The scaled agile framework (SAFe) helps larger organizations manage the challenges they face when practicing agile. The scaled agile framework was first introduced in 2011 by software industry guru Dean Leffingwell in his book Agile Software Requirements. The framework details a set of workflow patterns for implementing agile practices at an enterprise scale. This is achieved by guiding roles and responsibilities, planning and managing work, and establishing certain values that large organizations must uphold.
Element
Description
Implications
Examples
Applications
Agile Principles
SAFe adheres to Agile principles, emphasizing customer collaboration, adaptability, and early delivery.
– Promotes customer-centricity and flexibility. – Encourages iterative development.
Prioritizing customer feedback.
Agile software development projects.
Lean Principles
Lean thinking is incorporated to minimize waste, optimize processes, and improve efficiency.
– Focuses on eliminating waste and enhancing value delivery. – Drives continuous improvement.
Implementing Kanban boards.
Streamlining production processes.
Agile Release Train (ART)
ART is a self-organizing team of Agile teams working together to deliver value in a fixed timeframe.
– Facilitates collaboration and alignment among teams. – Ensures synchronized planning and delivery.
Scrum teams working together.
Large-scale product development.
SAFe Roles and Responsibilities
Roles like Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Release Train Engineer have specific responsibilities.
– Defines clear roles and accountability. – Ensures efficient teamwork and communication.
Scrum Master facilitating daily stand-ups.
Role clarity in Agile projects.
Program Increment (PI)
PI is a time-boxed planning interval (usually 8-12 weeks) during which an Agile Release Train delivers value.
– Enables regular inspection and adaptation. – Aligns all teams toward a common goal.
Quarterly PI planning sessions.
Coordinating multiple teams’ efforts.
PI Objectives
Teams set PI objectives during PI planning, defining what they aim to accomplish within the Program Increment.
– Provides focus and alignment around shared goals. – Measures progress and success.
Setting objectives for a software release.
Tracking team achievements during a PI.
Lean Portfolio Management
This involves aligning strategy and execution by prioritizing and funding value streams and Agile Release Trains.
– Ensures the allocation of resources to the most valuable work. – Aligns business strategy with execution.
Allocating budget to development efforts.
Aligning organizational strategy with projects.
Inspect and Adapt (I&A)
Regularly reviewing progress, identifying issues, and adapting to changes to enhance the overall solution.
– Promotes continuous improvement and responsiveness. – Addresses challenges proactively.
Conducting retrospectives after a PI.
Enhancing project performance iteratively.
SAFe Big Picture
The visual representation of SAFe, illustrating roles, activities, and the flow of value in a scaled Agile context.
– Provides a shared understanding of SAFe principles and practices. – Aids in visualizing the framework components.
Referencing the Big Picture for guidance.
Communicating SAFe concepts to teams and stakeholders.
Table of Contents
Understanding the scaled agile framework
One of the key strengths of the scaled agile framework is its ability to promote the alignment and successful collaboration of multiple agile teams.
It is not a single methodology. Instead, it provides a broad knowledge base of proven best practices.
Some core values and principles of the scaled agile framework
Values
Alignment
SAFe requires that all employees understand the goals of the business and collectively move toward achieving them.
Importantly, the flow of information runs upward and downward in a timely manner.
This is in stark contrast to the traditional top-down or hierarchical approach.
Built-in quality
All teams operating under SAFe principles must never sacrifice quality for agility.
Practices that increase quality output should be incorporated into five key dimensions: flow, architecture and design quality, code quality, system quality, and release quality.
Program execution
Teams must be able to routinely execute high-quality programs that are aligned with company values.
Principles
Apply systems thinking
Large solutions invariably have many interconnected parts in vast organizations.
Here, solutions are defined as products, services, or systems delivered to an internal or external customer.
Team members should understand how their role fits into the bigger picture.
This can be achieved by considering three key areas: the solution itself, value streams, and the enterprise building the system.
Take an economic view
Everyone must understand the economic impact of project delays and act accordingly.
Operating within lead budgets and developing an understanding of economic trade-offs are a good place to start.
Limit work in progress (WIP) and manage queue lengths
Reducing work in process gives key stakeholders a more holistic understanding of project development.
Here, achieving flow through maximizing throughput is the priority.
This entails limiting the prevalence of overlapping work and the amount of work tackled at a given time.
Work should also be carried out in smaller batch sizes and be less complex.
