“Discipline is doing what needs to be done, even if you don’t want to do it.” – A quote I read on my school’s ‘Thought of the day’ board on my way to daily morning assembly.
We live in this crazy world, obsessed with freedom, autonomy and the thrill of venturing into the unknown. We champion the maverick. The disruptor. That one person who just bravely, stubbornly, carves his/her own path and deserves a standing ovation without realizing that deep down, tucked right under the surface of every single amazing achievement, every smoothly running system you rely on, even every single well-lived life, there’s this unseen scaffolding. These quiet, invisible boundaries. They are guardrails.
Introduction
The word itself, “guardrails,” probably makes the brain go straight to those winding mountain roads, which have those metal barriers just keeping your car from plunging into a gorge on a really bad day. A powerful image that nails the truth.
In the context of Agile ways of working, it is way beyond just physical safety. It’s this absolute bedrock principle that makes complex systems actually succeed. It is like getting through your own personal journey without completely falling apart. The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) has really gotten everyone buzzing about guardrails, especially in big, sprawling agile transformations because at its very core, setting clear boundaries, giving people solid guidelines so they can actually do things, powerfully is timeless. It’s a fundamental best practice that works everywhere. And it always has.
Think about it for a second, every single intricate system we depend on, it’s playing by the guardrails. Our financial markets, for instance, which have all those regulations literally there to stop total, eye-watering crashes. Or the aviation industry, with all those incredibly strict protocols and the checklists, the must-dos – what keeps millions of people safe. There are so many incredibly carefully built frameworks which enable innovation & efficiency but all within these really sensible, really safe limits so you can move fast. You can make real decisions, feel truly empowered, without that constant, nagging fear of just veering off the course.
Even nature has guardrails. The utterly delicate balance of an ecosystem is maintained by its own natural laws. Its limitations. You push those boundaries, and the whole system can just implode. Same deal in our own lives, guided by those unwritten rules of social interaction, our own personal values, the lines we draw in our relationships are also actually guardrails. They guide us. They protect us. Keep us from, well, making colossal messes.
What might go wrong without Guardrails?
There is something interesting about the idea of guardrails. At first glance, they seem like they are holding you back, putting limits on what you can do. But when you really think about it, their true power is actually the opposite – they make it easier to act with confidence. When people and teams have a clear understanding of the lines they should not cross, they actually feel more comfortable stepping up, trying new things, and being creative. Without those clear boundaries in place, you run the real risk of spinning your wheels, repeating work that’s already been done, heading in different directions, and even making some pretty big mistakes.
Think about a group of really talented cooks who are asked to come up with a whole new menu for a restaurant. If they are just told to go wild, with no rules about how much things can cost, what kind of food to make, if they need to consider things like allergies, or even what ingredients they have on hand, you could end up with a real mess. Some dishes might be amazing, but others could be totally impossible to actually make or sell.
Now, imagine the restaurant owner sets some clear guidelines – a certain amount of money for each dish, a focus on modern Indian cooking, making sure there are some pure and healthy options, and giving them a list of what fresh ingredients are available right now. Suddenly, those chefs, even with these “restrictions,” are actually freed up to really use their skills within those limits. This is how you get a menu that makes sense and is a success.
Guardrails in SAFe
The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) understands that when you are trying to be agile with lots of teams working together, you need to find a good balance. The balance to make some central direction to keep everyone on the same page, and also being mindful that certain decisions are made better by the teams. In short, balancing the centralised and decentralised decision making. To do it rationally, guardrails in SAFe are used at various levels.
At the very top of the SAFe hierarchy, you have got the Portfolio level. Think of it as where the really big decisions get made; the “what” and the “why” of everything we are going to build. And to stop us all from running off in a million different directions, we have guardrails. The Lean Portfolio Management or LPM members are the main players here. In organizations implementing SAFe, LPM looks after how work flows through the organization connecting the strategic themes to execution. They are responsible to partner with other executives, SMEs and delivery representatives to set up guardrails when explaining how to handle budgets over different time periods.
SAFe has mentioned the concept of guardrails primarily for lean budgeting, whereas guardrails is a universal concept and it is there at all levels in SAFe and in all other frameworks, just that it is not labelled as one.
What is Lean Budgeting?
