Introduction
Agile ways of working is no longer a new shop on the street and it is highly surprising if anyone in the IT field does not know about it, it is even a part of the university curriculum now! With decades of awareness and dozens of scaling frameworks, large organizations still face the challenge of scaling Agile principles beyond individual teams to the entire enterprise. This is where the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) comes in handy, as it provides a comprehensive framework and a structured approach to scale Agile, enabling enterprises with:
- Systematic structured approach to align with common understanding of value
- Delivering solutions faster for continuous value realisation
- Bringing predictability by orchestrating interventions at portfolio, value streams, ART and team levels
- Ensuring consistently higher quality
What is SAFe for Enterprise?
SAFe for Enterprise, as the name suggests, is a framework designed to help large organizations implement Agile at scale. It provides a set of principles, practices, and competencies for Lean and Agile development at the enterprise level. The framework proposed elaborated ways to synchronize alignment, collaboration and delivery across multiple teams. It’s about aligning strategy with execution, ensuring everyone is working towards the same goals.
Benefits of SAFe for Enterprise
Organizations adopting SAFe experiences following benefits:
- By aligning teams and streamlining processes, SAFe helps organizations optimize their workflow, leading to increased productivity
- SAFe is well-documented compared to other scaling frameworks
- Working on systematic cadence balances predictability & uncertainty
- Emphasis on iterative development and frequent releases enables organizations to deliver value to customers more quickly
- Built-in quality practices ensure that quality is a priority throughout the development process, resulting in higher-quality products and services
- ImplementingSAFe enhances alignment between teams at all levels, from the team level to the portfolio level, ensuring that everyone is working towards the same strategic goals
- By empowering teams and encouraging a culture of collaboration, SAFe can improve morale and engagement of the workforce
What are the Key Challenges in Adopting SAFe for Enterprise?
While SAFe offers numerous benefits, its adoption is not without challenges. Some common hurdles include:
- Resistance to Change, as it demands changes in organizational structure, processes, and culture, which can lead to resistance from employees.
- Insufficient leadership support and commitment is detrimental to drive such transformation at enterprise level. Without it, the transformation is likely to fail.
- SAFe is a comprehensive framework with many components, which can make it complex to understand and implement and without proper guidance and external SAFe consulting support, it could be tough for organisations to implement it by themselves.
- SAFe implementation requires investment in training, tools, and consulting, which can be a significant financial undertaking
Key Concepts of SAFe for Enterprise
SAFe is built upon several core concepts, below is a brief mention and their purpose followed by their detailed understanding:
| SAFe Concept | Description |
| SAFe Configurations | Offers different configurations (Essential, Large Solution, Portfolio, and Full) to accommodate varying organizational needs and complexities. |
| Built-In Quality | Emphasizes integrating quality practices throughout the development lifecycle, rather than treating it as an afterthought. |
| Agile Release Trains (ARTs) | Self-organizing teams of Agile teams that plan, commit, and execute together to deliver value. |
| Value Streams | Represent the sequence of activities an organization uses to deliver a continuous flow of value to a customer. |
| Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) | Aligns portfolio execution with enterprise strategy, optimizing value delivery across the portfolio. |
| Leadership’s Role | Leaders play a crucial role in driving and sustaining SAFe adoption by embracing a Lean-Agile mindset and empowering teams. |
| SAFe Metrics | Uses metrics to measure progress, identify areas for improvement, and track the value delivered by the organization. |
Let’s understand these SAFe concepts in detail.
1. SAFe Configurations
There are four primary configurations proposed by SAFe:
- Essential SAFe
- This is the basic building block of SAFe, providing the minimum elements necessary to scale Agile at the program level.
- Large Solution SAFe
- This configuration is for organizations building large and complex solutions that require coordination across multiple ARTs.
- Portfolio SAFe
- This configuration aligns portfolio execution with enterprise strategy, organizing ARTs and Value Streams around the flow of value.
