Why was SAFe created when other agile frameworks existed?
Many of the scaling agile frameworks you see today, such as LeSS (Large Scale Scrum), came out after SAFe was created so it’s one of the first scaling frameworks to be created.
SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) was created to help organizations solve the challenge of aligning agile, product development teams with organizational and customer objectives.
An organization may have one or more Agile teams in place, but the organization itself is not agile nor are they capturing the value of true business agility. It is exactly these kinds of organizations that SAFe was created for.
A common scenario for an organization that has had some kind of agile adoption is that they may have an agile team, or several agile teams, but they aren’t aligned with strategic aims and goals, nor are they organized to create and deliver value for customers.
Team A might be running scrum whilst team B is running Kanban.
A project might receive funding from X department whilst Y department is funding another product. At no stage do these teams align with cross-functional departments and optimize for the entire system rather than local elements of it.
As you can see, several problems exist when an organization moves beyond the small scrum team of 6 to 9 individuals and requires collaboration between departments and functions that are not agile.
SAFe was created to:
- Align organizational strategy and customer value.
- Organize and coordinate teams of agile teams.
- Ensure that the organization are working on the most valuable work.
- Ensure that the organization is focused on a clear, compelling, and prioritized customer need or problem.
- Ensure that value streams are organized and aligned with organizational portfolios.
Minimizing the risk of dependencies
Once an organization achieves any kind of scale, it becomes almost impossible to prevent dependencies from arising between teams.
A phenomenon known as Delta Stress arises when a high-performing team is being forced to wait or is being prevented from progressing because of dependencies on other teams or departments. It is known and proven to cause frustration, staff turnover, and loss of team morale.
SAFe was designed to help solve this problem of dependencies and align team and organizational objectives and capabilities.
Aligning priorities
Department A might have X priority whilst department B have Y priority. As you zoom out, you realize that both these departments have competing priorities with the organization, as a whole system, and are misaligned with what executive teams consider the highest priority.
This causes delays, hand-offs, and friction within the organization.
It also results in departments competing for resources and budget, and a lack of collaboration across departments because they are in a competitive, command and control state rather than an agile and collaborative state.
SAFe was designed to eliminate this element of competing priorities and misalignment between departments to help organizations align departmental priorities with customer and organizational priorities.
The agile framework invites and rewards collaboration over competition and aligns efforts to ensure that teams are consistently achieving customer, departmental, and organizational objectives in the correct order of priority.
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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