Scaled Agile Framework: The Optimal Approach for Scaling Enterprises

What is the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)?

Generally, the SAFe is a massive collection of principles and practices for scaling companies or projects to achieve agility with ease.

The framework provides well-structured guidelines on allocating, planning, managing tasks, and delivering values flexibly. Accordingly, companies can develop better products, services, or systems that catch up with market trends and customers’ growing needs.

There are four major configuration options of the SAFe. They are also understood as SAFe levels and are designed to serve different purposes of scaling agile in business.

They particularly include:

Essential SAFe – the most fundamental or smallest SAFe framework, including basic elements from two old configuration options at Team and Program levels. Further, this option is an updated feature of the latest SAFe version 5.1.
Portfolio SAFe – suitable for carrying out multiple projects that have modest dependencies on each other and require a handful of agile teams. In general, this framework includes the Essential SAFe construct.
Large Solution SAFe – provides solutions for large, complex projects without depending on the Portfolio construct. But this option still includes the core elements of Essential SAFe.
Full SAFe – the most well-rounded model, supporting large projects that involve hundreds of members. That is, this framework includes Essential, Portfolio, and Large Solution constructs.

The Importance of a Scaled Agile Framework

Firstly, SAFe promotes alignment and collaboration. This unity is crucial for the successful implementation of large-scale projects. In fact, 91% of organizations state that it is a strategic priority to adopt Agile.

Secondly, the Scaled Agile Framework fosters a culture of transparency. This openness leads to better decision-making and improved overall performance. Agile adoption in software teams increased from 37% in 2020 to 86% in 2021.

Thirdly, SAFe provides a clear and structured approach to scaling agile. This structure reduces the risk of failure and increases the likelihood of success of respondents that used scaling said they used SAFe, making it the most popular framework for scaling agile.

Lastly, the Scaled Agile Framework supports continuous learning and improvement. This culture of continuous improvement leads to higher quality products and happier customers. The most significant agile adoption barriers are inconsistencies in processes and practices (46%), cultural clashes (43%), and general organizational resistance to change (42%).

In conclusion, the Scaled Agile Framework is an essential tool for any organization looking to scale agile. It provides the structure, guidance, and support needed to successfully implement agile practices at scale. With SAFe, organizations can achieve their goals more efficiently and effectively.

SAFe Core Principles and Values

Generally, the Scaled Agile Framework is developed around seven core values and ten major principles as follows. The latest version 5.1 of the SAFe released in 2020 comes with two new values (i.e. Organizational Agility and Continuously Learning Culture) and one principle (i.e. Organize around value).

SAFe Values

Lean-Agile Leadership – This value shows that leaders gain authority by building expected behaviors for others to follow. They can also align words, actions, and mindsets to Lean-Agile tenets and principles to build desired norms across their companies. Further, they create a good working space and equip the necessary resources to lead changes and guide members to follow.

Team and Technical Agility – This value details essential skills and practices that high-performing, cross-functional teams use to devise sensible, high-caliber solutions for customers.

Agile Product Delivery – This value focuses on exploring, building, and constantly delivering top-quality products or services rapidly. Also, agile teams must balance customer-centricity and execution focuses to develop a golden chance for a sustainable market.

Enterprise Solution Delivery – This value specifies how companies use agile practices to build truly large “living” systems and networks. These systems allow such activities as launching new features or improving technology to evolve further. Also, companies can align value streams with shared tasks between Agile Release Trains (ARTs) and Suppliers.

Lean Portfolio Management – This value describes how a portfolio of value streams is strategized, funded, executed, and governed to build essential solutions to achieve targets. Further, portfolio management approaches need to be modernized. This accordingly supports new Lean-Agile working processes and works well under highly uncertain circumstances.

Organizational Agility – This value indicates how companies quickly respond to new chances and challenges of the evolving market. Also, it supports enterprises to build a company-wide, Lean-Agile mindset.

Continuously Learning Culture – This value explains tenets and values used to motivate individuals to explore, build creativity, and grow together. Also, they take over constantly improving a product’s quality.

Recommended reading: The Importance of Scrum to a software product

SAFe Principles

Take an economic view

Grasping the building systems’ economics helps in offering the best quality and value for customers within a proper budget and a sustainable lead time.

Apply systems thinking

Using systems thinking helps understand their underlying aims and then optimize entire systems instead of only focusing on their components.

Assume variability, preserve options

Businesses need to preserve numerous designs and requirements over the long term in the development cycle. This facilitates future changes if their initial choices prove unsuitable.

Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles

Developing increments over a series of repetitive phases supports quicker user feedback and risk mitigation.

Base milestones on the objective evaluation of working systems

Product owners, developers, and stakeholders share responsibilities to guarantee the economic advantages of investing in new approaches.

Visualize and limit WIP, reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lengths

Companies obtain the continuous flow of converting concepts to cash in no time. To do so, businesses need to visualize and minimize workload in the process (WIP). Besides, companies should reduce batch sizes and control the waiting times for new functions.

Apply cadence, synchronize with cross-domain planning

Using cadence which is the timing for sprint activities and synchronizing with cross-domain planning enables enterprises to operate effectively. Such activities accordingly provide mechanisms to explore business opportunities and correct mistakes promptly.

Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers

Building a mutual-influence workspace, offering autonomy, and minimizing obstacles are important to promote employee commitment and involvement.

Decentralize decision-making

Making decentralized decisions helps deliver values faster, enhance the development cycle, facilitate quick responses, and build more creative solutions.

Organize around value

Companies operate around value rather than functional expertise to quickly adapt to the changing demands of customers.

