How Does SAFe Handle Planning and Execution at the Team Level?
In SAFe (The Scaled Agile Framework), the Team Level refers to the level of an organisation whereby Agile Teams are created, and work together to deliver high-quality products to their customers. In SAFe, an Agile Team is typically composed of a group of 10, and sometimes even fewer individuals who together define, build, test, and deliver. These teams have a high level of responsibility and accountability to manage their work, and influence their productivity outcomes. When teams are encouraged to work in this way, it has been found to result in higher levels of productivity, and increased time-to-market.
In SAFe, Agile Teams Can Be Organised Into:
🚀 Functional Teams.
🚀 Feature Teams.
🚀 Component Teams.
🚀 Specialist Teams.
Each of these teams have different functions and expectations that must be met. These different types of teams can also be thought of as the team levels within the organisation, that together work towards achieving a common goal; meeting the product goal, and satisfying customers.
At a medium level, each team will have its own Team Backlog, whereby each team will have their own particular backlog in which certain tasks and requirements are prioritised in order to achieve a Definition of Done for each Sprint. This is generally sequenced and delegated by the Product Owner, and then given over to the team, whereby they decide how much work they are actually able to do within the timeframe they are given.
Next, they need to come up with an Iteration Goal. This refers to the particular business and technical goals that the team and the Product Owner agree to accomplish in an Iteration.
We can achieve our Iteration Goal by:
🚀 Determining what we want to achieve in the end.
🚀 Understanding the purpose of our Iteration Goal.
🚀 Providing flexibility and encouraging adaptation in the Iteration Backlog.
🚀 Planning effectively.
🚀 Participating actively in daily meetings.
Daily Scrum meetings whereby teams meet to collaborate, and assess their progress is therefore an important ingredient for effective application of SAFe.
And where teams come together and ask themselves:
🚀 Is there anything impeding our progress and goals?
🚀 How can we best address these challenges?
🚀 Do we need additional support, and where can we get it?
And what happens at the end of the Iteration? We have the Iteration Review, whereby we:
🚀 Inspect.
🚀 Collect customer feedback.
🚀 Build that feedback into the next Iteration.
Next, we move onto the Iteration Retrospective. At this stage, we are concerned with inspecting how we have worked, and exploring other potential ways of working, and how we can improve it with actionable goals. And with that being said, I think it is important to mention that in my career implementing SAFe, I have found that where teams often go wrong is when they have a long list of improvement items but are not able to execute them all. In my opinion, this is a waste of time, because you are not only spending valuable time resources in listing an excess of identified problems, but you are also risking going off-track, and actually achieving nothing of actual value in the end.
To avoid this, I recommend to my team, and course trainees, that it is more effective and meaningful when you select one or two items that you can actually grasp and have capacity to improve.
You will find that these improvements will feed into the Sprint Iteration Planning, and will help you with keeping track of the Team Backlog items.
I view this as ‘working with intent,’ meaning that instead of simply winging it, and dangingling on a string hoping for the best, we are supporting each other in achieving a more structured and purposeful approach to product development.
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.
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