SAFe as an Operating System for Business Agility Study Guide

**SAFe as an Operating System for Business Agility (SECTION I)** What is a Business Agility Value Stream? This is the ability to compete and thrive in the digital age by quickly responding to market changes and emerging opportunities with innovative digitally enabled business solutions. Why do we...

**SAFe as an Operating System for Business Agility (SECTION I)** What is a Business Agility Value Stream? This is the ability to compete and thrive in the digital age by quickly responding to market changes and emerging opportunities with innovative digitally enabled business solutions. Why do we need dual operating system for Business Agility? For Speed of innovation from the development value stream and efficiency and stability from Traditional hierarchy What are the steps between Business opportunity emerging to Business opportunity leveraged? **Step 1: Sense an opportunity:** This step requires *SAFe Organizational Agility*; *Strategy Agility*. Strategy Agility is the ability for to sense the conditions of market changing and implement new strategies quickly. Strategy agility fosters Market research, Analysis of quantitative and qualitative data, Direct and indirect customer feedback and Direct observation of the customers in the marketplace **Step 2: FUND MVP:** For one to fund an MVP they must first sense the opportunity via Strategy Agility and use the 4 main factors above that is Market Research, direct/indirect customer feedback, analysis of quantitative and qualitative data and observation of customers in the market. However, as an investor you must aligns strategy and execution by applying Lean and systems thinking approaches to strategy and investment funding, Agile portfolio operations, and governance and this is called Lean Portfolio Management. What provides the ability to quickly allocate sufficient funds to build MVP (an early version of the solution used to evaluate the primary business hypothesis)? **Lean Budgeting.** *These funding decisions become visible and are addressed as the new initiative flows through the SAFe Portfolio Kanban system.\ ***Step 3: Organize around value:** Agile teams or ARTs should be organized around value. 2 core competencies that deal with these are Team and Technical Agility, and Organizational Agility. **Step 4: Connect to customer:** Customer centricity and Design thinking are linked to Agile Product Delivery which is a core competency that enables this connection. **Step 5: Deliver MVP:** MVP should be delivered iteratively and incrementally. Depending on the scope of the solution, [Agile Product Delivery](https://scaledagileframework.com/agile-product-delivery/) and [Enterprise Solution Delivery](https://scaledagileframework.com/enterprise-solution-delivery/) are the two core competencies that enable this step. **Step 6: Pivot or persevere:** If the hypothesis is proven (results of solution was great) the organization will decide to proceed with further solution development. If the hypothesis is disproven organization will accept sunk cost and move to other business opportunities. MVP outcome gives you valuable insights that reveal new alternative solutions. Its not always a yes or no answer. This decision point is a crucial investment milestone and is a critical stage in the portfolio Kanban system. Again, Lean Portfolio Management is the core competency that enables this step. **Step 7: Deliver value continuously:** Once MVP is approved, and organization decides to develop solution iteratively and incrementally, this process relies on Agile Product Delivery. Building on DevOps, these practices include optimizing a Continuous Delivery Pipeline that ensures a steady flow of value and the ability to release on-demand to meet the needs of customers and business. For large organizations, Enterprise Solution Delivery will be needed. **Step 8: Learn and adapt:** Measurement is an integral part of Improvement. Three measurement domains---**Competency** (The *SAFe Business Agility Assessment gives BO and portfolio stakeholders a way toa sses overall progress. The individual SAFe Core Competency Assessments help teams and ARTs improve their technical and business practices to achieve the portfolio's goal)*, **Flow**, and **Outcomes**---provide critical perspectives and measures of organizational performance that help identify impediments and opportunities for improvement. The [Continuous Learning Culture](https://scaledagileframework.com/continuous-learning-culture/) core competency is the primary driving force behind positive change. What are the 7 core competencies of business agility? 