not exclude traditional goals of portfolio
management for ensuring compliance, optimal resource allocation and solving (resource) conflicts and
interdependencies, as these are still valid. Based on our theoretical and empirical knowledge base, we
derived four generalizable goals along the two design cycles, which are described in the following.
As “digitalization is nothing more than consistent customer orientation” (CIO BankCorp), agility re-
quires everyone to focus on providing value for the customer at any time and continuously checking
Horlach et al. /Agile Portfolio Management Design Principles
Twenty-Seventh European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS2019), Stockholm-Uppsala, Sweden 6
on the fit between the value and the own services (Denning, 2010). As organizations are increasingly
operating in business ecosystems, customer value also includes solving business partners’ and em-
ployees’ needs as intermediaries to and ’voices’ of the customer. Thus, companies with indirect cus-
tomer proximity are also affected by this logic. For portfolio management, this requires a correspond-
ing management logic from output-driven decisions towards outcome focus, i.e. what the services are
needed for (= the customer value, not the shareholder value) (Denning, 2016). Therefore, the first de-
sign goal calls for a customer-value based portfolio management process (DG1) along two dimen-
sions: (a) a value fit between need, idea and portfolio demand and (b) a value fit between the portfo-
lio decision and the realized service. Purposeful portfolio decisions require the ability to collect, pro-
cess and monitor large amounts and a variety of data for identifying the customer value (Bharadwaj et
al., 2013; Nazir and Pinsonneault, 2012) and integrate this knowledge when realizing the services, e.g.
by integrating data analysts or customer journey experts in the (project or product) teams. This also
calls for continuous innovation, which results in a needed end-to-end ‘ownership’ on operational level
for the whole service cycle from idea to realization and back with e.g. having a committed service
owner from business in project settings or a committed product team (Bogsnes, 2009). Teams’ ideas
for improvement then need to flow back to the portfolio to monitor the overall customer value (Little
and Karaj, 2013). Having procedures for teams for predicting customer needs externally, e.g. via close
collaboration with market influencer and users (Sambamurthy et al., 2003), can also be helpful.
Since the customer value can change at any time, agility in portfolio management means speed in han-
dling changes (Fitzgerald and Stol, 2017; Suomalainen et al., 2015). Thus, the second design goal im-
plies a time-efficient portfolio elicitation and management process (DG2) with the two sub-goals (a)
realization of portfolio items in adequate time and (b) refinement of portfolio items in adequate
time. This means a fundamental change of the traditional annual portfolio management processes to
short cadences like quarterly business cycles. Time-efficiency also implies service changes to be real-
ized on time to avoid waiting times and release delays. Thus, teams “cannot run alone and say: ‘Here
I come.’ No; they are swim lanes working on different things. They need parallel synchronization”
(CIO ManuCorp). In addition, the information on the service lifecycle and corresponding decisions
constantly is to be transparent and traceable from elicitation to realization in the portfolio process for
continuous value generation (Suomalainen et al., 2015; Little and Karaj, 2013).
With the service content and the service landscape being in a flux, portfolio management needs to
handle the ongoing rebalancing its resources and capabilities (Overby et al., 2006; van Oosterhout et
al., 2006). Therefore, an efficient setup of allocation processes (DG3) with (a) flexible and adaptable
resource allocation and (b) flexible and adaptable budget allocation is essential. Flexibility implies
capabilities’ scalability and their ability for (re)integration and (re)configuration (Sambamurthy et al.,
2003). Thus, organizations need to think of how to set up the organization to ensure resource flexibil-
ity while enabling ownership for continuous innovation of services. Flexibility in structuring should be
based on a problem-centric mind-set: “What should become better and what or who can help achiev-
ing this goal? [...] In today’s situation, I have today’s problem and try to solve those with today’s
knowledge and an anticipation of tomorrow. Will that be just as valid in the future? I don’t
know.”(CIO RetailCorp) This also involves flexibility in sourcing strategies, as external sources may
be needed for realizing services in adequate time or manner (Sambamurthy et al., 2003). The budget
allocation process also must handle flexibility, which in turn means fast and adaptive budget handling
in portfolio management (Hope and Fraser, 2003; Bogsnes, 2009).
With the plethora of services and the fluidity of content and resources, portfolio management still has
to face the multitude of service interdependencies and possible resource shortages for the realization.
Like in traditional settings, this results in a needed business IT alignment for solving the challenges by
knowledge sharing and a resulting shared understanding (Reich and Benbasat, 2000; Chan and Reich,
2007). As digital services require an even deeper IT understanding for business and vice versa (Bha-
radwaj et al., 2013), fast, but profound decisions require a continuous alignment between business
and IT in the portfolio management (DG 4) by (a) shared awareness of service interdependencies
and (b) continuous shared commitment and contribution to the capabilities of the organization. This
Horlach et al. /Agile Portfolio Management Design Principles
Twenty-Seventh European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS2019), Stockholm-Uppsala, Sweden 7
leads to new ways in mind-set, process and structure to solve problems like lack of collaboration and
understanding caused by terminology differences by business and IT (Melarkode et al., 2004).
4.2 Design principles
The following six design principles depict the principles of form and function (the causa formalis)
(Gregor and Jones, 2007) for achieving agility in portfolio management. Thereby, we describe the ab-
stract blueprint of the requirements for attaining such a portfolio management system by highlighting
each principle and how it can realized based on specified constructs. We also show testable proposi-
tions, which represent each principle’s outcomes, and the mechanisms mainly contributing to achiev-
ing this outcome. Table 2 presents the six principles, their key characteristics and mainly underlying
design goals as well as an excerpt of the testable propositions with an example of its literary origins.
