What is SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) ?

SAFe® The Scaled Agile Framework

 

The Scaled Agile Framework SAFe is simply a set of patterns of workflow for organizations for implementing agile practices to their enterprise scale. The Safe framework is simply a body of knowledge that includes structured guidance on responsibilities and roles, how to plan and manage the work, and the flow of values to uphold.

 

SAFe is promoting alignment, delivery, and collaboration across large numbers of agile teams working together. It was constructed based on three bodies: firstly, agile software development, secondly, lean product development, and lastly, systems thinking.

 

As every business grows in time, SAFe provides a nicely structured and planned approach for scaling agile. There are major four configurations given in SAFe to accommodate various levels of scale:

 

1. Essential SAFe
2. Large Solution SAFe
3. Portfolio SAFe
4. Full SAFe

 

Dean Leffingwell and Drew Jemilo released publicly SAFe in 2011 to help organizations in designing better systems and software which better meet customers’ changing needs. During that time, teams used traditional project management processes in order to deliver software.

 

But as the requirement to rapidly respond to the changing market conditions increased, new frameworks had emerged in order to help businesses improve the solution deliveries across the enterprises, and SAFe came into existence. Presently, SAFe is a popular scaled agile delivery framework provider, and SAFe’s worldwide community is evolving every day, the community of practitioners.

 

Agile software project development is a complete methodology that is based on iterative development. Agile software development in other words refers to the agile manifesto in the development process. In fact, a group of leading pioneers in the software industry has developed an agile manifesto.

 

SAFe - Scaled Agile Core Values

 

SAFe’s core values best describe the culture and that the leadership requires to foster and how people must behave within that culture to effectively make use of the framework.

 

1. Alignment

 

SAFe needs that companies and organizations must put the planning and reflection cadences in place during all the levels of the organization. With these needs in place, everyone will understand the state of the business, the goals, and why and how everyone shall move together in order to achieve the goals.

 

By synchronization of people and activities regularly, every level of the portfolio will stay in alignment. Information flows in a timely fashion both upward and downward, not like traditional top to down, commanding, and controlling structures.

 

2.Built-in quality

 

In the framework of SAFe, agility must never come at the cost of quality. SAFe needs teams at all levels in order to define what “done” meaning for each task or project and thus to bake the quality development practices into each and every working agreement.

 

As per SAFe, there are mainly five key dimensions of built-in quality: firstly the flow, then comes the architecture, and lastly comes the design quality, and the code quality, and the system quality, and the release quality.

 

3.Transparency

 

Safe agile always encourages the trust-building behavior, which includes planning the work in smaller batch sizes so that problems can be surfaced sooner, thus providing real-time visibility into the backlog progress across all levels, and then inspect and lastly adapt rituals.

 

4.Program execution

 

Program execution, also the heart of the SAFe and the element that powers everything else in the framework. The Teams and the programs should be able to deliver the quality, the working software, and the business value on a very regular basis.

 

5.Leadership

 

The SAFe needs the lean-agile leadership behavior as only leaders may change the system and create an environment required to embrace entire core values.

 

SAFe Principles

 

The SAFe principles are then meant in order to improve the company as a wholesome organization by inspiring lean-agile decision making across functional and organizational and enterprise boundaries.

 

The principles then are intended in order to influence the decisions to not just the leaders and managers, but rather of everyone in the organization and company and condition and change their mindset to make a shift from traditional waterfall thinking to the lean-agile thinking, where the practices like the Lean Portfolio Management are applied.

 

1.To take a wholesome economic view

 

Truly inspired by theories on the product development flow extracted from one of Donald Reinertsen's best-selling books to achieving the shortest and sustainable lead-time requires each and every individual in the decision-making chain in order to understand the economic implications of the delays. Only delivering early and often is not enough always.

 

As per Safe 5.0, all the sequencing jobs for the most fruitful benefit, the very well understanding of economic trade-offs, and the operation within lean budgets are all of the responsibilities that is required to be shared entirely with the organization. Many of these concepts and tools are often drawn from Reinertsen’s theories on the product development flow.

 

2.To apply the systems thinking

 

The SAFe also encourages people using the framework to then apply systems thinking to the three key areas: firstly, the solution itself, then, the enterprise building the system, and lastly, the value streams. The solutions can either refer to products and services, or the systems delivered to the Customer, whether if they are internal or external to the organization.

 

Many large solutions have interconnected component parts, thus, team members must have the higher-level of perspective on how the part fits into their bigger picture. While thinking about an enterprise or organization building a system, people following Safe agile must consider the organization’s people, the staff, the management, and the processes.