- Full SAFe
- This is the most comprehensive configuration, supporting enterprises building large, integrated solutions that require the coordination of multiple Value Streams.
2. Built-In Quality
Quality is everyone’s responsibility. Practices like test-driven development, continuous integration, and automated testing are encouraged so as to ensure quality is built into the product from the start. This approach reduces defects, improves flow, and enhances overall product quality.
3. Agile Release Trains (ARTs)
An Agile Release Train (ART) is a long-lived, self-organizing team of Agile teams that plans, commits, and executes together to develop and deliver value. ARTs operate on a synchronized cadence, typically following a Program Increment (PI), which is a fixed timebox (usually 8-12 weeks). It is responsible to build solutions responsible for a development value stream. At the start of each cadence, the ART performs a just-enough planning internal planning or PI planning to align with the objectives and at the end of the cadence, ART team retrospect in ‘Inspect & Adapt’ event and also plan for the next cadence.
4. Value Streams
Value streams represent the series of steps an organization takes to deliver a product or service to a customer. SAFe helps organizations identify, map, and optimize their value streams to improve efficiency and reduce waste. By focusing on value streams, organizations can better understand how value flows through their systems and identify areas for improvement. There are 2 types of value streams – operational and developmental.
5. Lean Portfolio Management (LPM)
Aligning portfolio execution with enterprise strategy is a critical aspect of enterprise scaling and that’s where Lean Portfolio Management helps. LPM helps organizations make better investment decisions, optimize value delivery, and adapt quickly to changing market conditions. It emphasizes a Lean approach to portfolio management, focusing on maximizing value and minimizing waste. The LPM team partners with business executives, value stream owners, epic owners and also representatives of ART, LACE and COPs to streamline continuous value delivery.
6. Leadership’s Role
Leaders must embrace a Lean-Agile mindset, champion the transformation, and empower teams to make decisions to make SAFe for enterprise a successful initiative. They are responsible for creating an environment that stimulates agility, collaboration, continuous improvement and above all enabling everyone to stay value focused.
7. Metrics
SAFe provides a variety of metrics to help organizations measure their progress and identify areas for improvement –
- Team and ART Velocity: Measures the amount of value a team or ART can deliver in a given time period.
- Program Predictability Measure: Measures how consistently an ART delivers its value focused planned objectives.
- Value Stream Metrics: Measures the time it takes to deliver value in terms of solutions which could be a product, platform, a component of it or expected services through a value stream.
- Portfolio Runway: Measures how far into the future the portfolio has visibility and funding.
How to Implement SAFe for Enterprise?
Implementing SAFe is a significant undertaking that requires careful planning and execution and this is how it is proposed –
- Establish a Lean Agile Center of Excellence (LACE): A LACE provides guidance, support, and training for the SAFe implementation.
- Train Leaders and Teams: SAFe training is essential for ensuring that everyone understands the principles, practices, and roles involved.
- Identify Value Streams: Identify the value streams that deliver value to your customers and also organize our structure supporting the value.
- Create the Implementation plan & prepare for ART launch: It is important that before the first ART gets launched, we should set certain aesthetics in place like identifying the focused roles, training people on how to work in cadence, setting up the cadence, preparation for first PI planning, setting up events and many others.
- Launch Agile Release Trains (ARTs) & Train ART members: Launch ARTs to organize teams around the flow of value ensuring that we have formed the agile teams, they understand the roles and responsibilities of all the other members of the ART and ready to assimilate the new ways of working.
- Coach ART Execution: Since its the first time experience for most of the people, we need to coach it extensively to onboard people continuously, remove bottlenecks and support wherever needed for seamless execution.
- Launch more ARTs: Once we stabilise the ART launched, its time to identify more such ARTs assuring they are value focused to create more such success stories by continuous interventions.
- Adopt Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) to enhance the portfolio: Implement LPM practices to align portfolio execution with enterprise strategy.
- Promote Leadership Involvement: Ensure that leaders are actively involved in the transformation and champion the adoption of SAFe.