This term reminds me of the time when my mother and father used to allocate a budget for things at the start of every month based on the updated priorities. They had identified budget buckets for expenses in exchange of ‘value’ for grocery, utility bills, tuition fees, event specific expenses and others. The word lean implies fat free. Born in a middle-class family with a humble background, you observe and learn the value of money. I didn’t feel that we compromised on anything because they both prioritised their budget carefully. I got my cricket bat, a new dress at each festival, family picnics and outings also happened at a decent interval.
Likewise, it is important that while leaders budget for organization, they need to look from various perspectives and not just from a Return on Investment basis but also the value that could be recurring in the long term for both customers and business.
In the lean budgeting concept of SAFe, it’s the senior leaders who allocate a budget to Value Streams rather than funding individual projects, that is the critical recommendation of the framework. The reason is to build a system thinking, visualising the end to end flow of customer experience, identifying the opportunity for business and then building solutions for each step to ensure it is worthy for both customers and business. Project based thinking is like an isolated approach and managing such isolated projects and calculating overall efficiency of portfolio is a tedious job.
This way value streams make decisions about how to best utilize their budget to deliver value against strategic themes.Once the budget is allocated to the value stream, they could make their own decisions, plan for innovation within the budget, and won’t be worried of the overhead of project-by-project funding approval.
In the context of SAFe, the value streams are expected to function within guardrails, which acts as a high-level constraint.
Examples of guardrails
- Comply to strategic themes, at least to one of them -> Since development value streams are meant to build solutions for operating value streams in terms of products and services, at the same time, they need to ensure that their outcomes are aligned with the strategic themes, which are actually considered as the objectives for a portfolio, elaborated in the form of OKRs. Otherwise, the work that we will create will be directionless
- Ensure that the total portfolio spent shouldn’t exceed the allocated budget -> otherwise asking for more budget is very stringent and also if the leadership keeps on considering such requests then they may end up compromising with other essential spends.
- Ensure adherence to certain technological standards within the organization -> autonomy is key but all the solutions that might be built by any teams should be able to work in harmony instead of creating blockers or adding to rewriting a certain solution
- Ensuring that each investment within a portfolio should directly or indirectly leads to customer satisfaction -> this in true terms make it a customer-centric organization and bring sincerity among people to ask right questions when they decide scoping or evaluating the budget allocation for certain initiatives within the value stream
- Ensuring managing risks effectively for all investments & it’s complete adherence to industry or regulatory standards -> this way for each investment, all the parties involved will proactively flag, monitor, create mitigation plans and ensure that it shouldn’t affect the sanctity of the flow of value. Also, adherence to compliance is the symbol of trust which is sacrosanct for a business to run
- Certain percentage of budget should be allocated for innovation -> this allows teams to think out of the box, do experiments, take calculated risks and also contribute in operational excellence activities
It is important to also talk about the ‘Investment Criteria’ because they help Value Stream stakeholders make informed decisions about which investments to pursue. Let’s learn about it in detail.
What are Investment Criteria?
If we call guardrails as high-level constraints that we put for effective management of portfolio budget investments, the ‘investment criteria’ denotes more specific guidelines used to evaluate and prioritize individual epics or initiatives within a value stream.I think it could be understood by following examples:
Examples of Investment Criteria helping in aligning Initiatives or Epic to guardrails (few)
For the respective guardrails that we have covered above, here is how the investment criteria helps by questioning to initiative owners, its alignment with specific guardrails:
Comply to strategic themes, at least to one of them
- Investment criteria would be:
- How do you know if the identified epic or initiative is aligned to the strategic themes?
- Which key results of what Objective is it going to impact?
- What KPI are we going to use to measure it – revenue, cost savings, customer satisfaction, or other? What is the current score and what is the expected change?
Ensure that the total portfolio spent shouldn’t exceed the allocated budget
- Investment criteria would be:
- What is the estimated cost of implementing the Epic? How large is the Epic, and how much effort will be required to implement it?
- What is the potential business value of the identified initiative or epic?
- In case, we add 20% more or deduct 20% from the asked budget, what could be the change in impact we could see?
And more around risks, feasibility etc.
