From Scrum Events to System Design
Scrum often isn’t what fails to scale, portfolio design does. Teams can run a good Scrum and still be slow because the real constraint sits upstream in funding, governance, and decision rights.
Your product portfolio type determines which dependencies help you win and which ones quietly slow you down.
In a loosely coupled portfolio (different strategies/customers, limited reuse), success comes from autonomy, local decision-making, and minimal coupling.
In a strongly coupled portfolio, success comes from intentional integration—the right dependencies, supported by governance and funding.
So the goal isn’t “reduce dependencies.” The goal is: design the right dependencies for your portfolio, strengthen the ones that create advantage, and remove the ones that don’t.