To achieve agility’s main goal of continuous customer value (DG1) while having limited information
and predictability on whether the resulting service will really fulfil their needs, DP1 implies a custom-
er solution-driven portfolio management. A solution in the context of portfolio represents the busi-
ness capabilities, which are necessary for achieving the targeted customer value and the respective
outcome (what are they needed for) (Steindl, 2005). Thus, solutions involve the current and envisioned
services, the targeted customer segments and the value streams as the “series of steps […] that provide
a continuous flow of value to a customer” (Scaled Agile, 2018). Via the value stream, the involved
people and the flow of information and materials for realizing the value proposition (DG4) is mapped
(Shalloway et al., 2010). Overarching topics like legal and non-functional requirements are also solu-
tions, as they also have a certain (indirect) outcome for the customer, e.g. by investing in quality (Dis-
ciplined Agile, 2018). As the value is in flux, solutions and their selection and prioritization are under-
going changes by becoming outcome-driven with goal-oriented milestones or desirability factors
(Daniel et al., 2014) for rolling forecasts (Rickards and Ritsert, 2012) opposing concrete plans for each
milestone level: “When you have a business capability or an initiative to roll out, you have a plan for
one or two years, and have strategic milestones in the plan. […] You only plan in more granularity for
the next six or three months. […] The scope, what we want to achieve, or, actually, the key milestones
are, of course, planned long-term. But we don’t plan what we want to do in January to March 2019.
Instead, we say: ‘You have to reach some milestones by March 2019,’ and the teams have to adjust to
these milestones.” (CIO BankCorp) However, the teams have the autonomy on how to commit to the
strategic milestones, as they semi-autonomously plan and estimate their own work, e.g. by weighted
shortest job first based on the economics of the product development flow (Scaled Agile, 2018) or the
net promoter score (Little and Karaj, 2013). In principle, they can defer work resulting from the mile-
stones, if their own topics are more urgent at a certain point or if the work requires efforts beyond the
team’s capacity at the time. As the teams do not work in isolation, especially regarding realizing the
strategic milestones, they need to coordinate their plans with other involved parties and come to an
agreement. This is mainly reflected via continuously coordinated team backlogs based on common
portfolio backlogs (Poppendieck and Poppendieck, 2003), roadmaps (Saad et al. 2006) and planning,
review and performance management cycles (Tengshe and Noble, 2007; Scaled Agile, 2018).
Opposing a traditional top down portfolio management process with a dedicated executive portfolio
team, separated for business and IT, agility requires a decentralized enterprise portfolio system with a
multi-level cross-functional portfolio governance body (DP2). As any to be escalated decision
causes a delay in action and can be falsified based on missing knowledge of the individual context,
recurring and time-critical decisions that require knowledge on the local context are to be managed
and governed on the operational level within the teams as much as possible (Steindl, 2005). This also
involves the allocation of additionally needed resources and material for realizing a solution (DG3).
Overall portfolio management involving executives is then responsible for business critical, long last-
ing decisions with enterprise-wide impact (e.g. terminating a solution) (Paasivaara, 2017). Due to the
high decentralization of traditional top down portfolio decisions, information sharing between the mul-
tiple ‘hierarchical’ levels is key to optimize the whole (Disciplined Agile, 2018) as “we are much
more involved in the content on the portfolio level, both regarding the what and the how [,but] the rat-
Horlach et al. /Agile Portfolio Management Design Principles
Twenty-Seventh European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS2019), Stockholm-Uppsala, Sweden 8
ing system does not resemble the content of established products so that they cannot be sufficiently
evaluated based on ROI and strategic points. Although we try to capture the content by reviews and
retrospective, we need more. We [as executive management] need to be involved in the content-related
discussion much more and know in more detail what is going on in our organization and what the
teams are doing.” (CIO BankCorp). Organizations have implemented formal and informal multi-level
communication channels to provide this feedback loop like communities of practice or interest (Little
and Karaj, 2013; Power, 2011), cross-functional team structures or gatekeeper roles with business and
IT expertise like (chief) product owner or solution owner. Next to being responsible for ensuring con-
tinuous optimization of service(s) delivery with resources and knowledge (DG2), they are main facili-
tators for the convergence of business and IT-related decisions following DG4 on the multiple levels
to create speed in decision-making and a shared understanding via system thinking. A converged
overall portfolio decision-making with IT and business executives via an ‘executive squad’ (XSCALE,
2018), sometimes following a common strategy, is on the rise as enabling practice.
DP3 addresses the required aligned autonomous portfolio decision-making for agile settings. We
identified that the selection and prioritization of topics within the solutions is to be as autonomous as
possible by the teams to enable the fastest possible reaction to the customer (DG2). The executive
management intervenes in case of conflicts that teams could not solve among each other. However,
teams need to follow the overarching central enterprise vision and ‘plan’ via the portfolio for shaping
their plans (Bogsnes, 2009). Therefore, the solution, more accurately its outcome, sets the boundaries
for teams’ decisions by setting the team’s purpose (Hope and Fraser, 2003; Rautiainen et al., 2011).
Organizations are using bottom-up self-commitment via self-defined objectives and measures on team
level to create this purpose. The current favoured mechanism is objective and key results (OKR) with
quantifiable key results developed for each team and individual based on identified objectives derived
from the enterprise vision. For solutions involving multiple teams, solution ‘middle-ware’ domains are
increasing, where teams are grouped under the same purpose to enable optimization of the whole solu-
tion instead of local enhancements. We found that the purpose has another alignment function: com-
mitment of team members to the individual team and to the company as a whole (DG1). The purpose
demonstrates to team members that the individual work is an impactful contribution to the organiza-
tion, which in turn strengthens the commitment and alignment of actions to the common direction. For
creating a fit between solutions in case of dependencies, teams align via centralized collaboration
mechanisms, similar to scrum meetings on team level. We identified that product owners are usually
the main actors in the mechanisms or some delegated specialists from the teams, depending on the top-
ic. In addition, cross-team oriented roles like e.g. solution architects are part of the settings for provid-
ing input and continuous attention to the overall interfaces and interactions (Scaled Agile, 2018).