Scaled Agile vs. Agile
Agile started as a lightweight development method compared to heavyweight software development, which is the core paradigm of the previous decades of software development. By 2001 the Manifesto for Agile Software Development was born as a set of principles that defined the new paradigm for software development as a continuous iteration. This would also influence the way of doing business.
As the name might suggest, the main difference between agile and scaled agile is in the ability of each discipline to work with smaller (agile) or larger enterprise teams (scaled agile).
Indeed, the main goal of scaled agile is to make the agile methodology viable at an enterprise level, thus focusing on some of the key values that matter the most at that level.
At an enterprise level, indeed, things like alignment, quality, and scaled execution matter the most.
Therefore, those values need to be balanced out with fast iterative product development loops.
Whereas in the agile methodology, instead, what matters the most is the ability of the small and lean team to ship fast and iterate even faster.
With very short development cycles that move along a continuous loop of building, launching, measuring, and learning.
Strengths and weaknesses of the scaled agile framework
Strengths
The most obvious strength of the scaled agile framework is that it allows large businesses to have the best of both worlds.
In other words, they can tap into the power of agile and efficient software development while still maintaining centralized, enterprise-level decision making.
The framework also delivers benefits in project alignment.
Alignment can sometimes waver in agile environments when developers lose sight of broader company objectives.
Centralized decision making again comes to the fore by ensuring that strategic objectives remain a key focus during product development.
Weaknesses
Perhaps ironically, SAFe tends to add layers of oversight and administration that many large organizations are trying to negate.
With administrative roles assigned for multiple projects, some argue that developers have little of the freedom or flexibility that characterizes agile environments.
The “bigger picture” thinking of SAFe also leads to longer planning cycles and fixed roles within development cycles.
Again, this contravenes agile development principles around delivering short sprints to bring products to market quickly.
Broadscale thinking also hinders the creation of continuous loops that are important in ensuring quality at every step of the process.
Scaled Agile Framework vs. Scrum
Scrum is a methodology co-created by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland for effective team collaboration on complex products. Scrum was primarily thought for software development projects to deliver new software capability every 2-4 weeks. It is a sub-group of agile also used in project management to improve startups’ productivity.
Whereas Scaled Agile focuses on large organizations, to align large teams with launching products at scale.
Scrum focuses on an iterative approach for smaller teams to work more effectively to speed up execution.
Thus, a scrum might be more suited for smaller startups.
Scaled Agile might be more useful for large workforces and complex teams to collaborate effectively at scale.
Is Kanban Scaled Agile?
Kanban is a lean manufacturing framework first developed by Toyota in the late 1940s. The Kanban framework is a means of visualizing work as it moves through identifying potential bottlenecks. It does that through a process called just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing to optimize engineering processes, speed up manufacturing products, and improve the go-to-market strategy.
Kanban is an excellent tool for recording project management tasks related to software development.
Thus, Kanban might be one of the tools used within the Scaled Agile methodology.
Key takeaways
The scaled agile framework was developed to help large organizations bring better products to market in a timely fashion.
The scaled agile framework is based on several values and principles that help project teams in large or complex workforces collaborate effectively.
The scaled agile framework gives large organizations greater access to agile project development while maintaining centralized decision making. However, the effectiveness of this decision making when paired with agile principles is questionable.
Key Highlights
Introduction to SAFe: The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) was introduced by Dean Leffingwell in 2011 as a way for larger organizations to implement agile practices at an enterprise scale. It offers workflow patterns, roles, and values to manage challenges in practicing agile at a larger level.
Key Strength of SAFe: SAFe excels in aligning and collaborating multiple agile teams within a larger organization. It’s not a single methodology but a knowledge base of best practices.
Core Values and Principles:
Values:
Alignment: SAFe emphasizes understanding business goals and promoting upward and downward information flow, unlike traditional hierarchical approaches.
Built-in Quality: Quality should not be compromised for agility. Five dimensions of quality are emphasized: flow, architecture, code, system, and release quality.
Program Execution: Teams should routinely execute high-quality programs aligned with company values.
Principles:
Systems Thinking: Understand interconnected parts in large solutions. Consider solution, value streams, and enterprise perspective.
Economic View: Understand economic impacts and trade-offs of project delays.
Limit WIP: Limit work in progress, reduce overlapping work, and aim for flow and smaller batch sizes.
Scaled Agile vs. Agile:
Agile emphasizes smaller, iterative development, while Scaled Agile focuses on agile practices at an enterprise level.
Scaled Agile aims to balance values like alignment, quality, and scaled execution with fast iteration.
