SAFe Framework Overview and Benefits

SAFe is a comprehensive framework for achieving business agility by integrating Lean, Agile, and DevOps principles. It helps organizations deliver innovative products and services faster, more predictably, and with higher quality.

It enables businesses to align technology development with their strategic goals, deliver new value on a predictable schedule, improve solution quality, scale Agile practices across the enterprise, and foster collaboration and innovation.

SAFe's adaptability allows organizations to customize the framework to their specific needs, whether they have a few teams or hundreds working on complex systems.

SAFe draws upon four key bodies of knowledge: Agile development, systems thinking, Lean product development, and DevOps. These contribute to its effectiveness in addressing business agility challenges.

SAFe empowers businesses to adapt to the changing demands of the digital age, recognizing that agility is no longer optional but crucial for survival.

SAFe helps organizations transition away from traditional functional structures and move towards value streams, allowing teams to collaborate more effectively to deliver value.

SAFe's adoption by over 20,000 enterprises worldwide, with over 1 million trained practitioners, demonstrates its widespread impact and success.

SAFe's configurations cater to various organizational needs, from small teams to large enterprises with complex systems, ensuring a scalable and adaptable solution.

SAFe's goal is to help organizations achieve business agility, which means being able to respond quickly and effectively to market changes, customer needs, and technological advancements.

SAFe improves business outcomes such as faster time to market, better employee engagement, higher quality products, increased customer satisfaction, and improved economic performance.

SAFe evolves continuously to stay current with emerging business and technology trends. It adapts to new challenges and advancements, ensuring its relevance and effectiveness.

The Big Picture in SAFe provides a visual representation of the entire framework, showcasing its key components and their relationships.

SAFe's Seven Core Competencies represent the essential areas that contribute to business agility, guiding organizations to implement a holistic approach.

Team and Technical Agility focuses on empowering Agile teams and ensuring they have the skills and practices to create high-quality solutions.

Agile Teams are highly effective, cross-functional groups that collaborate using Agile principles to develop exceptional solutions.

Built-in Quality emphasizes integrating quality into all aspects of development and production, ensuring high-quality solutions from the start.

A Team of Agile Teams is a group of Agile teams working together as a single unit towards a shared goal, often coordinated as an Agile Release Train (ART).

Agile Product Delivery focuses on delivering innovative products and services to customers in a timely and customer-centric manner.

Customer Centricity and Design Thinking puts the customer at the heart of every decision, ensuring solutions are desirable, feasible, and meet customer needs.

Developing on Cadence means creating solutions in regular, predictable cycles, while releasing on demand allows for delivering value to customers as needed.

DevOps and the Continuous Delivery Pipeline aim to create a smooth and automated flow of value, enabling continuous deployments and rapid response to customer needs.

Enterprise Solution Delivery focuses on implementing and evolving large, complex enterprise solutions that often involve multiple teams and stakeholders.

A shared vision for the future state of the product or service being developed, encompassing customer and stakeholder needs, and outlining the proposed features and capabilities to address those needs.

OKRs are a goal-setting framework that helps align the Enterprise and Portfolio strategy with the work of Agile Release Trains and Teams. They support transparency and promote a shared understanding of goals and their progress.

A roadmap in SAFe provides a visual representation of planned ART and value stream deliverables and milestones over a timeline. It helps visualize the progress of work and communicate key events.

AI-assisted development in SAFe aims to leverage artificial intelligence to enhance the capabilities of Agile Teams. It focuses on integrating AI technologies within the framework to optimize development processes.

Shared Services represent specialized roles that are essential for the success of an ART or Solution Train but are not dedicated full-time to any specific train. They act as a support system for different teams.

A Community of Practice (CoP) is a group of individuals with common interests or goals who share knowledge and best practices within an ART or enterprise. They promote collaboration and learning within the organization.

The System Team is an Agile team responsible for supporting the continuous delivery pipeline. They ensure the smooth functioning of the pipeline, validating full end-to-end system performance.