For fast overall decision-making with holistic information and flexible resource (re)allocation to solu-
tions, DP4 proposes synchronized short portfolio cycles. Our study reveals that synchronization is
required throughout the portfolio system with multiple integration points, as little value is provided
before all constituent parts of the solution as minimum viable products (MVP) are usable (DG2)
(Steindl, 2005). Otherwise, value is inhibited by waiting times due to delayed integration testing, risk
identification (e.g. capacity or budget shortage) and planning and allocation of content, resources and
budget for the next iteration. Therefore, “you actually need a synchronized procedure across all do-
mains, and you eventually need a synchronization point [again]. […] It is […] important that they
have no offset. The weeks need to start all the same with a Monday and use the same Monday as syn-
chronization point. […].” (CIO RetailCorp) The periods for the different integration points are also
becoming synchronized (time boxed), resulting in a cadenced enterprise planning and validation cycle
for continuous adaptation (XSCALE, 2018). The integration points are moving to much shorter peri-
ods with most preferably quarterly reviews (Little and Karaj, 2013; Power, 2011), turning away from
the traditional annual cycles. This continuously (re-)aligns and commits all stakeholders to the com-
mon technical and business vision (DG4), both near- and long-term, as well as flexibly (re)allocates
the required resources (DG3). With decentralization of decision-making, synchronization helps mini-
mizing uncertainty in solution delivery, as sharing the planning and control empowers teams to create
the best possible plans to achieve the best possible solution within the given constraints.
Horlach et al. /Agile Portfolio Management Design Principles
Twenty-Seventh European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS2019), Stockholm-Uppsala, Sweden 9
Design Principle
Testable propositions (selection) and exemplary origin
DP1: Customer-solution-driven
portfolio management: Definition,
management and evaluation of the
purpose of present/ future solutions
against expected customer value
(Addressed design goals: 1, 4)
TP1.1 Awareness for customer-solution orientation is fostered via vi-
sion and purpose based on value (Poppendieck and Poppendieck, 2003)
TP1.2 Agile units are committed to
overall organizational goals and
strategic direction via customer-driven KPIs (Scaled Agile, 2018)
TP1.3 Understanding of units’ own share towards corporate success is
fostered by value stream (system thinking) (Steindl, 2005)
DP2: Multi-level cross-functional
portfolio governance body: Con-
tinuous involvement of stakehold-
ers from business and IT from mul-
tiple organizational levels in whole
portfolio management process
(Addressed design goals: 2, 3, 4)
TP2.1 Alignment between business and IT stakeholders is fostered via
shared understanding, learning and proficiency along the multiple or-
ganizational levels and disciplines (Little and Karaj, 2013)
TP2.2 Decision-making is faster and comprehensive due to less needed
additional information acquisition via set purpose (Daniel et al., 2014)
TP2.3 Resource allocation is effective based on completeness of in-
formation on necessary skills for demand realization (Power, 2011)
DP3: Aligned autonomous portfo-
lio decision-making:
Transfer of
decision rights solution specifica-
tion and resource allocation to real-
izing organizational units aligned to
the overall strategic vision
(Addressed design goals: 1, 2, 3)
TP3.1 Fast changes to solutions based on evaluation of actual data are
enabled by monitoring skills within teams (Little and Karaj, 2013)
TP3.2 Entrepreneurial spirit and behavior by units is facilitated by re-
sponsibility (ownership) of teams for their solutions (Krebs, 2009)
TP3.3 Shift of teams towards new topics is simplified based on out-
come-based purpose instead of output-based scope (Saad et al., 2006)
DP4: Synchronized short portfo-
lio cycles: A series of defined in-
formation points for common plan-
ning and reflection of the status of
the solutions' realization status
(Addressed design goals: 2, 3, 4)
TP4.1 Waiting times in solution realization are minimized by synchro-
nized timeframes (Steindl, 2005)
TP4.2 Overall information completeness is improved and faster via
common information points (Heje and Krohn, 2017)
TP4.3 Transparency of consequences in case of shifting priorities is
facilitated based on continuous monitoring (Saad et al., 2006)
DP5: Alignment of portfolio
management with adjoining stra-
tegic management processes:
Continuous information exchange
and activities between portfolio
management and adjoining strategic
management processes
(Addressed design goals: 1, 3, 4)
TP5.1 Evaluation of strategic planning is flexible and adaptive via con-
tinuous internal and external feedback flows on changes between port-
folio and strategic planning (Laanti and Kangas, 2015)
TP5.2 IT landscape is manageable and its development is controlled by
continuous check of architectural baseline (Rickards and Ritsert, 2012)
TP5.3 Faster response to changing customer needs is enabled by flexi-
ble and adaptive budget allocation, based on short feedback flows from
the operational units (Laanti and Kangas, 2015)
DP6: Extension towards innova-
tion management capabilities
integration: Integration of explora-
tive and exploitative portfolio de-
mands in decision-
making and
management with information
flows to various innovation origins
(Addressed design goals: 1, 3)
TP6.1 I
nformed evaluation of possible technology investments for the
portfolio is facilitated based on actual data through the application in a
concrete context (Little and Karaj, 2013)
TP6.2 Business opportunities are identified, realized and tested early
of in a limited (non-critical) environment based on teams focusing on
continuous service improvement and innovation (Krebs, 2009)
TP6.3 The (re)integration of ideas and solutions, developed by third
parties, into the portfolio management process is enabled by continu-
ous improvement of (future) customer value (Little and Karaj, 2013)
Table 2. Agile portfolio management design principles and excerpt of testable propositions
