If you are in the position where you have started your SAFe journey on your own and things are not going as you expect them to go, or things are falling apart, is there a way out? The simple answer to that question is yes. This is because we know that any kind of transformation journey is long and it’s hard; it’s going to take time and energy, as well as your best mindset. And trust me, people who have been on this journey also have their own set of battle scars that helped them along the way.
Now within SAFe, one of the key success patterns that has been captured is the implementation roadmap, which is not just a linear sequence of events simply because somebody sat in the room and came up with it. No, it is actually a result of both theory and practice, that is based on a lot of work by one of the leading change professionals John Cotter, who has completed over 20 000 successful implementations of SAFe across the globe.
We All Need to Reach Out for Help Sometimes
I think the issue however comes in when people try to implement SAFe without a good understanding of its application. And I blame this partly on the fact that SAFe is freely available and accessible to everyone, and so when people adopt this ‘DIY’ mentality without an actual grasp on what SAFe is actually all about, the result is that they either skip or miss a step, misinterpret what the step is, and then enter the dangerous territory of ineffective implementation of SAFe.
When you have reached this point, you need saving and you need to reach out for help. When people who have tried to adopt SAFe come to me and tell me that they are lost, the first thing I advise them to do is to get someone who can guide and mentor them back on the right track.
To help you, your guide or mentor would typically:
🚀Conduct an assessment of where you.
🚀Understand what needs changing.
🚀Guide you to implement that change.
Alignment is Key
Another thing that typically shows up, is the way that teams are configured; if you want to find the root of the problem, look at the alignment of teams, their functionality and the hierarchical structure of the organisation. When teams are not aligned, they struggle to meet objectives, perform to their fullest potential and struggle with collaboration which damages product quality and getting things done.
So if you want to identify whether there are issues of misalignment in your team, I recommend doing team testing and finding where your dependencies are in the PI Planning or when you have Integrated Solutions. If there are issues in your team here, you may find that one team is in the right place while the other teams are not, or your dependencies have not been met.
If you find yourself in this dilemma, then that’s a likely signal that something is wrong and you should consider how you are going to address it within your team. For example, you could try running a Value Stream and an Agile Release Identification Workshop that provides you with some insight to move forward. This solution can be as simple as you make it; gain knowledge about your system, identify what is not working and then act on that knowledge and then move forward. For instance if you identify a set of patterns, signals or too many dependencies, you will see that things could take a lot longer than you think and the quality might not be as high.
So when you are running the Value Stream Mapping Workshop, it is important to remember that the workshop is designed for you to understand the workflows within your organisation and your Product Development Cycle from ideation to delivery to customer. Therefore when you are looking at the steps needed to arrive at this outcome, you need to look at what workflow is required to reach these goals, and once you have identified what steps you need, that’s where the significant impact happens.
Time to Intervene
So now that you have identified what steps are needed, you can now develop your Intervention Map, and determine what areas need the most attention, present the most constraints and have the most meaningful impact. This is going to give you a way forward and help you gain knowledge of the systems so that you can enhance your adoption and implementation of SAFe.
At the end of the day, being proactive in understanding and identifying ways to improve one’s understanding and implementation of SAFe is a sign of good leadership and management, as you need to understand that in order to be the best and continually improve, you need to understand the data in front of you and what interventions needs to be run in order to arrive at maximal value.
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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