Enforce, Review & Update Guardrails
Setting up governance to continuously monitor effectiveness of guardrails for SAFe implementation
It is so much usual to build norms and then getting disappointed seeing its inobedience leading to vagueness, budget overruns, poor decision making etc etc etc. To keep it checked, we need to put some governance in place:
- Incorporate regular reviews of guardrail and investment criteria. Check its adherence. Challenges faced by people. Use this opportunity in Portfolio sync and Value Stream sync meetings
- Conduct audits periodically on investment decisions to vet the compliance with guardrails and criteria & also to know their effectivity. Many times the loopholes are found within the system which might show adherence but still it is not creating the needful impact in the system. Just like how I remember my colleagues in job were talking about using the medical leave to extend their holidays 🙂
- Integrating the guardrails and criteria into the Value Stream’s decision-making process will bring sincerity towards its purpose. We could make it a mandatory step to evaluate proposed initiatives/epics and also it requires initial training and handholding to respective initiative owners to get adjusted to guardrails mindset
- The ultimate responsibility of its success is with the LPM team, who will enforce the guardrails at the portfolio level, the subsequent implementation of them at value stream or ART level is on respective value stream owners, LACE and RTEs
- Guardrails and criteria should not be static, should be reviewed and updated periodically (leaving the frequency based on the organization’s context) to ensure they remain relevant and aligned with the evolving enterprise strategy and market conditions
More relatable example
Guardrail -> All new LMS features must comply with accessibility guidelines (WCAG).
Criterion for ‘Improve Learner Engagement’ Epic:
- Strategic Fit: Directly supports Accessible & Engaging RQI Training Strategic Theme (Score: 3/3)
- Value: Expected to increase learner engagement by 20% (High Value)
- Cost: Estimated at $200,000 (Medium Cost)
- Risk: Low risk, as similar features have been implemented in other LMS platforms.
- Urgency: Medium urgency, as learner engagement is a key factor in training effectiveness.
Types of Guardrails in SAFe
There are four types of guardrails that needs to be considered by each value stream as recommended by SAFe –
Guardrail 1: Guiding investments by horizon
According to SAFe, any initiative that we start with goes through 4 horizons which helps the leadership team to decide if they should allocate a budget or not? And if they allocate then how much and till when? Following are the explanation of these horizons –
- Horizon 3 investments are those dedicated to investigating new potential solutions. Often, an Epic is created to start the initiative, and an MVP is defined to test the benefit hypothesis. The investment continues until the initiative is stopped or allowed to continue to horizon 2
- Horizon 2 reflects the investments in Solutions which have emerged from horizon 3. Since these are promising new Solutions, the business is willing to make ongoing investments in excess of the current return. However, if the decision is made to stop the program, it’s likely that some modest investment is necessary to decommission the system, as it has likely made its way into the internal and external business ecosystem
- Horizon 1 reflects the desired state where Solutions deliver more value than the cost of the current investment. These Solutions require ongoing investment to maintain and extend functionality. This investment profile often consumes much of a portfolio budget, sometimes with lack of focus on innovation at other horizons
- Horizon 0 reflects the investment needed to decommission a deployed Solution
Guardrail 2: Applying capacity allocation to optimize value and solution integrity
While investment by horizons help us in understanding the inflow of initiatives to respective value streams, it is also important to vet that in an ART capacity for a particular planning interval (PI), how much capacity are we going to allocate for the respective initiatives or epics which has been condensed to features, enablers or tech debt items?
Guardrail 3: Approving significant initiatives
Like how we all are different in our own ways, the initiatives are not all the same when it comes to their contribution to key factors like value delivery, customer satisfaction, adherence to compliance standards, reducing critical quality impact etc. Hence, we need to vet each of them against the budget allocated and decide based on their cost, if it’s exceeding or at par below the threshold. In either case, we need to make decisions. In the latter case, it’s not a concern as the ART team could manage it internally otherwise the approval would be required from portfolio leaders.
Guardrail 4: Continuous Business Owner engagement
| ART/Supplier | Estimated Size Range for ART’s Portion of Epic 1 (Story Points) | ART PI Velocity (Story Points) | Negotiated ART Capacity for Epic 1 | Available Points for Epic 1 (Velocity x Capacity) | Forecasted # of PIs (Size / Points) |
| ART 1 | 800 – 1200 | 1000 | 30% | 300 | 3 – 4 |
| ART 2 | 1000 – 1500 | 800 | 50% | 400 | 2.5 – 3.75 (rounds to 3-4) |
| ART 3 | 500 – 700 | 600 | 40% | 240 | 2 – 3 |
Business owner engagements are essential to make tough decisions as they are the one who wants guardrails to prevail and they need to look at details to make decisions on the budget allocation and for that they review the ongoing capacity of teams for corresponding PIs, partner with respective representatives of ARTs and pave the way out to get critical initiatives their pathway to production.
