How does SAFe Handle Planning and Execution at the Portfolio Level?

On a portfolio level, one of the primary roles of The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), is to ensure that there is alignment with the organisational strategy and other large scale initiatives such as ethics, and safety. This is typically planned out at the portfolio level, where we conceptualise our product’s value streams.

What Are Value Streams?

Value streams refer to the capabilities that are required to provide value streams to the customers. So for example, a value stream will typically involve a set of actions that must take place, and add value to the customer’s journey. What is most important and desired is that the value stream ends with the customer.

But how do you decide what capabilities you may need for a value stream? Well, this is typically laid out in the planning phase, whereby we will usually look at the capacity allocation across different value streams. So for example, we may ask the following questions at this phase:

🚀 How much funding do we need?

🚀 What are the customer satisfaction requirements?

🚀 How can we maintain our productivity and standards?

🚀 Who will do the work?

🚀 What skills are needed?

Another important part of this phase is ensuring that there is a balance between the market demand and the organisation. And since we are often working under time sensitivity, it is vital that we are able to discern what is actually worth investing in, as it needs to support our value stream goal.

Now you may find, as did I, that sometimes there are going to be Agile Release strains, which are going to work against some of your initiatives. The SAFe approach is great, since the emphasis is not on delivering a perfect product, but rather we first focus our attention on the Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

Developing an MVP, involves answering:

🚀What is the minimum solution required to meet our goals?

🚀What are the minimum features required?

In addition, the benefits of determining and developing the MVP are that you will be able to:

🚀 Release a product to the market in the fastest way possible.

🚀 Assess an idea first with demo users and avoid committing to a large budget before the full product is ready.

🚀 Test the MVP against the market standards and determine whether it is competitive enough.

🚀 Reduce unnecessary loss in revenue.

What Can We Do If We Are Faced With Multiple Value Streams?

It is very likely that as you start your journey with the SAFe, you will find that sometimes features will cross-section across different Agile Release Trains. This typically occurs if we are in a situation whereby we need coordination across a variety of value streams and Agile registrations.

To achieve this in the most efficient way, we can break it down as follows:

🚀 Determine the capacity we need from these different value streams.

🚀 Identity what the potential technical debt may be.

🚀 Remove shortcuts or irrelevance that has hindered the quality.

🚀 Allocate capacity for continual improvement and revision.

Teams also have an input in the product management function, as they too need to understand:

🚀 What needs to be done?

🚀 How it will be done?

🚀 Who is accountable and who is responsible?

🚀 How does our inputs satisfy our capacity allocation?

As you can see, the portfolio planning phase is quite intricate, and functions to answer some important questions that will inform your Agile work processes and ultimately make achieving your products goals, easier, more cost-effective and quality efficient. By exploring all the potential influencing factors, challenges, and requirements of your organisation and team, you will be able to increase the chances of your product goal’s success.

Interested to learn more?

At Value Glide, through the application of SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework), we are able to offer agile consulting, agile coaching, and agile training specialists who work with organisations to align business objectives with customer needs and wants.

As deeply experienced agile coaches and practitioners, our team is invested in continuous learning through each client engagement and uses the data and evidence we gather from each implementation to inform our training, coaching, and consulting services.

In a nutshell, empirical process control or empiricism.

If you are thinking of adopting agile within your organisation and have identified SAFe as a great agile framework to adopt, implement and improve your business agility, visit our SAFe Quickstart ART Launch program page or view our SAFe Consulting Services page.

If you have identified a need for an agile coach and SAFe coach to help your organisation adopt and implement SAFe, visit our SAFe Coaching Services page. We are committed to equipping organisations with the tools and knowledge to thrive in this ever-changing digital age, and achieve business agility through the Scaled Agile Framework.

Sounds good to you? Then sign-up today, and learn more about this transformation and revolutionary framework that is changing the game in the world of Agile. It is truly remarkable what can be done when we put our heads together and decide to work as one.

If you want to know more about SAFe and how to lead SAFe, visit our SAFE Training page for a host of options, from Leading SAFe to a SAFe Release Train Engineer course.

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