IBM's "Provisioning Steering Committee" .accelerates decision making and works out systemic inefficiencies in the organization.

Recently we were asked to anticipate the questions a CEO would ask a Program Manager at a scheduled review meeting for an important project.

A senior executive asked us, when presenting our portfolio modeling system, “What business problem does this solve?” She then made the comment, “All my projects are important and therefore are all the top priority, we have to do them all.” Good questions that required a thoughtful response.

Our matrix organizes root causes of poor time-to-market performance. It is a result of our ongoing research and is a composite of our work in many different client environments.

The "Fuzzy-Front-End" is the time at the beginning of the development cycle. It is the point in time when an idea is conceived to when a project is approved and a full team is formed. Don Reinertsen said that "fuzziness consumes time."

Understanding how organizations provision development teams (i.e. provide necessary people, funding, information, facilities, resources, knowledge, skills, etc.) has been a foundational practice in our research work.

The “Host” is everything in an organization that is outside and around a team. The host can provision a team or it can interrupt it. Fast organizations design the host to "provide for" when resources, information, or "things" are needed by the team to be effective.

As we studied fast teams, we observed three high-level systems that enabled them to be fast. We called these systems Strategy; instilling a mindset for speed at the top, Portfolio; defining the right products at the right time, and Execution; establishing fast structures.