SAFe core value 3 – Transparency
Transparency refers to:
- The words and terms that we use.
- The work that we are doing.
- The reasons behind what we are doing and how we are doing it.
The words and terms that we use.
In agile, and other industries, there is an industry jargon that prevails.
Technical terms, such as MVP (minimum viable product) tend to have different meanings according to different people.
Marketing departments view MVP very differently to how the product development team view that same concept, as so we need to be transparent about what we mean when we refer to something as an MVP.
The purpose of this is to ensure that we are all clear on the definition and constituency of that word or term to avoid misunderstandings and ensure that everyone is aligned with the purpose of the word or term.
Transparency on the work we are doing and where it currently is.
The product backlog is a great example of making work visible.
It allows everyone to see what the team are going to be working on, and when done correctly, they will also be able to visualise the priority of that work.
We also need to make clear what we are currently working on and how that work is progressing.
Some teams prefer old-school post-it notes to demonstrate the flow of work, whilst other teams will make use of digital tools that range from spreadsheets to Jira software.
The purpose is to make work transparent and empower anyone who is looking at the backlog items to understand where that work is and how it is flowing through the value stream.
The reasons behind what we are doing and how we are doing it.
In traditional environments where poor performance or failure is severely punished, people tend to hide problems or sweep potential failures under the rug to avoid consequences.
In agile, and SAFe, we want people to be transparent about the challenges they are facing, the obstacles and impediments that are preventing progress, and to highlight mistakes.
We do this to ensure that we are learning as a team and because we are in a constant state of experimentation, we need to document what has worked and what we need to go back to the drawing board on.
That repository of information, learning, and detail empowers us to make better decisions moving forward and prevent others from repeating our mistakes or pursuing dead ends.
Psychological safety is a critical element of teamwork and having the psychological safety to be honest about the challenges we are facing, the problems that have cropped up, and the ways in which we failed to achieve our goals and objectives allows us to continuously improve.
The benefits of Transparency
Transparency builds trust.
As people around us, from colleagues to customers, witness how we work and how we overcome the challenges we face, they develop a deep level of trust in who we are and our capabilities.
If people witness us learning from our mistakes and evolving faster than before because of what we have learned from those mistakes, people no longer fear us making mistakes. Instead, they embrace those failures as the path to learning and success.
SAFe builds transparency into the framework at the team level, the teams of team’s level (agile release trains), all the way through to senior leadership and executive level.
It’s baked into how we work with customers, suppliers, other agile release trains, and other people within the organization who are not part of an agile release train.
It also empowers the individual to quickly and accurately assess how their work, their contribution impacts the customer satisfaction objectives and organizational objectives.
About Value Glide
Value Glide are a SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) consultancy, coaching practice, and training specialist who work with organizations to align business objectives with customer needs and wants.
As deeply experienced agile coaches and practitioners, our team are invested in continuous learning through each client engagement and use 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 organization 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 organization adopt and implement SAFe, visit our SAFe Coaching Services page.
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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