 

Thus, if an enterprise is looking for optimizing the way people work, it can require to eliminate the silos become cross-functional, and then form new working agreements with the suppliers and the customers. Finally, an organization must clearly project and define how the flow of values should be from concept to cash in solution development. The Leaders and management requirements to maximize the flow of values across functional boundaries and organizational boundaries.

 

3.To assume the variability by preserving options

 

Usually, designing systems and software are a very uncertain exercise. This very principle is addressed by introducing the concept of the set-based design, which then calls for retaining multiple requirements and the design options for a larger period in a development cycle. Moreover, Set-based designs also rely on empirical data to narrow the focus on the final design option.

 

The set-based design generally helps to improve decision-making at times of uncertainty by searching out the options and intended outcomes, very similar to a strategic bet. Additionally, the concept of the “learning milestones”, which refers to the deadline for a decision, is instrumental to the set-based design.

 

As more teams learn over time, more and more choices can be eliminated. Few the more choices they eliminate, the easier it gets to opt-out of the best path forward and gets the best possible outcome for customers.

 

4.To have an incremental building with integrated learning cycles

 

Similar to Principle 3, this particular principle addresses risk and uncertainty during learning milestones. It is fairly not enough for each and every component part of a system to prove functionality, the whole system shall be considered to assess the feasibility of the design choices. Integration points should be planned on regular periods to inherit faster learning cycles. These points of integration are examples of Walter A Shewhart’s plan-do-check-adjust cycle, the framework for the continuous improvement in quality and mechanism for control of the variability of development. Stewart's work is often inspired within SAFe.

 

5.To Base milestones on the objective evaluation of the working systems

 

Demo of the actual working system provides a good basis for the decision making than the required document or some sort of other superficial evaluations of success. Counting in the stakeholders in such feasible decisions early supports trust-building and systematic thinking.

 

6.To Visualize and limit the Work in Process (WIP), and reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lengths

 

Limiting the work in the process helps every stakeholder to see exactly how the work is playing out for them.

 

There are three elements of these principles which represent the primary ways of maximizing throughput and accelerating the value delivery - or in simple words, implementing the “flow”. As we quote "How can someone digest an elephant? One small bite at one time."

 

When one applies this to software development, it means limiting the amount of overlapping work, the complexity of each and every item of work, and the total amount of work dodged at some given time. Small size batches allow for the constant validation of whether the work is headed in the right direction and managing the queue lengths.

 

This principle promises to offer superiority in optimizing for the best results.

 

7.Applying the cadence and causing synchronization with cross-domain planning

 

The agile teams generally apply cadence through iterations or sprints. Creating a sort of cadence for all the possible matters reduces complexity, and addresses uncertainty, and builds muscle memory, enforces the quality, and instills collaboration.

 

Synchronization of these cadences enables the people and activists to move like the cogs in the wheel where learned information informs the decisions and influences incremental planning.

 

8.To unlock the motivation of knowledge workers

 

Inspired by the influential consultant Peter Drucker and the author Daniel Pink, this very principle our favorites! It is all about unleashing the true potential of teams and thereby helping leadership to take the perspective of coaching, serving their own teams over a command-and-control mindset.

 

9.To decentralize decision making

 

By reducing the queue lengths and taking in an economic approach is by decentralizing the decision making, giving teams the autonomy they need to get the work done. Successful leaders must preserve their decision-making authority for likely topics of strategic importance and thus enable teams to make informed choices.

 

How does the SAFe Work?

 

Those organizations which are ready to implement SAFe normally have executive sponsorships, a very strong purpose for change, and a foundation in Scrum.

 

Scaled Agile is providing a SAFe implementation roadmap which contains very detailed steps on how to start and set up an organization for wide-spread adoption across different portfolios.

 

A central feature of SAFe is, it continues the evolution in collaboration with its entire community of practitioners across the world. Very recently, scaled agile had launched the new version of SAFe, SAFe 6.0 . The key changes include the addition of the tenth principle, "To Organize around value," and change step twelve from “Improve and sustain” to “Accelerate.” However, there is much more involved stuff.

 

Few of the Frameworks like SAFe and other options available in the market provide a very feasible option to help all types of businesses grow effectively and scale agile within their organizations and companies and fulfill their visions and achieve their business outcomes. However just as important as are the tools one chooses to help amplify the existing practices and then thus realize the full benefits of such practices.

 

Thus, SAFe Agile certification training is a very preferred option to create implementation plan, prepare for art launch, train and coach for ART launch and grow the businesses