With agility being an enterprise-wide spanning activity, an alignment of portfolio management with
adjoining strategic management processes (DP5) like strategic planning, budget and investment,
architectural planning and decisions on sourcing (strategies) is required to not inhibit portfolio man-
agement’s speed (Suomalainen, 2015; Disciplined Agile, 2018). Our study reveals that these manage-
ment processes therefore undergo a transformation towards agility themselves. For example, we iden-
tified that budgeting and investment is changing its nature by (1) faster and shorter feedback loops for
more efficient budget reallocation and identification of budget deficits (DG3), (2) decentralization of
Horlach et al. /Agile Portfolio Management Design Principles
Twenty-Seventh European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS2019), Stockholm-Uppsala, Sweden 10
decision-making with budgeting on teams instead of individual thematic initiatives (‘money-boxing’),
which results in teams having the right to allocate necessary capabilities (Laanti and Kangas, 2015)
and (3) converged investments for business logic and IT-specific operational expenses, which were
traditionally separated in change and run budgets (DG4). A similar development is evident in strategic
planning, which reduces its learning cycles, converging business and IT strategies towards a capabil-
ity-based strategic vision (DG1) to handle the economic uncertainties by focusing on the organiza-
tion’s core competencies (Little and Karaj, 2013; Laanti and Kangas, 2015; Paasivaara, 2017). As the
IT landscape is in constant change along the solutions, architecture management for guarding its effi-
cient development is also becoming fluid. Most prominent, the role of architects are transforming from
giving directions from the ‘ivory tower’ to consulting teams in their ongoing work and continuously
update the overall architecture (Heje and Krohn, 2017). Architectural thinking also becomes more en-
grained in portfolio decisions with enterprise architects becoming portfolio adviser for solutions’ tech-
nological feasibility and influence the often-complex IT landscape (Scaled Agile, 2018). In addition,
they develop enterprise-wide architectural recommendations instead of presetting regulations.
DP6 advises the portfolio’s extension towards innovation management capabilities integration.
Based on a higher commitment by the agile teams towards their realized solutions, they increasingly
focus on its optimization or deriving completely new ideas and initiate endeavors (Disciplined Agile,
2018). Actual customer data then serves as rapid feedback and consequently allows fact-based deci-
sion making on progressing on the innovation or not. Thus, the teams with their ‘ear to the customer’
increasingly become a major innovation source and motor (DG1). We realize that actively enforcing
teams’ drive for innovation seeking and e.g. dedicating shares of worktime for own ideas, is gaining
more and better results. As these ideas may possibly be valuable for the whole organization and show
a possible threat to changes in customer needs, an extensive exchange of insights between teams and
the portfolio is required for ongoing business success. Due to teams’ knowledge on customer behav-
iour and consequent new business potentials, either continuous or disruptive, originally separated ideas
and project portfolio (Young et al., 2011) merge in an agile world. Especially the integration of disrup-
tive thinking is essential for being able to create a real competitive value for organization and shaping
the future instead of simply evicting visionary ideas from the portfolio because of their high risk. For
effectively handling the differing requirements, the portfolio is becoming ambidextrous (Krebs, 2009).
Differing demands are specified in their rough sequence of tasks based on their capacities and teams
can choose and switch their state between exploration and exploitation within the delivery cycles
based on the requirements they prioritized for the upcoming time (DG3). We see that due to teams still
being in an early stage of expertise, exceptions are yet made for disruptive ideas such as e.g. block-
chain solutions. These are realized with specialists within (newly set up or existing) innovation teams.
4.3 Exemplary instantiation at RetailCorp
In the following, we highlight the design features on how RetailCorp as an organization quite ad-
vanced in transforming their whole enterprise has shaped an agile portfolio management system (see
Figure 1). This instantiation of our artefact serves as “theory representation or exposition” (Gregor and
Jones, 2007) and shows how organizations can follow our baseline to establish a portfolio system in-
stead of randomly combining agile practices.
RetailCorp has continuous customer-centricity (DP1) deeply engrained, both in its processes and in its
structures. For achieving a customer-centric structure, the teams are organized by the business capabil-
ity-based solutions like e.g. “order to cash” along the value chain. Each team focuses end-to-end on
autonomously solving the assigned problems through the portfolio process and includes all the key
functions needed to create value, i.e. marketing, product management, customer journey experts,
UX/UI, data analysts, or dev and ops engineers, resulting in a structure that is genuinely customer-
centric. The purpose like e.g. “deliver and maintain robust back-end services to verify and register in-
formation for new customers and guarantee high quality data” is setting the direction and boundaries
for the team, which also supports the aligned autonomy principle (DP3). As the solutions involve both
the technological and functional logic, these teams are cross-functional ‘BizDevOps’ teams with
Horlach et al. /Agile Portfolio Management Design Principles
Twenty-Seventh European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS2019), Stockholm-Uppsala, Sweden 11
members from business and IT continuously working together (DP2). Each of the team has its own
budget in order to flexible allocate the budget to personnel and resources to the changing incoming
topics (DP5). Overall budgets are annually distributed and allocated to teams based on the estimated
needed amount via the enterprise portfolio.