Strengths of SAFe:
SAFe allows large organizations to combine efficient software development with centralized decision-making.
It enhances project alignment by maintaining strategic objectives during development.
Weaknesses of SAFe:
SAFe can introduce oversight and administration layers that counteract agile flexibility.
Broadscale thinking can lead to longer planning cycles and fixed roles, contrary to agile principles.
SAFe vs. Scrum:
Scrum focuses on effective team collaboration in iterative cycles for smaller teams.
SAFe targets large organizations, aligning larger teams to launch products at scale.
Is Kanban Scaled Agile?
Kanban is a lean manufacturing framework that visualizes work and identifies bottlenecks.
Kanban can be used within the SAFe methodology as a tool for project management tasks.
Key Takeaways:
SAFe helps large organizations align and collaborate for effective agile practices.
It emphasizes values and principles to guide project teams in larger or complex workforces.
SAFe aims to provide access to agile development while maintaining centralized decision-making, though it has some potential drawbacks.
AIOps is the application of artificial intelligence to IT operations. It has become particularly useful for modern IT management in hybridized, distributed, and dynamic environments. AIOps has become a key operational component of modern digital-based organizations, built around software and algorithms.
Agile started as a lightweight development method compared to heavyweight software development, which is the core paradigm of the previous decades of software development. By 2001 the Manifesto for Agile Software Development was born as a set of principles that defined the new paradigm for software development as a continuous iteration. This would also influence the way of doing business.
Agile Program Management is a means of managing, planning, and coordinating interrelated work in such a way that value delivery is emphasized for all key stakeholders. Agile Program Management (AgilePgM) is a disciplined yet flexible agile approach to managing transformational change within an organization.
Agile project management (APM) is a strategy that breaks large projects into smaller, more manageable tasks. In the APM methodology, each project is completed in small sections – often referred to as iterations. Each iteration is completed according to its project life cycle, beginning with the initial design and progressing to testing and then quality assurance.
Agile Modeling (AM) is a methodology for modeling and documenting software-based systems. Agile Modeling is critical to the rapid and continuous delivery of software. It is a collection of values, principles, and practices that guide effective, lightweight software modeling.
Agile Business Analysis (AgileBA) is certification in the form of guidance and training for business analysts seeking to work in agile environments. To support this shift, AgileBA also helps the business analyst relate Agile projects to a wider organizational mission or strategy. To ensure that analysts have the necessary skills and expertise, AgileBA certification was developed.
Agile leadership is the embodiment of agile manifesto principles by a manager or management team. Agile leadership impacts two important levels of a business. The structural level defines the roles, responsibilities, and key performance indicators. The behavioral level describes the actions leaders exhibit to others based on agile principles.
The andon system alerts managerial, maintenance, or other staff of a production process problem. The alert itself can be activated manually with a button or pull cord, but it can also be activated automatically by production equipment. Most Andon boards utilize three colored lights similar to a traffic signal: green (no errors), yellow or amber (problem identified, or quality check needed), and red (production stopped due to unidentified issue).
Bimodal Portfolio Management (BimodalPfM) helps an organization manage both agile and traditional portfolios concurrently. Bimodal Portfolio Management – sometimes referred to as bimodal development – was coined by research and advisory company Gartner. The firm argued that many agile organizations still needed to run some aspects of their operations using traditional delivery models.
Business innovation is about creating new opportunities for an organization to reinvent its core offerings, revenue streams, and enhance the value proposition for existing or new customers, thus renewing its whole business model. Business innovation springs by understanding the structure of the market, thus adapting or anticipating those changes.
Business modelinnovation is about increasing the success of an organization with existing products and technologies by crafting a compelling value proposition able to propel a new business model to scale up customers and create a lasting competitive advantage. And it all starts by mastering the key customers.
A consumer brand company like Procter & Gamble (P&G) defines “Constructive Disruption” as: a willingness to change, adapt, and create new trends and technologies that will shape our industry for the future. According to P&G, it moves around four pillars: lean innovation, brand building, supply chain, and digitalization & data analytics.
That is a process that requires a continuous feedback loop to develop a valuable product and build a viable business model. Continuous innovation is a mindset where products and services are designed and delivered to tune them around the customers’ problem and not the technical solution of its founders.
A design sprint is a proven five-day process where critical business questions are answered through speedy design and prototyping, focusing on the end-user. A design sprint starts with a weekly challenge that should finish with a prototype, test at the end, and therefore a lesson learned to be iterated.