Guardrails in Action Beyond SAFe
So, as we learnt that the guardrails are helping a lot to leaders in managing the portfolio investments efficiently but you could see it all over the place, Let’s explore it in other contexts:
For an open-source application
Think about those cool open-source projects online where loads of people are chipping in code, and still it doesn’t just turn into a mess because the core development team usually have these rules or guardrails for how you write the code, how you can add your own code, and how someone checks it before it goes live. It’s like, guidance will encourage people to contribute and at the same time it reminds them that if they do not follow the norms then the code checked-in might break everything. It is not perceived as a wall reason while the new contributor to the open-source application also feels confident, it is like a clear path.
Freelance Designers Working Together
Then you’ve got those freelance designers who team up on big projects. To make sure all their unique styles don’t clash and the client’s happy, they usually have these shared design guidelines and ways they talk to each other and give feedback. So, one person can do their bit, and they trust that it will all fit together in the end. I heard about this one designer who had a quite unique style, but even they realized that these guidelines actually helped everyone understand each other and made the final view really work for the client. More wins for everyone that way.
Even Your Own Money
When we try to manage your spending, we set little limits for groceries, going out, etc. Those are our own personal “don’t go crazy” lines. They don’t stop you from having fun, but they stop you from ending up totally broke later. I knew someone who was terrible with such control & always ended up buying stuff on impulse. But then one fine day he found a budgeting app with these clear spending limits – the very own little money “guardrails” – and it actually made him feel more in control and less stressed about cash. It’s weird but it worked.
So yeah, these guardrails, they’re not just some big corporate thing. They’re like those invisible lines that help things run smoothly and keep us from totally going off the rails, whether it’s a bunch of coders, some artsy types, or even just you trying to make it to payday. They create the space for good things to happen without total chaos.
Why Are Guardrails Always Relevant, Especially Now?
Guardrails protect us when we either may get reckless or casual with our actions or if someone else or you may accidentally do something wrong. It brings discipline and in today’s rapidly changing world, with increasing complexity, guardrails are not optional but a must-have. They provide the assurance in any structure to navigate ambiguity. When applied effectively, it also gives confidence to leaders to empower teams by decentralizing decision-making. The speed and autonomy are crucial for any business to survive, likewise innovation is not an option, and with guardrails you can have one critical practice that could avoid chaos and wasted effort.
I remember learning about autonomous cars, when it was newly introduced just as a concept to the world, to achieve that incredible autonomy, it demands making countless decisions in real-time responsibly. This autonomy is entirely dependent on a robust set of pre-defined guardrails like traffic laws, safety protocols, sensor limitations, and ethical considerations which are programmed into its system, and it can not afford to make a mistake, not even for a second as it may cost lives and other damages. These guardrails gives trust to the society to accept and firstly allow the driverless car on road as it will navigate complex environments safely and efficiently.
Likewise, in organizations, after the recent pandemic, the acceptance for remote work and distributed teams came only when the guardrails of clear communication guidelines, decision-making frameworks, and expectations around collaboration are what ensure productivity and alignment despite the physical distance, which was not even a popular case in the corporate world.
How to effectively implement guardrails in a new environment?
Knowing the importance of guardrails is fascinating & in a new environment to expedite success, lets learn effective way to implement guardrail –
So, when you’re looking to put these guardrails in place, start with laying the foundation first by asking questions to really dig in and understanding the whole situation –
– Who are the actual people who are going to be working within these boundaries?
– What are they day-to-day doing?
– What is the ultimate goal they are all striving for?
– What could potentially go wrong?
– What is the right balance between centralised and decentralised decision making?
We want to promote team effort, a real collaboration with the people who’ll be operating inside those guardrails every single day and at the same we do not want to over-democratise decision making to add delays, confusions and lose our focus from the problems to solve or goals to achieve.
Once these and other fundamental questions are answered, it’s time to actually define and communicate the guardrails.
To make the implementation of guardrails impactful, get everyone involved in building them, bringing in all the people who will be affected, whether directly or indirectly. Idea is to build an agreement, which is a shared understanding on how we are going to work together, to help each other to achieve our common purpose.
