What is an agile release train?
An agile release train (ART) are a team of agile teams that are designed to align their product development efforts directly with customer and organizational objectives or strategies.
Their configuration is designed to minimize the number of hand-offs and dependencies between agile teams, and ensure that each agile team’s efforts are aligned to a specific value stream or customer journey.
A dedicated focus to building a solution that solves a problem or serves a customer’s need.
- An ART is aligned to a specific customer need or requirement.
- An ART is aligned with a specific customer strategy.
- An ART is aligned with creating an economically viable, profitable business objective.
How is an Agile Release Train designed?
An agile release train is initially designed using the Value Stream Identification workshop.
Value Stream Identification Workshop
The Value Stream Identification workshop identifies specific value streams within the organization, predominantly an operational value stream and a customer value stream.
So, the ART architects will identify how value flows from concept to customer and map out all the elements that enable the agile release train to continuously deliver value to the customer.
They will identify every operational element, every hand-off, every dependency, and every decision-making mechanism relevant to the design, production, and delivery of a solution to a customer, and then design the agile release train (ART) around those requirements and processes.
So, a team of people dedicated to enabling the processes and systems that support product development and value creation (operations) which then in turn enables the delivery of value directly to the customer.
Empirical Process Control.
The second element of designing an agile release train comes from doing the work.
Once the agile release train has been configured, the organization will do a few dry runs to assess how effective the ART is in delivering value to customers. From there, it’s good old Empiricism that governs how design tweaks are made and how the team organize around value creation.
The design team makes every element of the customer journey transparent as well as the business and customer objectives for that specific value stream. Once operations begin, the team inspects what is working, what isn’t working, and gather as much data and feedback as possible.
The final element is adaptation.
The team evaluates the data and feedback and adapts based on what they are learning through the process of value creation. Some elements are operational tweaks, whilst others might require an organizational policy shift.
As the team moves through each program increment (PI), they seek to continuously improve and make the necessary adjustments to become as effective and efficient as possible.
So, it’s an ongoing process of learning, adapting, and responding to data and feedback.
Value Stream Mapping Workshop
After the first 3 months of operations, Value Glide run a Value Stream Mapping workshop with the intention of mapping out every element of the value stream. Operational and Customer value streams.
The initial Value Stream Identification workshop is how we designed the team and mapped the value stream based on our hypothesis and expert estimation. The Value Stream Mapping workshop is based on how things work based on our experience over the past 3 months of working as an agile release train.
Because we now have data and real-time feedback, we can map out the entire value stream, from concept to customer delivery, based on what we know to be true based on our experiences.
We might identify that a specific department or committee is creating unnecessary delays in the flow of work throughout the system. We might identify that decision-making is situated too high in the organizational chart and needs to be decentralized to the team level to reduce delays.
In our experience, a great outcome from a value stream mapping workshop can reduce delays in the delivery of value to customers by as much as 50%. That means we are getting the product to market twice as fast as we were only 3 months before the value stream mapping workshop.
We will also identify how fit for purpose the work is as it flows from one phase of development to another.
- Are we clear about the criteria that must be met before a product is handed over?
- Are we clear about what needs to happen to transition from phase A to phase B?
- Are we clear about what needs to be done or do the team need to ask more questions?
And so forth.
So, we are identifying how effective the Agile Release Train is in developing the right solution, and we are evaluating how efficiently work flows through the system from point A to point Z.
What we learn in the value stream mapping workshop empowers the team to adapt and respond to both the opportunities and the threats in the value stream. So, adapt and respond based on what we have learned, our hypothesis for the next 3 months, and our product development goals.
An Agile Release Train lives and breathes Agile.
The team itself is transformed through the process of empirical process control just as much as the product evolves through the process of empiricism.
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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