Tim Brown, Executive Chair of IDEO, defined design thinking as “a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” Therefore, desirability, feasibility, and viability are balanced to solve critical problems.
DevOps refers to a series of practices performed to perform automated software development processes. It is a conjugation of the term “development” and “operations” to emphasize how functions integrate across IT teams. DevOps strategies promote seamless building, testing, and deployment of products. It aims to bridge a gap between development and operations teams to streamline the development altogether.
Product discovery is a critical part of agile methodologies, as its aim is to ensure that products customers love are built. Product discovery involves learning through a raft of methods, including design thinking, lean start-up, and A/B testing to name a few. Dual Track Agile is an agile methodology containing two separate tracks: the “discovery” track and the “delivery” track.
eXtreme Programming was developed in the late 1990s by Ken Beck, Ron Jeffries, and Ward Cunningham. During this time, the trio was working on the Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System (C3) to help manage the company payroll system. eXtreme Programming (XP) is a software development methodology. It is designed to improve software quality and the ability of software to adapt to changing customer needs.
Feature-Driven Development is a pragmatic software process that is client and architecture-centric. Feature-Driven Development (FDD) is an agile software development model that organizes workflow according to which features need to be developed next.
A Gemba Walk is a fundamental component of lean management. It describes the personal observation of work to learn more about it. Gemba is a Japanese word that loosely translates as “the real place”, or in business, “the place where value is created”. The Gemba Walk as a concept was created by Taiichi Ohno, the father of the Toyota Production System of lean manufacturing. Ohno wanted to encourage management executives to leave their offices and see where the real work happened. This, he hoped, would build relationships between employees with vastly different skillsets and build trust.
GIST Planning is a relatively easy and lightweight agile approach to product planning that favors autonomous working. GIST Planning is a lean and agile methodology that was created by former Google product manager Itamar Gilad. GIST Planning seeks to address this situation by creating lightweight plans that are responsive and adaptable to change. GIST Planning also improves team velocity, autonomy, and alignment by reducing the pervasive influence of management. It consists of four blocks: goals, ideas, step-projects, and tasks.
The ICE Scoring Model is an agile methodology that prioritizes features using data according to three components: impact, confidence, and ease of implementation. The ICE Scoring Model was initially created by author and growth expert Sean Ellis to help companies expand. Today, the model is broadly used to prioritize projects, features, initiatives, and rollouts. It is ideally suited for early-stage product development where there is a continuous flow of ideas and momentum must be maintained.
An innovation funnel is a tool or process ensuring only the best ideas are executed. In a metaphorical sense, the funnel screens innovative ideas for viability so that only the best products, processes, or business models are launched to the market. An innovation funnel provides a framework for the screening and testing of innovative ideas for viability.
According to how well defined is the problem and how well defined the domain, we have four main types of innovations: basic research (problem and domain or not well defined); breakthrough innovation (domain is not well defined, the problem is well defined); sustaining innovation (both problem and domain are well defined); and disruptive innovation (domain is well defined, the problem is not well defined).
The innovation loop is a methodology/framework derived from the Bell Labs, which produced innovation at scale throughout the 20th century. They learned how to leverage a hybrid innovation management model based on science, invention, engineering, and manufacturing at scale. By leveraging individual genius, creativity, and small/large groups.
The Agile methodology has been primarily thought of for software development (and other business disciplines have also adopted it). Lean thinking is a process improvement technique where teams prioritize the value streams to improve it continuously. Both methodologies look at the customer as the key driver to improvement and waste reduction. Both methodologies look at improvement as something continuous.
A startup company is a high-tech business that tries to build a scalable business model in tech-driven industries. A startup company usually follows a lean methodology, where continuous innovation, driven by built-in viral loops is the rule. Thus, driving growth and building network effects as a consequence of this strategy.
As pointed out by Eric Ries, a minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort through a cycle of build, measure, learn; that is the foundation of the lean startup methodology.
Kanban is a lean manufacturing framework first developed by Toyota in the late 1940s. The Kanban framework is a means of visualizing work as it moves through identifying potential bottlenecks. It does that through a process called just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing to optimize engineering processes, speed up manufacturing products, and improve the go-to-market strategy.
Jidoka was first used in 1896 by Sakichi Toyoda, who invented a textile loom that would stop automatically when it encountered a defective thread. Jidoka is a Japanese term used in lean manufacturing. The term describes a scenario where machines cease operating without human intervention when a problem or defect is discovered.
The PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle was first proposed by American physicist and engineer Walter A. Shewhart in the 1920s. The PDCA cycle is a continuous process and product improvement method and an essential component of the lean manufacturing philosophy.
RAD was first introduced by author and consultant James Martin in 1991. Martin recognized and then took advantage of the endless malleability of software in designing development models. Rapid Application Development (RAD) is a methodology focusing on delivering rapidly through continuous feedback and frequent iterations.
Retrospective analyses are held after a project to determine what worked well and what did not. They are also conducted at the end of an iteration in Agile project management. Agile practitioners call these meetings retrospectives or retros. They are an effective way to check the pulse of a project team, reflect on the work performed to date, and reach a consensus on how to tackle the next sprint cycle. These are the five stages of a retrospective analysis for effective Agile project management: set the stage, gather the data, generate insights, decide on the next steps, and close the retrospective.
Scaled Agile Lean Development (ScALeD) helps businesses discover a balanced approach to agile transition and scaling questions. The ScALed approach helps businesses successfully respond to change. Inspired by a combination of lean and agile values, ScALed is practitioner-based and can be completed through various agile frameworks and practices.
The SMED (single minute exchange of die) method is a lean production framework to reduce waste and increase production efficiency. The SMED method is a framework for reducing the time associated with completing an equipment changeover.
The Spotify Model is an autonomous approach to scaling agile, focusing on culture communication, accountability, and quality. The Spotify model was first recognized in 2012 after Henrik Kniberg, and Anders Ivarsson released a white paper detailing how streaming company Spotify approached agility. Therefore, the Spotify model represents an evolution of agile.
As the name suggests, TDD is a test-driven technique for delivering high-quality software rapidly and sustainably. It is an iterative approach based on the idea that a failing test should be written before any code for a feature or function is written. Test-Driven Development (TDD) is an approach to software development that relies on very short development cycles.
Timeboxing is a simple yet powerful time-management technique for improving productivity. Timeboxing describes the process of proactively scheduling a block of time to spend on a task in the future. It was first described by author James Martin in a book about agile software development.
Scrum is a methodology co-created by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland for effective team collaboration on complex products. Scrum was primarily thought for software development projects to deliver new software capability every 2-4 weeks. It is a sub-group of agile also used in project management to improve startups’ productivity.
Scrumban is a project management framework that is a hybrid of two popular agile methodologies: Scrum and Kanban. Scrumban is a popular approach to helping businesses focus on the right strategic tasks while simultaneously strengthening their processes.
Scrum anti-patterns describe any attractive, easy-to-implement solution that ultimately makes a problem worse. Therefore, these are the practice not to follow to prevent issues from emerging. Some classic examples of scrum anti-patterns comprise absent product owners, pre-assigned tickets (making individuals work in isolation), and discounting retrospectives (where review meetings are not useful to really make improvements).
Scrum at Scale (Scrum@Scale) is a framework that Scrum teams use to address complex problems and deliver high-value products. Scrum at Scale was created through a joint venture between the Scrum Alliance and Scrum Inc. The joint venture was overseen by Jeff Sutherland, a co-creator of Scrum and one of the principal authors of the Agile Manifesto.
Six Sigma is a data-driven approach and methodology for eliminating errors or defects in a product, service, or process. Six Sigma was developed by Motorola as a management approach based on quality fundamentals in the early 1980s. A decade later, it was popularized by General Electric who estimated that the methodology saved them $12 billion in the first five years of operation.
Stretch objectives describe any task an agile team plans to complete without expressly committing to do so. Teams incorporate stretch objectives during a Sprint or Program Increment (PI) as part of Scaled Agile. They are used when the agile team is unsure of its capacity to attain an objective. Therefore, stretch objectives are instead outcomes that, while extremely desirable, are not the difference between the success or failure of each sprint.
The Toyota Production System (TPS) is an early form of lean manufacturing created by auto-manufacturer Toyota. Created by the Toyota Motor Corporation in the 1940s and 50s, the Toyota Production System seeks to manufacture vehicles ordered by customers most quickly and efficiently possible.
The Total Quality Management (TQM) framework is a technique based on the premise that employees continuously work on their ability to provide value to customers. Importantly, the word “total” means that all employees are involved in the process – regardless of whether they work in development, production, or fulfillment.
The waterfall model was first described by Herbert D. Benington in 1956 during a presentation about the software used in radar imaging during the Cold War. Since there were no knowledge-based, creative software development strategies at the time, the waterfall method became standard practice. The waterfall model is a linear and sequential project management framework.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
