© Scaled Agile, Inc.
Essential SAFe 5.0 ®
Overview and Self-Diagnostic
© Scaled Agile, Inc.
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 2
1
Introducing the Essential SAFe configuration
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 3
Essential SAFe offers three enterprise competencies
Lean-Agile Leadership describes how Lean-Agile Leaders drive and sustain
organizational change and operational excellence by empowering individuals and
teams to reach their highest potential.
Team and Technical Agility describes the critical skills and Lean-Agile principles and
practices that high-performing Agile teams and Teams of Agile teams use to create
high-quality solutions for their customers.
Agile Product Delivery competency is a customer-centric approach to defining,
building and releasing a continuous flow of valuable products and services to
customers and users. This enables the organization to provide solutions that delight
customers, lower development costs, reduce risk, and outmaneuver the competition.
Essential SAFe serves as the foundation for the Large Solution, Portfolio SAFe and Full SAFe
configurations
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 4
2
Why focus on the essentials?
... because skipping them greatly increases the risk of transformation failure
Customer findings Customer quotes
Successful rollout, but still struggling. Root “SAFe is a flexible framework. We’ve adopted
causes: what we liked, but we don’t use Agile Release
Trains.”
Not doing Inspect & Adapt
“SAFe is flexible. We’re adopting it, but we’ve
No Innovation & Planning iteration
decided not to affect the way the teams are
Individual Agile teams were not actually working. So we didn’t include the teams in
cross-functional training.”
No routine System Demo “Our leaders don’t have time for training.”
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 5
Begin the Lean-Agile journey with Essential SAFe
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 6
3
Start by applying the ten critical success factors
1 SAFe Lean-Agile Principles 6 System Demo
2 Real Agile Teams and Trains 7 Inspect & Adapt
3 Cadence and Synchronization 8 IP Iteration
4 PI Planning 9 Architectural Runway
5 Customer Centricity, DevOps and 10 Lean-Agile Leadership
Release on Demand
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 7
1 Anchor the transformation with Lean-Agile principles
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 8
4
Without a shared understanding of principles
☐ No systematic way to adapt practices to a
specific context
☐ Business outcomes do not significantly improve
☐ Practices and measures that were once
beneficial become problematic
☐ The Lean-Agile Mindset is unachievable
☐ Conflict and disagreement on processes and
practices are difficult to resolve
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 9
2 Implement Real Agile Teams and Trains
Cross-functional Agile teams and trains work towards a common vision and
program backlog. They operate with architectural and Lean UX guidance.
Cross-functional Agile teams power the train and
apply Scrum, XP, Kanban, and Built-in Quality
practices to produce working system increments
every iteration.
Agile Release Trains (ARTs) apply systems thinking and build
a cross-functional organization optimized to facilitate the flow
of value from idea to release.
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 10
10
5
Critical Agile Team roles
Well defined roles empower teams and Agile Release Trains (ARTs)
Scrum Master is a servant leader and coach for an Agile Team. They help
remove impediments and foster an environment for high-performing team
dynamics, continuous flow, and relentless improvement
Product Owner is a member of the Agile Team responsible for defining stories
and prioritizing the team backlog to meet program priorities.
Agile team is a cross-functional group of individuals who define, build, test,
and deliver an increment of value in a short time box.
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 11
11
Critical Agile Release Train roles
Release Train Engineer is a servant leader and coach for the Agile Release
Train (ART).
Product Management is responsible for defining and supporting the building of
desirable, feasible, viable, and sustainable products that meet customer needs
over the product-market lifecycle.
System Architect/Engineering System Architect/Engineering is responsible for
defining and communicating a shared technical and architectural vision for an ART
Customer consumes the work of an ART. They are the ultimate deciders of value
Business Owners are a small group of stakeholders who have the primary business
and technical responsibility for governance, compliance, and return on investment
(ROI) for a solution
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 12
12
6
Without Real Agile Teams and Trains
☐ Responsibilities are unclear, resulting in delayed
decision-making
☐ The lack of cross-functional skills causes over-
specialization and bottlenecks that inhibit flow.
☐ Teams locally optimize and can’t deliver end-to-end value
☐ No architectural and user experience integrity; solution
features and components evolve incompatibly
☐ Vision and requirements are not clear and prioritization is
extremely difficult
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 13
13
3 Apply Cadence and Synchronization
Transforms unpredictable events into
predictable events
Makes wait times predictable
Facilitates planning; provides more
efficient use of resources
Synchronization causes multiple
events to happen at the same time
Sync events facilitate cross-functional
tradeoffs of people and scope
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 14
14
7
Without Cadence and Synchronization
☐ No steady development rhythm
☐ Gradual decline into disorder and lack of predictability
☐ It’s hard to schedule planning, retrospectives, demos
and other key events
☐ Difficult to adjusting to changing priorities
☐ Teams are constantly overloaded
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 15
15
4 Create alignment with PI Planning
No event is more powerful than PI planning. It’s the magic in SAFe—the
alignment and energy created in just two days saves months of delays.
► All stakeholders face-to-face, whenever possible
► Management sets the mission with minimum possible constraints
► Important stakeholder decisions are made immediately
► Requirements and design emerge
► Teams create and take responsibility for plans
See the short PI planning example video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZAtl7nAB1M
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 16
16
8
Without PI Planning
☐ Stakeholders, teams, and management are not
aligned
☐ Demand doesn't match capacity; no
predictability; excess Work in Process (WIP)
☐ Lack of trust between stakeholders and teams
☐ Late discovery of dependencies cause delays
☐ Low commitment, ownership, and employee
engagement
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 17
17
5 Improve results with Customer Centricity, DevOps and Release on Demand
► Create a positive customer experience across all products and services.
