Quick Guide: Go from strategic change initatives to agile execution

	Assess your strategy. Understand how high-level strategic themes are executed in the context of an agile methodology. Here are some suggestions to gain insight: Know your company's goals.Analyze your company's overall strategy to understand the overall vision and how this breaks down into actionable strategic themes. Understand the most critical strategic themes. Review the business question How are we executing our strategy? to understand the impact of strategic themes on the agile portfolio. Focus on core strategies. Ensure ownership and accountability for the strategic themes, that their value has been assessed, and that there are no gaps in the execution of the strategy.
	Assess value for stakeholders. Ensure that the flow of value is documented in operational and developmental value streams in order to understand the dependencies required to create value for stakeholders. Understand how high-level strategic themes are executed. Review the strategy in the context of an agile methodology by reviewing with the business question How are we executing our strategy? Identify potential risks to the strategy. Navigate to the content area of the operational value stream of a critical strategic theme and review the mapping of each step of the value stream across consistent dimensions to identify bottlenecks, misalignments, handoff issues, or architectural risks. Review the prioritization of the work to be done. Review the epics impacting the operational value stream to understand the flow of these epics—from ideation through analysis, implementation, and completion.
	Capture and prioritize the portfolio backlog. Epics are large scale solutions requiring significant time and effort to develop. The epics in your repository should be well-documented. Assess epics based on the Weighted Shortest Job First methodology. Go to the business question How do we manage our portfolio flow? and rate and prioritize the epics based on the WSJF score. Review the details of the epics with the highest priority. Ensure that the most relevant epics have a Lean Business Case is specified , is associated with a value stream , and supports a strategic theme.
	Manage the flow of epics. Visualize, develop and manage your portfolio epics from ideation through analysis, implementation, and completion. Move epics to the next phase to ensure a smooth and continuous flow of work.
	Plan the portfolio vision. Communicate the plan of intent for achieving the portfolio vision. Help stakeholders understand the hypothesized timelines for business and enabler epics.
	Establish cadence and synchronize the agile release train. Ensure that your agile architecture is well documented. Set a regular rhythm of planning and execution and keep all teams in the agile release train aligned on schedule and progress. Plan the program increments, iterations, and stories that are delivered. For each program increment, specify the features that it delivers as well as the the solution scope impacted by the program increment Review the agile delivery roadmap. Find potential overlaps between the ARTs within the portfolio. Track key milestones and ensure alignment with your agile timeline to stay on schedule for successful delivery. Review individual ARTs. Plan the flow of features for the agile release train and assess the solutions and business value that the ART delivers.
	Capture and prioritize the program backlog. Features are derived from epics and the solutions required to support them. The features in the repository should be well-documented. Assess features based on the Weighted Shortest Job First methodology. Go to the business question How do we manage our program flow? and rate and prioritize the features based on the WSJF score. Review the details of the features with the highest priority. Ensure that the most relevant features have user or enabler stories specified to realize the feature so that they can be implemented, tested, and delivered in an iteration as part of an agile release train (ART).
	Manage feature flow. Visualize, develop and manage your feature flow from ideation through analysis, implementation, and completion. Move features to the next phase to ensure a smooth and continuous flow of work.