Figure 1. Agile portfolio management system at RetailCorp
Continuous customer-centricity is also key along the management process. RetailCorp’s employs a
multi-level portfolio system with a bottom-up and a top-down stream deriving the workload for the
teams. Bottom up, each team starts the process by deriving their own topics, e.g. based on customer
feedback data, experienced non-functional difficulties or radically new ideas. Cross-functional teams
are yet in a rather nascent phase regarding identifying radically new business opportunities and rather
focus on IT-related improvements at RetailCorp. With teams increasingly maturing in relation to cus-
tomer-centric and business thinking as well as taking responsibility for their own actions, this suppos-
edly changes in the near future (DP6). For each topic, the team estimates the expenses and identifies
dependencies to other teams. Sometimes, the teams develop an estimated business case to strengthen
the value for the individual idea (e.g. in case of innovation). The resulting calculations are sent to the
‘domain lead’, who then prioritizes and preselects all calculations. The domain lead sends the pre-
prioritized list to the enterprise portfolio function and escalates identified challenges in the list like e.g.
shortages in capacity or skills, which may result in additional teams or budget. The final prioritization
is conducted in the enterprise portfolio, where business and IT executives discuss the topics, their fea-
sibility and architectural integrity and prioritize the demands according to their strategic importance
and urgency in unison (DP2). Before that, the executives also elicited their new demands in a top
down manner based on e.g. external business, legal and technological trends and identified topics
based on analysing the strategic objectives, which is in turn based on the enterprise vision as the ‘self-
conception’ and identity of the company and its core business capabilities. For the technical feasibility
and integrity analysis, an enterprise architect is part of this process as he has the overview on the in-
terdependencies between the potential and current solutions and surveys the efficient development of
the IT landscape (DP5). The prioritized portfolio solutions are communicated to the teams by a JIRA
board, together with defined strategic milestones on a high-level roadmap. Teams and domains com-
mit themselves to those solutions according to their capacities in a common meeting (DP3). During
Horlach et al. /Agile Portfolio Management Design Principles
Twenty-Seventh European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS2019), Stockholm-Uppsala, Sweden 12
this meeting, individual plans are discussed, dependencies are identified and coordinated and prioriti-
zations are aligned across all domains and teams. Common ground rules for the work are also set. In
case of impediments, executive management is informed in a separate meeting, which results in e.g.
additional budget for teams. Resource shortage within the single team is solved through the ‘area
lead’, who is responsible for the personal development of the team members. This role also has the
disciplinary responsibility by being able to hire or fire team members.
RetailCorp employs different planning horizons with only the enterprise vision and its core business
capabilities are fixed for a rather longer cycle. Starting from the resulting strategic objectives to realize
the capabilities with assigned customer-oriented KPIs (including the net promoter score and traditional
metrics such as ROI), all other plans are under continuous monitoring and revision at least on the quar-
terly cadences. The cycles in RetailCorp are synchronized across the teams and levels, which results in
the same cadences organization-wide. Quarterly synchronization cycles have been chosen to evict or
reduce waiting times and redundancies, but leave time for teams to work in peace on the topics. As the
cycles are this short as DP4 advocates, this results in a drastic change in the plans’ nature as well. In
contrast to traditional extensive planning, RetailCorp plans only their first quarters in detail, leaving all
remaining plans more tentative. At the end of the quarter, plans are conducted for the following three
months. For initiatives with fixed, sequential execution schedules (e.g. rollouts), the planning is more
defined, but still depicted via a solution roadmap. On the enterprise portfolio level, all solution
roadmaps are combined with their strategic milestones and corresponding KPIs.
As the portfolio topics involve business and IT-related content, executives and management require
extensive knowledge on what is happening within the organization. In RetailCorp, information sharing
within the organization is perceived as key for effective decisions and facilitate their approach by e.g.
introducing cross-functional ‘discussion groups’ for exploring ongoing solution and possible future
opportunities, such as voice technology (DP2). On operational level, the team setting as ‘BizDevOps’
teams and the corresponding cross-functional domain logic with representatives of business and IT in
continuous collaboration with each other is a further facilitator of convergent thinking and acting.
5 Summary and Conclusion
Our contribution for agility in portfolio management are six design principles for achieving four de-
sign goals to establish an effective agile portfolio management system based on qualitative analyses
within two design cycles with empirical and theoretical evidence from scientific and practitioner-in-
use literature. Experts from ten organizations contributed and validated both goals and principles.
Our research extends, integrates and complements the existing theoretical and practical debate by
combining an underlying baseline with concrete actions instead of proposing only one of them. By
emphasizing the underlying goals and principles of agility regarding the portfolio system, including
the processes, but also giving indication for structures and roles, our research goes beyond existing
work that mainly focuses on giving specific guidelines for scaling agile software development. While
our results confirm earlier research on goals to be attained like alignment, adaptivity and effectiveness
(e.g. Hoffmann et al., 2017) in relation to agility, we also combine how to achieve these goals with
design principles, possible practices and testable propositions. For example, we give insights on how
Hoffmann’ et al. (2017) recommendation of “decomposing large-scale projects into distinct projects”
(p. 1511) can be achieved with forming products based on the enterprise vision and business purpose
via value streams and roadmaps, which serve as benefit assessment from the beginning to align teams
to the strategic objectives and outcome. Furthermore, we also address the proactive side of agility and
the resulting connection to innovation management, instead of portfolio management being reactive in
nature by being responsive to changing strategic trajectories (Hoffmann et al. 2017). The formulation
of design goals, design principles and their context of application allows for condensing prescriptive
knowledge to derive different instantiations for specific organizational settings, while focusing on the
most critical design characteristics. Thereby, it supports practitioners in agile organizations to define
their individual portfolio management approach with highlighting necessary changes to structures,
processes as well as communication and information models. Research may use our design principles
Horlach et al. /Agile Portfolio Management Design Principles
Twenty-Seventh European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS2019), Stockholm-Uppsala, Sweden 13
for further empirical studies by analyzing different instantiations in order to refine and validate the
underlying mechanisms and identify contextual factors for boundary spanning of the applicability.
Furthermore, we address some of the existing weaknesses of the agile portfolio management research
with our systematic development and formulation of our research findings by integrating the either
empiric-focused and/or theory-ingrained existing prescriptive knowledge in the field. Especially our
findings on a convergence of business and IT in the agile portfolio management system is contributing
to the ongoing debate on how business IT alignment as one of executives’ central goals can be
achieved. Our results further show how agility can be expanded beyond the software development by
involving the remaining organization in this organizational setup.