► Adopt a DevOps mindset, culture, and applicable technical practices to enable more
frequent and higher-quality releases.
Customer Centricity DevOps and Release on Demand
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 18
18
9
Customer Centricity requires Design Thinking
Design thinking is a customer centric development process and the application
of specific tools.
Clear understanding of target market & problems it’s facing.
Epics &
Features
Journey
Gemba Walks
Maps Prototyping
Personas & Story
Empathy Maps Mapping
Problem & Solution Space (double diamond)
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 19
19
DevOps requires Built-In Quality
“You can’t scale crappy code” (or hardware, or anything else).
► Built-In quality ensures that every increment of the
solution reflects quality standards
► It’s required for high, sustainable development
velocity
► Software quality practices (most inspired by XP)
include continuous integration, test-first, refactoring,
pair work, collective ownership, and more
► Hardware quality is supported by exploratory, early
iterations, frequent system-level integration, design
verification, model-based systems engineering, and
set-based design
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 20
20
10
Without Customer Centricity, DevOps and Release on Demand
☐ Lower customer satisfaction and bad customer experiences
☐ Reduced deployment quality and high production defects
☐ Value delivery is seriously delayed; more frequent releases
are not possible, increasing time to market
☐ Large batches of code are pushed to production, resulting in
production errors, and emergencies
☐ Friction between development and operations limits
collaboration, learning, and cultural change
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 21
21
6 Get fast feedback with the System Demo
► Features are functionally complete or
‘toggled’ so as not to disrupt demonstrable
functionality
► New Features work together, and with
existing functionality
► Happens after the Iteration review (may lag
Full system
by as much as one Iteration, maximum)
► Demo from a staging environment which
System
team
resembles production as much as possible
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 22
22
11
Without the System Demo
☐ Teams are ‘sprinting,’ but the system is not
☐ Chronic lack of trust between stakeholders and
teams
☐ Lack of feedback to iterate to the right solution
☐ False progress and poor quality
☐ ‘Waterfalled PIs’—problems and risks are
discovered too late
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 23
23
7 Relentlessly improve with Inspect & Adapt
Inspect & Adapt (I&A) supports systematic review of Program
Increment (PI) outcomes and continuous improvement.
1. 2. Quantitative and qualitative 3. Retrospective and Problem-Solving
The PI System Demo
measurement Workshop
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 24
24
12
Without the Inspect & Adapt
☐ No systemic improvement; problems persist Three parts of Inspect and Adapt:
☐ No means to measure or establish delivery 1. The PI System Demo
predictability Quantitative and qualitative
2.
measurement
☐ Improvement efforts address symptoms, not root Retrospective and
3.
causes Problem-Solving Workshop
☐ Leaders who could change the system are not Timebox: 3 - 4 hours per PI
Attendees: Teams and stakeholders
engaged
☐ Low morale
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 25
25
8 Dedicate time for Innovation and Planning
The IP Iteration provides an estimating buffer for meeting PI objectives, and
dedicated time for innovation, education, PI planning and I&A events.
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 26
26
13
Without the IP Iteration
☐ Lack of estimating buffer and poor predictability
☐ ‘Tyranny of the urgent’ iteration inhibits innovation
☐ Technical debt grows uncontrollably
☐ Lots of overtime and people burn out
☐ No time for teams to plan together, demo together, and
improve together
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 27
27
9 Enable fast feature delivery with Architectural Runway
Architectural runway provides ‘just enough’ technical infrastructure to keep
velocity high and avoid excessive redesign and delays.
Feature
Feature
Feature
Implemented now …
Enabler … to support
future features
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 28
28
14
Without Architectural Runway
☐ Architecture progressively decays under the ‘urgency of now’
☐ Velocity peaks for a while, then falls off
☐ Infrequent and irregular releases
☐ Solution robustness, maintainability, and quality decay
☐ Unsustainable development pace
Enabler
Enabler
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 29
29
10 Lead with Lean-Agile Leadership
Successful transformations are based on educating leadership first. ‘Lean-thinking
manager-teachers’ lead, rather than passively follow the transformation.
It is not enough that management commit themselves to quality
and productivity, they must know what it is they must do.
Such a responsibility cannot be delegated.
…and if you can’t come, send no one
—W. Edwards Deming, adapted from Out of Crisis
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 30
30
15
Without Lean-Agile Leadership
☐ Teams cannot learn from their leaders
☐ The transformation is fatally impaired
☐ Agile development with traditional
governance results in ‘Agile in name
only’
☐ Lead time increases due to frequent
escalation of decisions
☐ People not allowed to experiment, fail,
innovate, and learn
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 31
31
One more thing, without Lean-Agile Leadership
SAFe will not work!
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 32
32
16
Prepare Share
Essential SAFe Self-Diagnostic 7 3
► Step 1: Fill out the Essential SAFe Self-Diagnostic on the next page
► Step 2: Use the previous slides to identify the symptoms that exist in
your enterprise
► Step 3: Be prepared to share
Example
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 33
33
Essential SAFe Self-Diagnostic
5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
No. of Symptoms
4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Lean-Agile Real Agile Cadence & PI Customer Centricity, System Inspect & IP Architectural Lean-Agile
Principles Teams and Synchronization Planning DevOps and Demo Adapt Iteration Runway Leadership
Trains Release on Demand
Essential SAFe Elements
© Scaled Agile, Inc. 34
34
17
Questions?
©
© Scaled
Scaled Agile,
Agile,Inc.
Inc. 35
35
18
