Nowadays, every company, regardless of industry, is likely to be able to develop its products and services best through IT developments. Moreover, in the insurance, banking, telecommunications or energy sectors, it is certain that any change to the product will be implemented through some kind of IT development.
More and more components are becoming virtual (think SDN and NFV in telecommunications), and services are being provided on a wide scale, from corporate supporting CRM and ERP systems to web self-service portals. The extent and speed of change has accelerated, and the key to survival is to react quickly and at the same time provide the right level of digital experience. It can also be safely stated that agile thinking and methodologies provide a better solution in this environment than waterfall-based planning.
For large companies, however, the transition is more challenging: organizational culture, large size (several hundred employees), and different financial and project planning methodologies have long hindered the breakthrough. However, since the 2010s, several scaled methodologies have emerged to alleviate these difficulties.
Why SAFe?
SAFe was launched in 2011 and is one of the leading methodologies on the market. Currently, 70 of the US Fortune 100 companies use SAFe. These companies report significant productivity and employee satisfaction increases, faster time to market, and improved quality ( https://www.scaledagileframework.com/case-studies/ ). In addition, plannability - which is generally a criticism of large companies against agile - is not compromised. As a result, the demand for SAFe professionals is constantly growing (the number of certified people is already over 500,000).
The framework is constantly evolving, with SAFe 5.0 going live in January 2020.
How does it work?
One of its main concepts is ART – Agile Release Train.
This cross-functional, self-organizing team consists of 50-125 people and is organized around a specific business or technological value or value stream. It consists of several smaller, 5-11 person agile teams, and the daily work is basically done according to SCRUM, XP Kanban methods. The team delivers during a 2-week cycle of development, continuous delivery (DevOps) and on-demand Release. The planning for the entire ART is done for a 3-4 month cycle, the team makes a commitment to this time interval. This 2-day planning, in which the entire team, stakeholders, and business representatives all participate, is called PI-planning (Product Increment). At this time, the teams divide the desired goals among themselves and give feedback to the business representatives about any problems. Taking into account the capacity of the entire ART, the plan is completed on the second day, which is acceptable to everyone.
During ART, all teams deliver according to a jointly defined plan – paying special attention to dependencies –, continuously integrate and Demo every 2 weeks. During the Iteration, several PO and Scrum Master synchronization meetings are held to coordinate. At the end of ART, the entire cycle is evaluated and the delivered, working, value-added features are presented in an ART Demo. This makes agile development predictable in a way that is understandable even for large company management.
SAFe can be flexibly configured from just one ART (Essential SAFe) to a Solution that encompasses multiple ARTs to organizations with thousands of people encompassing numerous Solutions (Full SAFe).
SAFe also opens new doors for professional development and career planning. The role-based curriculum and certification provide a roadmap from entry-level to professional expert.
Certification comes with SAFe community membership and digital badges issued by Acclaim, which can be easily shared on social media.
The SAFe Big picture is available at the following link: https://www.scaledagileframework.com/ .
About Training360's SAFe training
The comprehensive SA – SAFe Agilist certification provides leaders, stakeholders, and participants with comprehensive knowledge in a 2-day training. After introducing Lean, agile, mindset, the 10 principles of SAFe, and the 7 core competencies with small exercises, participants experience a PI design in a multi-hour simulation. Finally, the training concludes with Full SAFe portfolio-level planning and financing issues. Participants then take an online exam within a month to earn the certification and a digital badge.