Our research is not without limitations. Most importantly, we build our results on knowledge gained in
an empirical discourse with six organizations and existing case studies and frameworks on portfolio
management in agile environments. Since the number of existing approaches are quite low, such stud-
ies do not achieve the universal validity of our research. To address this issue, we evaluated our design
principles at the end of each design cycle by reflecting with the experts from the empirical inquiry and
with four additional organizations. Furthermore, enriching our results with extended knowledge based
on existing case studies and frameworks shall extend the limited knowledge base due to only six or-
ganizations participating. For achieving a further generalizability of our results, we strongly encourage
future studies for empirical validation of our findings. We will also continue to follow this path with
extending our study as well as enriching the results via patterns on concrete recommended action for a
tighter alignment between the provided baseline by the design goals and principles and the specific
(agile or traditional) portfolio practices and frameworks. A second limitation of our research is the
immaturity of agility in research and practice in relation to governance in general and portfolio man-
agement in particular. Our analysis is mainly based on the integration of both concepts by their theo-
retical constructs, enriched with literature from practitioner publications, as we could not rely on sci-
entifically grounded definitions or conceptualizations in this field spanning our whole research field.
Since many companies are in the early stage of introducing agility on portfolio level, we yet lack
widespread experiences with the concept and demonstrated proofs of design effectiveness. Thus, we
recommend to gain extend existing knowledge on portfolio management and connectivity and interre-
lations with other governance processes such as investment decisions, architecture and sourcing man-
agement in relation to agility. With extending agility outside software development, we also strongly
encourage analyses on how to integrate support functions like HR, accounting or legal in this setup.
Horlach et al. /Agile Portfolio Management Design Principles
Twenty-Seventh European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS2019), Stockholm-Uppsala, Sweden 14
References
Ahmad, M. O., Lwakatare, L. E., Kuvaja, P., Oivo, M. and J. Markkula (2017). “An Empirical Study
of Portfolio Management and Kanban in Agile and Lean Software Companies.” Journal of Soft-
ware: Evolution and Process 29 (6), 1-16.
Archer, N. P. and F. Ghasemzadeh (1999). “An Integrated Framework for Project Portfolio Selection.”
International Journal of Project Management 17 (4), 207–216.
Beck, K., Beedle, M., van Bennekum, A., Cockburn, A., Cunningham, W., Fowler, M., Grenning, J.,
Highsmith, J., Hunt, A., Jeffries, R., Kern, J., Marick, B., Martin, R. C., Mellor, S., Schwaber, K.,
Sutherland, J. and D. Thomas (2001). Agile Manifesto. URL: http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.
html (visited on 10/12/2018).
Benbasat, I. and R. W. Zmud (1999). “Empirical Research in Information Systems: The Practice of
Relevance.” MIS Quarterly 23 (1), 3–16.
Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O. A., Pavlou, P. A. and N. Venkatraman (2013). “Digital Business Strategy:
Toward a Next Generation of Insights.” MIS Quarterly 37 (2), 471–482.
Bogsnes, B. (2009). Implementing Beyond Budgeting: Unlocking the Performance Potential. 1st Edi-
tion. Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley.
Chakravarty, A., Grewal, R. and V. Sambamurthy (2013). “Information Technology Competencies,
Organizational Agility, and Firm Performance. Enabling and Facilitating Roles.” Information Sys-
tems Research 24 (4), 976–997.
Chan, Y. E. and B. H. Reich (2007). “IT Alignment: What Have We Learned?” Journal of Information
Technology 22 (4), 297–315.
Cohen, W. M. and D. A. Levinthal (1990). “Absorptive Capacity: A New Perspective on Learning and
Innovation.” Administrative Science Quarterly 35 (1), 128–152.
Conboy, K. and B. Fitzgerald (2004). “Toward a Conceptual Framework of Agile Methods: A Study
of Agility in Different Disciplines.” In: Proceedings of the 2004 ACM Workshop on Interdiscipli-
nary Software Engineering Research (WISER). Newport Beach, USA, 37–44.
Cooper, R. G., Edgett, S. J. and E. J. Kleinschmidt (1999). “New Product Portfolio Management:
Practices and Performance.” Journal of Product Innovation Management 16, 333–351.
Daniel, E. M., Ward, J. M. and A. Franken (2014). “A Dynamic Capabilities Perspective of IS Project
Portfolio Management.” The Journal of Strategic Information Systems 23 (2), 95–111.
Denning, S. (2010). “Rethinking the Organization: Leadership for Game‐Changing Innovation.” Strat-
egy & Leadership 38 (5), 13–19.
Denning, S. (2016). “Agile’s Ten Implementation Challenges.” Strategy & Leadership 44 (5), 15–20.
Denning, S. (2017a). “Strategic Agility. Using Agile Teams to Explore Opportunities for Market-
Creating Innovation.” Strategy & Leadership 45 (3), 3–9.
Denning, S. (2017b). “The Next Frontier for Agile: Strategic Management.” Strategy & Leadership 45
(2), 12–18.
Disciplined Agile (2018). The Disciplined Agile (DA) Framework. URL:
http://www.disciplinedagiledelivery.com/ (visited on 10/12/2018).
Doz, Y., and M. Kosonen (2010). “Embedding Strategic Agility: A Leadership Agenda for Accelerat-
ing Business Model Renewal.” Long Range Planning 4 (2), 370-382.
Drechsler, A. and A. R. Hevner (2018). “Utilizing, Producing, and Contributing Design Knowledge in
DSR Projects.” In: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Design Science Research
in Information Systems and Technology (DESRIST). Ed. by S. Chatterjee, K. Dutta and R.
Sundarraj. Cham: Springer, 82-97.
