SAFe Principle 4: Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles
Principle 4 – build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles – builds upon principle 3 – assume variability and preserve options – to help your organization use empirical process control to navigate uncertainty and complexity.
You don’t want to build big, long-term batches of products and features.
Instead, you want to focus on small, short-term products or features that empower you to build fast, learn from what you have built, and use the data and evidence to inform what you do next.
When your product, feature or service has multiple components, you cannot learn from a single component. You need an integrated learning approach that informs all elements of the product or feature.
You aren’t just learning from each of the individual elements, you are also learning from how the integrated elements perform.
So, integrate sooner rather than later, to get the most valuable feedback, data, or evidence from the work you are doing.
Why is fast, integrated learning cycles important?
In traditional project management, a team of project managers and stakeholders will attempt to estimate whether a project or product will resonate in a given market, at a given point in time, within the cost constraints determined upfront.
A team could build a project worth millions of dollars over a period of one or more years only to find out that the project or product does not resonate with customers. A competitor may have launched a new product in the meanwhile that captures your intended audience and delivers more value or greater returns on investment than what you have built.
Either way, your big bet falls flat and a great deal of time, money and effort has been wasted.
In the tech world, you will often hear of an MVP (minimum viable product) as a launch strategy that can evolve and improve over time. The thinking is to build something fast, that creates or captures value for customers, at a price point that is feasible or good value for customers.
As customers adopt the product, feature, or service, you now have feedback loops that inform which elements of product development customers most value, and which of those elements they would be prepared to pay extra or a premium for.
You may have had 20 ideas on the table, but customers only validate 5 of those ideas and provide you with evidence that they are willing to pay for those ideas or features.
Great, you have just eliminated 15 ideas or features that you shouldn’t be working on, and you can focus your time, money, and effort on creating the 5 features or ideas that you know are viable.
It’s the difference between opinions and evidence.
Short, sharp production cycles empower your team to learn, adapt, and evolve effectively. They empower you to create products and features that resonate with customers and invest your time and money into things that are going to deliver returns on your investment.
This is what principle 4 – build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles promotes.
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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