Measure and Grow in SAFe is a process of evaluating the organization's progress towards business agility and identifying areas for improvement. It leverages SAFe's three measurement domains: Outcomes, Flow, and Competency.

The SAFe foundation comprises the principles, mindset, and values that underpin the framework. It includes Lean-Agile Mindset, Core Values, SAFe Principles, and implementation guidance.

Implementation Roadmap in SAFe provides a structured guide for organizations to transition to a Lean-Agile technology enterprise. It outlines steps for implementing SAFe practices and achieving business agility.

Leaders are expected to not only support the Lean-Agile transformation but to actively lead it by creating the environment, preparing individuals, and providing essential resources.

The Lean-Agile way of working should be deeply embedded in leaders' beliefs, decisions, actions, and reactions, influencing the entire organization's behavior.

Leaders demonstrate the desired behaviors, inspiring others to follow their example and contribute to the transformation process.

It's the foundational configuration of SAFe, suitable for initial implementations and built on the principles of Lean-Agile Leadership, Team and Technical Agility, Agile Product Delivery, and Continuous Learning Culture.

This configuration addresses the development of large and complex solutions requiring multiple ARTs and suppliers, but without portfolio-level considerations.

This configuration enables business agility by adding two competencies beyond Essential SAFe: Organizational Agility and Lean Portfolio Management.

This is the most comprehensive configuration, encompassing all seven core competencies for Business Agility. It caters to large enterprises managing portfolios of complex solutions.

It is a collection of roles and artifacts that can be applied across all SAFe configurations, providing additional context-specific guidance.

This organizational structure brings Agile teams and critical stakeholders together to achieve a shared mission.

A set of practices, principles, and frameworks designed to enhance business agility and accelerate value delivery.

Agile teams continuously deliver value to their customers in a flow, ensuring seamless delivery of products and services.

It encompasses the alignment of multiple Agile Release Trains working together with a shared mission to build complex systems, providing lightweight governance.

It emphasizes the flow of value through various value streams, aligning portfolio execution with the enterprise strategy.

It involves extending Lean thinking and practice throughout the entire enterprise, enabling agile responses to market changes and opportunities.

It helps accelerate the flow of significant initiatives (epics) needed to achieve the portfolio vision and advance the enterprise strategy.

A competency focused on applying Lean-Agile principles to the design, development, deployment, and evolution of large, complex systems.

Applies Lean-Agile practices to synchronize all activities involved in defining, designing, implementing, testing, deploying, evolving, and ultimately decommissioning large, complex systems.

Coordinates all activities necessary to develop, implement, and manage large systems to ensure they meet a shared business and technology objective.

Contributes to the delivery of continual value to end users during and after the system's release.

A competency focused on aligning and executing business strategies by applying Lean and systems thinking to manage a portfolio of solutions.

Ensures that all solutions within a portfolio are aligned and funded to meet business targets.

Coordinates and supports decentralized execution of solutions within a portfolio, optimizing operational efficiency.

Manages spending, auditing, compliance, forecasting, and performance measurement for a portfolio of solutions.

A key aspect of Organizational Agility, where individuals and teams embrace Lean and Agile principles and practices.

Another aspect of Organizational Agility, enabling a company to sense market changes and adjust its strategies accordingly.

An aspect of Organizational Agility, applying Lean principles continuously improve the business processes that support a company's products and services.

A competency that emphasizes the importance of continuous learning and innovation for both individuals and organizations.

A key aspect of Continuous Learning Culture that focuses on empowering employees at every level to learn and grow, enabling the organization to adapt to a changing world.

A key aspect of Continuous Learning Culture focused on consistently improving solutions, products, and processes to enhance value delivery.

A key aspect of Continuous Learning Culture that fosters a climate of creativity and innovation, empowering employees to explore and implement new ideas.

A leadership approach that empowers individuals and teams to embrace Lean-Agile principles and practices.

A key principle of Lean-Agile Leadership, empowering leaders to drive continuous improvement by creating a culture of trust, transparency, and empowerment.