The Importance of SAFe to Enterprises

One downside of traditional agile methodologies is their poor compatibility with enterprise-level projects. Compared to small systems, their bulky, complicated counterparts hardly become agile or flexible to the evolving demands of end-users. The Scaled Agile Framework was introduced to help enterprises adopt Agile, Lean, and DevOps practices on a large scale.

Some noticeable statistics reported by more than 20,000 enterprises show why SAFe is considered pivotal to their overall growth:

50% said that applying the Scaled Agile Framework boosts the launch of deliverables to customers;
50% indicated that SAFe helps with reducing project defects;
35% showed that this framework helps increase their productivity;
30% dictated that SAFe makes workers more satisfied and engaged in work.

How to Implement the SAFe Successfully?

Upon grasping SAFe values and principles, businesses must devise proper management strategies and implement crucial moves to apply the Scaled Agile Framework resourcefully in business models.

Particularly, below are 12 key activities that many companies across the world apply and succeed in achieving business agility with SAFe.

Reaching the Tipping Point

Shifting from traditional methods to SAFe is considered challenging for various enterprises unless they have strong, persuasive incentives to change. Without such motivations, businesses hardly reach the tipping point at which the imperative action is obtaining the change rather than withstanding or avoiding it.

So organizations must determine and discuss reasons for business changes in, for example, expected goals, practices, and even business legislation. There’s a need for all members to set up a clear vision for change and understand the Lean-Agile mindset as well as its tenets. Also, leaders should describe the economic benefits of SAFe transformation.

Train Lean-Agile Change Agents

In this step, organizations will determine internal or external people who have the potential to become change agents. They then will be trained as Certified SAFe Program Consultants (SPCs) in charge of guiding leaders and those involved in SAFe shifts.

Train Executives, Managers, and Leaders

Business executives, managers, and leaders need to be trained to adopt the Lean-Agile mindset, embrace Lean-Agile principles, and develop skills needed for business agility.

Create a Lean-Agile Center of Excellence

Apart from training change agents and business leaders, building a Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (LACE) is a must to ensure a robust company-wide coalition. This group of excellent personnel provides motivation and instructions to implement SAFe transformation across the organization rather than developing agile practices in certain departments.

Identify Value Streams and Agile Release Trains (ARTs)

Value streams refer to all activities, information, and human resources needed to create and deliver value for customers. Meanwhile, Agile Release Trains (ARTs) are agile teams implementing jobs to build such values. Thus defining these two factors is key to executing. The Scaled Agile Framework effectively and developing high-quality solutions to meet user demands immediately.

Create the Implementation Plan

Drawing out the SAFe implementation plan requires enterprises to identify goals. And then establish a roadmap so that they will have a big picture of product development. Some critical activities related to this step include:

building the first value stream
setting up the first ART
developing initial plans for extra value streams and ARTs

These activities will be conducted, adjusted, and repeated.

There’s no perfect plan. So planning a bit, implementing a bit, learning a bit, and modifying a bit are keys to improving business agility plans.

Prepare for the ART Launch

Along with trained stakeholders and LACE members, SPCs use an ART Canvas as below to prepare for the first ART launch:

Some particular activities in this stage entail:

defining parameters and boundaries of the first ART
establishing deadlines and cadence for the Program Increment (PI) Planning event
training ART personnel, product owners, agile team leads, and other stakeholders
evaluate the state of readiness
prepare the program backlog

Train Teams and Launch the ART

The ART’s success depends on effective cooperation and communication between members. So training multiple agile teams in each ART is essential to ensure the comprehensive growth of business systems. Importantly, all members must be assigned clear roles and understand their responsibilities well.

There are many approaches to launching an ART. But the fastest and easiest one is the ART QuickStart method. Besides training SAFe for teams, this approach involves PI planning sessions and workshops. All these activities last one week to help teams change to a new working style.

Coach the ART Execution

SPCs work together with team leads or scrum masters across agile teams in the ART to implement coaching sessions for the following events:

Iteration planning
Backlog grooming
Daily stand-up meetings
Iteration review and retrospective
Scrum-of-Scrum, PO Sync, and ART Sync
PI Planning
System demos
Inspect and Adapt workshops

Launch More ARTs and Value Streams

The first ART launch, the first PI session, and PI deliverables give organizations initial, considerable benefits of using SAFe. All the members at this stage agree upon a new way of working, common missions, shared responsibilities, Lean-Agile practices, and more. So it’s time to boost employee engagement to a higher level. Besides it increases productivity, speeds up time-to-market, and deliver better values. That’s why launching more ARTs and value streams is a necessity.

Extend to the Portfolio

All those steps, at this time, will be advanced to the portfolio level to lead the transformation from traditional mindsets to lean agile thinking. To do so, enterprises will align value streams with the portfolio’s strategic objectives, monitor enterprise-wide workflow, and develop more objective administration missions. Besides, enterprises need to focus on managing financial resources and customer or supplier relationships with Lean approaches.

Accelerate

The final step of SAFe transformation, Sustain and Improve, was replaced with Accelerate after SAFe Version 5.1. went public. Once preparations have been almost completed, leaders must accelerate enterprises toward business agility. The reinforcement of SAFe transformation requires them to keep themselves and their stakeholders interested in agile processes. They also need to establish larger goals to truly become agile. Improvements need to be continuously made until the overall cultures of enterprises really transform into agile forms.

Conclusion

Through this article, Designveloper expects you to have a deeper insight into the Scaled Agile Framework. There’s no denying that SAFe is the leading approach for scaling projects and companies. But this doesn’t mean the framework fits all enterprises or projects. Apart from SAFe, your company can also consider other agile scaling solutions like Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS) or Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD). Selecting the right option, understanding, and complying with the chosen framework’s principles will help your business receive full benefits and cement existing activities.