- Monitor Progress with SAFe Metrics: Track key metrics to measure progress and identify areas for improvement.
- Inspect and Adapt continuously to accelerate value delivery: Regularly inspect and adapt your implementation to ensure it’s meeting your organization’s needs.
What are the Prerequisites for Adopting SAFe in an Enterprise?
Before adopting SAFe, organizations should consider the following prerequisites:
- Teams should have a solid foundation in agile principles and practices.
- Leaders at all levels must be committed to the transformation and willing to support the changes involved.
- A culture that encourages collaboration, communication, and transparency is essential for SAFe success.
- Willingness to change organizational structures, processes, and mindsets.
What are the Key Differences Between SAFe and Other Agile Frameworks?
The key focus of SAFe is on scaling Agile to the enterprise level. SAFe provides a more comprehensive framework for coordinating multiple teams and aligning them with strategic goals. Key differences include its emphasis on ARTs, LPM, and its various configurations to support different organizational contexts.The other frameworks like scrum focuses at team level intervention. In SAFe, it is flexible to use a varied framework at team level suitable for team’s context and at the same time it blends the best practices of portfolio management, team topologies, value stream mapping and many more.
How Benzne Agile Consulting Can Help with SAFe Solutions for Enterprise?
We at Benzne offers a range of services to help organizations successfully adopt and implement SAFe for enterprise. Benzne provides expert guidance, training, and coaching to support organizations throughout their SAFe journey. We have helped our customers with:
- SAFe implementation planning and execution
- Lean-Agile transformation consulting
- SAFe training and certification
- Agile Release Train (ART) launch and coaching
- Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) implementation
- Customized SAFe solutions
- OKRs implementation
- Value stream identification and organizing around value
Conclusion
Mastering SAFe for enterprise is a journey that requires commitment, collaboration, and a willingness to change. However, the rewards of successful SAFe implementation can be significant, including increased agility, faster time to market, improved quality, and enhanced alignment. By understanding SAFe’s principles, adopting its practices and partnering with experienced agile consulting firms like Benzne, organizations can achieve true business agility and thrive in today’s competitive landscape.
With this, our blog on “Mastering SAFe for Enterprise” comes to an end and we sincerely hope this has given you the understanding of SAFe for enterprise and how to implement itl. Please write to us at consult@benzne.com for any feedback or suggestions or if you want Benzne agile transformation company to support your organizational agile transformation journey.
FAQs about SAFe for Enterprise
1. What are the different SAFe configurations, and how do they differ?
SAFe offers four configurations: Essential, Large Solution, Portfolio, and Full. Essential SAFe is the simplest, providing the core elements for scaling Agile at the program level. Large Solution SAFe is for complex solutions requiring multiple ARTs. Portfolio SAFe aligns strategy with execution. Full SAFe is the most comprehensive, coordinating large, integrated solutions across multiple value streams.
2. Can SAFe be implemented in non-IT organizations?
Yes, SAFe can be implemented in non-IT organizations. While SAFe originated in the software development world, its principles and practices can be applied to any large organization that wants to improve its agility and deliver value more efficiently.
3. What is the role of the Release Train Engineer (RTE) in SAFe Solutions for Enterprise?
The Release Train Engineer (RTE) for the Agile Release Train (ART) facilitates ART events, helps manage risks and dependencies, and drives continuous improvement. RTE plays a critical role in ensuring the ART delivers value effectively.
4. How does SAFe support innovation within an enterprise?
SAFe supports innovation by providing a framework for experimentation, feedback, and continuous learning. In each cadence, called Planning Interval which is usually of 8-12 weeks duration, the last iterations is ‘Innovation & planning iteration’ which also encourages agile teams to think out of the box, not limiting it to be the only opportunity and expects everyone to inspect better ways of working and adapt to new ideas. SAFe also encourages decentralized decision-making, empowers teams to explore new ideas, and provides mechanisms for funding and supporting innovation initiatives.