Fitzgerald, B. and K. -J. Stol (2017). “Continuous Software Engineering. A Roadmap and Agenda.”
Journal of Systems and Software 123, 176–189.
Frey, T. and P. Buxmann (2011). “The Importance of Governance Structures in IT Project Portfolio
Management.” In: Proceedings of the 19th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS).
Helsinki, Finland, Paper 17.
Gill, A.Q. (2007). “Defining an Integrated Agile Governance for Large Agile Software Development
Environments: A Systematic Review and Analysis.” In: Proceedings of the 8th International Con-
Horlach et al. /Agile Portfolio Management Design Principles
Twenty-Seventh European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS2019), Stockholm-Uppsala, Sweden 15
ferenceon Extreme Programming (XP). Ed. by G. Concas, E. Damiani, M. Scotto and G. Succi.
Lec-ture Notes in Computer Science 4536. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 157-160.
Goldman, S. L., Preiss, K. and R. N. Nagel (1995). Agile Competitors and Virtual Organizations:
Strategies for Enriching the Customer. 1st Edition. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Gregor, S. and D. Jones (2007). “The Anatomy of a Design Theory.” Journal of the Association for
Information Systems 8 (5), 312–335.
Hevner, A. R., March, S. T. and J. Park (2004). “Design Science in Information Systems Research.”
MIS Quarterly 28 (1), 75–106.
Hitt, M. A., Keats, B. W. and S. M. Demarie (1998). “Navigating in the New Competitive Landscape:
Building Strategic Flexibility and Competitive Advantage in the 21st Century.” Academy of Man-
agement Executive 4 (12), 22–42.
Hoffmann, D., Mueller, T. and F. Ahlemann (2017). “Balancing Alignment, Adaptivity, and Effec-
tiveness: Design Principles for Sustainable IT Project Portfolio Management.“ In: Proceedings of
the 25th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS). Guimarães, Portugal, 1503-1520.
Hope, J. and R. Fraser (2003). Beyond Budgeting: How Managers can Break Free from the Annual
Performance Trap. 1st Edition. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Horlach, B., Böhmann, T., Schirmer, I. and P. Drews (2018). “IT Governance in Scaling Agile
Frameworks.” In: Proceedings of the 2018 Multikonferenz Wirtschaftsinformatik (MKWI). Ed. by
P. Drews, B. Funk, P. Niemeyer and X. Lin. Lüneburg: Universität Lüneburg, 1789–1800.
Jeffery, M. and I. Leviveld (2004). “Best Practices in IT Portfolio Management.” MIT Sloan Manage-
ment Review 45 (3), 41–49.
Krebs, J. (2009) Agile Portfolio Management. 1st Edition. Sebastopol: O'Reilly Media.
Krueger, R. A. and M. A. Casey (2014). Focus Groups: A Practical Guide for Applied Research. 1st
Edition. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.
Laanti, M. and M. Kangas (2015). “Is Agile Portfolio Management Following the Principles of Large-
Scale Agile? Case Study in Finnish Broadcasting Company Yle.” In: Proceedings of the 2015 Agile
Conference (AGILE). Washington, D.C., USA, 92-96.
Lee, O.-K. D., Sambamurthy, V., Lim, K. H. and K. K. Wei (2015). “How Does IT Ambidexterity
Impact Organizational Agility.” Information Systems Research 26 (2), 398–417.
Legner, C. and J. Löhe (2012). “Improving the Realization of IT Demands: A Design Theory for End-
to-End Demand Management” In: Proceedings of the 33rd International Conference on Infor-
mation Systems (ICIS). Orlando, USA, 1-17.
Liang, H., Wang, N., Xue, Y. and Ge, S. (2017). “Unraveling the Alignment Paradox. How Does
Business—IT Alignment Shape Organizational Agility?” Information Systems Research 28 (4),
863–879.
Little, J. and A. Karaj (2013). “Transforming a Public Sector Organization: From Stone Age to Agile.”
In: Proceedings of the 2013 Agile Conference (AGILE). Nashville, USA, 74-81.
Lu, Y. and K. Ramamurthy (2011). “Understanding the Link Between Information Technology Capa-
bility and Organizational Agility: An Empirical Examination.” MIS Quarterly 35 (4), 931–954.
Luna, A., Costa, C., Moura, H., Novaes, M. and C. Nascimento (2010). “Agile Governance in Infor-
mation and Communication Technologies: Shifting Paradigms.” Journal of Information Systems
and Technology Management 7 (2), 311–334.
Luna, A., Kruchten, P., Riccio, E, and P. Hermano (2016). “Foundations for an Agile Governance
Manifesto: a Bridge for Business Agility." In: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on
Management of Technology and Information Systems. Ruse, Bulgaria, 1–15.
March, J. G. (1991). “Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning.” Organization Science
2 (1), 71–87.
Martinsuo, M. and P. Lehtonen (2007). “Role of Single-Project Management in Achieving Portfolio
Management Efficiency.” International Journal of Project Management 25 (1), 56–65.
Melarkode, A., From-Poulsen, M. and S. Warnakulasuriya (2004). “Delivering Agility through IT.”
Business Strategy Review 15 (3), 45–50.
Meth, H., Mueller, B. and A. Maedche (2015). “Designing a Requirement Mining System.” Journal of
the Association for Information Systems 16 (9), 799–837.
Horlach et al. /Agile Portfolio Management Design Principles
Twenty-Seventh European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS2019), Stockholm-Uppsala, Sweden 16
Nazir, S. and A. Pinsonneault (2012). “IT and Firm Agility: An Electronic Integration Perspective.”
Journal of the Association for Information Systems 13 (3), 150–171.
Nissen, V. and A. von Rennenkampff (2017). “Measuring the Agility of the IT Application Systems
Landscape.” In: Proceedings of the 13th Internationale Tagung Wirtschaftsinformatik (WI).