Do not rush for this step as a glitch here might lead to failures and blame-game. So, once we have figured them out together, we need to document it in a clear, concise, and easy-to-find way. Immediately we have to bring governance, a kind of operating model to regularly talk about them, and reinforce the importance to make sure everyone truly understands and remembers them. The LPM team should provide continuous support and guidance to everyone.
The whole point of having these guardrails in the first place should always be about making things easier and more effective for people. Keep emphasizing how these boundaries actually help everyone act faster and with more confidence because they know the playing field and the general direction. When things do go a little off course, it’s not a reason to point fingers; it’s a chance to guide and mentor, to help people understand why the guardrails are there and how to work within them, until it just becomes the natural way things are done. And when someone really nails it and works well within those boundaries, we should absolutely highlight that, maybe even celebrate it.
Finally, remember that these things aren’t set in stone. Leverage external SAFe Consulting companies like Benzne to help you effectively implement guardrails in a new environment.
Conclusion
Guardrails, whether it’s in agile ways of working, or open-source communities, even just how we try to manage our own personal life aspects like finance management, or the little promises we make to ourselves every day—they are like the unsung heroes of getting things done right. Consider it as the backbone, which supports the entire structure, ensuring efficiency of investment made by portfolios for the allocated budget by the organization leaders. Backed with investment criteria, the guardrails helps us in implementing all four types of guardrails effectively.
Think about it for a second. Without those coding guidelines in open source, it would be a dumping zone, and the whole project would probably crumble. But because those guardrails are there, people all over the world can contribute and build something amazing together. And likewise those style guides for designers allows a bunch of different artists to create something that looks like it all belongs together, that has a real impact. Even when you set a budget for yourself, it doesn’t feel great at the moment, but it’s what gives you that peace of mind knowing you are not going to be stressed about money later.
Guardrails are our natural way to keep check on things so that they last longer and at the same time it would not let us go haywire. With this, our blog on “Guardrails in agile” comes to an end and we hope it helps out readers with enough information. We would be glad to support resolving bottlenecks in your scaling agile journey as a SAFe consulting firm. Please write to us at consult@benzne.com for any queries or feedback.
Frequently Asked Questions about Guardrails in Agile?
1. What exactly are guardrails?
You may see it as either boundaries, easy-to-undersand concise but impactful guidelines, or set of principles that provide a framework that encourages empowerment to teams and at the same time playing by the rules. These limits let individuals or teams operate autonomously to achieve desired outcomes.
2. Are guardrails the same as rigid rules?
Rules are supposed to be followed and they are if not obeyed then one gets penalised or can also lose the job but guardrails are like signals or signboards in the system to stay checked. Effective guardrails enable flexibility within a defined framework and not like rules where autonomy, innovation and any kind of flexibility is out of question.
3. Who is responsible for defining guardrails?
It’s often a collaborative effort that involves everybody getting affected, from leadership, to those who will be operating within the guardrails, and also relevant subject matter experts. Everybody should respect these constraints as they otherwise could impact credibility, budget overruns, missing critical releases and what not. The context, desired outcomes, and potential risks are considered when the guardrails are defined.
4. How do you ensure people follow guardrails?
- Start by clearly communicating the “why” behind them,
- Validate if the people who are operating within the guardrails understand them
- consistently reinforce them
- Review and course-correct
- Making guardrails easily accessible
- Integrating them into workflows or value streams also helps
5. Can guardrails hinder innovation?
Actually, guardrails enable innovation when designed effectively. An absolute cheerleader to experimentation, thinking out of the box and fixing the misaligned activities. If it is applied just for the sake of it then it will not be adhered well due to its restrictive nature and hence could hinder innovation. It is a definite aspect to explore when defining guardrail henceforth it is pro-innovation.
6. How often should guardrails be reviewed?
A safe answer is periodically but the continuous governance help us in reviewing them quite often and needs a basis we could pivot. A fixed half-yearly or annual cadence for review could be fine. Sometimes, it is done whenever there are significant changes in the context, goals, or understanding of risks. Best to keep it empirical.
7. What happens if guardrails are ignored?
Quite many. It is like there is a possibility for everyone to do anything like wild wild west. It could lead to misalignment, increased risks, lots of wasted effort, poor quality and a very hazy view towards efficiency of making investments. The consequences are contextual and is totally based on the nature of the guardrail.
