Wrong ways to fund Agile Programs

Last modified on 2023-03-20

Funding in large organizations

Large organizations approach funding as an annual excercise. During this window, the cost for the next year is allocated to execute initives. These initiatives are planned during the prior year to be delivered in the next 6 to 18 months. For the sake of this article, let us call this traditional funding.

Problems with traditional funding

• Funds allocated to a set of deliverables years ahead of time
• No way to change initiatives to changing market or customer needs
• Lets the executives pick and choose their favourite projects
• Fluctuating team size year over year leading to additional traning time

One approach to Agile funding

Fund a team of a certain size and have them burn through a prioritized backlog. In this way fund is not allocated to initiatives and team / executives can reprioritize items as they see fit. The executives can fix a team size that will remain for a forseeable few years (like 3 years); this helps team to reduce onboarding / losing knowledge due to funding gaps. Teams can also be set up on functionality as part of a large scope of work (e.g., development teams, sre teams, production support teams etc.)