St.Gallen: Universität St. Gallen, 425–438.
Overby, E., Bharadwaj, A. and V. Sambamurthy (2006). “Enterprise Agility and the Enabling Role of
Information Technology.” European Journal of Information Systems 15 (2), 120–131.
Paasivaaara, M. (2017). “Adopting SAFe to Scale Agile in a Globally Distributed Organization.” In:
Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE 12th International Conference on Global Software Engineering
(ICGSE). Buenos Aires, Argentina, 36–40.
Peterson, R. R. (2004). “Integration Strategies and Tactics for Information Technology Governance.”
In: Strategies for Information Technology Governance. Ed. by W. Van Grembergen. Strategies for
Information Technology Governance. Hershey: IGI Global, 37–80.
Poppendieck, M. and T. Poppendieck (2003). Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit. 1st Edi-
tion. Amsterdam: Addison-Wesley Longman.
Power, K. (2011). “The Agile Office: Experience Report from Cisco’s Unified Communications Busi-
ness Unit.” In: Proceedings of the 2011 Agile Conference (AGILE). Salt Lake City, USA, 201-208.
Pries-Heje, J. and M. M. Krohn (2017). “The SAFe way to the Agile Organization.” In: Proceedings
of the XP2017 Scientific Workshops. Cologne, Germany, Paper 18.
Rautiainen, K., von Schantz, J., and J. Vähäniitty (2011). "Supporting Scaling Agile with Portfolio
Management: Case Paf.com." In Proceedings of the 44th Hawaii International Conference on Sys-
tem Sciences (HICSS). Hawaii, USA, 1-10.
Reich, B. H. and I. Benbasat (2000). “Factors that Influence the Social Dimension of Alignment be-
tween Business and Information Technology Objectives.” MIS Quarterly 24 (1), 81–113.
Rickards, R. C. and R. Ritsert (2012). “Rediscovering Rolling Planning. Controller's Roadmap for Im-
plementing Rolling Instruments in SMEs.” Procedia Economics and Finance 2, 135–144.
Roberts, N. and V. Grover (2012). “Leveraging Information Technology Infrastructure to Facilitate a
Firm's Customer Agility and Competitive Activity. An Empirical Investigation.” Journal of Man-
agement Information Systems 28 (4), 231–270.
Saad, S., Gindy, N. N. Z., Cerit, B. and A. Hodgson (2006). “Technology Roadmapping for the Next
Generation Manufacturing Enterprise.” Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management 17 (4),
404–416.
Sambamurthy, V., Bharadwaj, A. and V. Grover (2003). “Shaping Agility through Digital Options:
Reconceptualizing the Role of Information Technology in Contemporary Firms.” MIS Quarterly 27
(2), 237–263.
Scaled Agile (2018). Scaled Agile Framework. URL: http://www.scaledagileframework.com/ (visited
on 10/12/ 2018).
Shalloway, A., Beaver, G. and J. Trott (2010). Lean-Agile Software Development: Achieving Enter-
prise Agility. 1st Edition. Upper Saddle River: Addison-Wesley.
Sherehiy, B., Karwowski, W. and J. K. Layer (2007). “A Review of Enterprise Agility: Concepts,
Frameworks and Indicators.” International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics 37(5), 445–460.
Steindl, C. (2005). “From Agile Software Development to Agile Businesses.” In: Proceedings of the
31st EUROMICRO Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications. Washington,
D.C., USA, 258-265.
Stettina, C. J. and J. Hörz (2015). “Agile Portfolio Management. An Empirical Perspective on the
Practice in Use.” International Journal of Project Management 33 (1), 140–152.
Strauss, A. L. and J. M. Corbin (1991). Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures
and Techniques. 1st Edition. Newbury Park: SAGE Publications.
Suomalainen, T., Kuusela, R. and M. Tihinen (2015). “Continuous Planning: An Important Aspect of
Agile and Lean Development.” International Journal of Agile Systems and Management 8 (2),
132–162.
Sushil (2015). “Strategic Flexibility: The Evolving Paradigm of Strategic Management.” Global Jour-
nal of Flexible Systems Management 16 (2), 113–114.
Horlach et al. /Agile Portfolio Management Design Principles
Twenty-Seventh European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS2019), Stockholm-Uppsala, Sweden 17
Sweetman, R., O'Dwyer, O. and K. Conboy (2014). “A Complex Adaptive Systems Perspective on
Self-Organization in IS Project Portfolios.” In: Proceedings of the 2014 International Research
Workshop on IT Project Management (IRWITPM), 28–36.
Tengshe, A., and S. Noble (2007). "Establishing the Agile PMO: Managing Variability across Projects
and Portfolios.” In: Proceedings of the 2007 Agile Conference (AGILE). Washington, D.C., USA,
188-193.
Van Oosterhout, M., Waarts, E. and J. van Hillegersberg (2006). “Change Factors Requiring Agility
and Implications for IT.” European Journal of Information Systems 15 (2), 132–145.
Vom Brocke, J., Simons, A., Niehaves, B., Reimer, K., Plattfaut, R. and A. Cleven (2009) “Recon-
structing the Giant: On the Importance of Rigour in Documenting the Literature Search Process.”
In: Proceedings of the 17th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS). Verona, Italy,
Paper 161.
XSCALE Alliance (2018). XSCALE. URL: http://xscalealliance.org/ (visited on 10/12/ 2018).
Young, M., Owen, J. and J. Connor (2011). “Whole of Enterprise Portfolio Management.” Interna-
tional Journal of Managing Projects in Business 4 (3), 412–435.
Yusuf, Y., Sarhadi, M. and A Gunasekaran (1999). “Agile Manufacturing: The Drivers, Concepts and
Attributes.” International Journal of Production Economics 62, 23–32.