1. Lean Agile Leadership (foundation) 2. Team and Technical Agility (core) 3. Agile Product Delivery 4. Enterprise Solution Delivery 5. Lean Portfolio Management 6. Organizational Agility 7. Continuous learning Culture What are some key aspects of SAFe that helps Enterprises thrive by delivering innovative products and services *faster, more predictably, and with higher quality*? SAFe's integration of lean, agile, DevOps into a comprehensive operating system. What are the 10 SAFe Lean- Agile Principles? **\#1 Take an economic view:** In the days where Waterfall method of development was used, each step of the SDLC was done in Phases: Requirements, Design, Implementation, and verification but this led to products being delivered with a huge deviation from what the customer wanted. In agile, we use the incremental delivery approach whereby a small piece of the work is refined, defined, implemented and tested in conjunction with getting feedback from customers at every step before deployment. This incremental approach of doing things causes agile teams to deliver valuable, feasible and sustainable products to our customers often. **Solution economic trade-offs**Understanding trade-off parameters: **Sequence job for maximum benefit** means work on items that bring the highest benefit first based on lean economics that is cost of delay (components of delay include user-business value , time criticality and risk reduction and opportunity enablement) and duration ( lead time, product cost, value, development expense and risk). **Do not consider money already spent**, this means if this money has been used or lost do not waste your time focusing on it, focus on the situation at hand. **Empower local decision-making** means to empower those who are doing the work to make decisions about the work the are doing (**decentralized decision making**). If you only quantify one thing, quantify cost of delay([**"If you only quantify one thing, quantify the cost of delay"** is a principle from Don Reinertsen, a renowned CoD expert and author. It emphasizes the importance of considering the economic value of completing a project sooner rather than later. By quantifying the cost of delay, product teams can make more accurate estimates of the value and costs of each initiative**^1^**](https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=5c6a17f73c1bcb6588782c98806fe2a9dd5d59da784988146114611777c752c3JmltdHM9MTczNzkzNjAwMA&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=4&fclid=19ff59fc-fa67-6285-394c-4c8ffb6f639f&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucG1pLm9yZy9kaXNjaXBsaW5lZC1hZ2lsZS93aGF0LWlzLXRoZS1lY29ub21pYy1jb3N0LW9mLWRlbGF5LWZvci1zb2Z0d2FyZS1kZWxpdmVyeQ&ntb=1)) **\#2 Apply systems thinking:** What are the attributes of System Thinking (Apply System Thinking)?Optimizing a component does not optimize the system ,For the system to behave well as a system, a higher-level understanding of behavior and architecture is required ,The value of a system passes through its interconnections, A system can evolve no faster than its slowest integration point (Integration points control product development and accelerate learning). Improvement comes through synchronization of design loop and faster learning cycles. **\#3 Assume variability; preserve options:** We do not know everything upfront. Therefore, requirements must be flexible to make economic design choices. Apply Set-Based approach, have multiple design options available as the team continue to try different options and learn they'll finally uncover the design that's most suitable for what they are building. Set-Based Design facilitates learning and allows for continuous, cost-effective adjustments towards an optimum Solution.  **\#4 Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles** (small batch sizes): Building iteratively gives the opportunity to the team to fail fast and learn sooner thus decreasing cost of risk-taking by truncating unsuccessful paths quickly. Fast feedback accelerates knowledge. Integration points decrease risk.The iterative learning cycle includes **PLAN DO CHECK ADJUST** ***Integration points reveal the true nature of work remaining and solution provide thus decreasing false positive feasibility over time.*** **\#5 Base milestones on objective evaluation of working systems:** When a customer can see a working software or product, then, they can give their feedback based on what they see, touch or use. They cannot give feedback on a theoretical product. "*There was in fact no correlation between exiting phase gates on time and the success of a project.... The data even suggested that the inverse may be true*."---Dantar P. Oosterwal, *The Lean Machine.* What's the **problem** with Phase-Gate Milestone? When a design decision is made early in the process that goes against "assume variability and option preservation" these cause an increase in false positive feasibility (degree in which). When work is done in phases, it also creates huge batches and long queues, and centralized requirements and design in program management. **\#6 Make value flow without interruptions:** Apply the 8 flow accelerators to achieve optimum workflow. These 8 accelerators include: Visualize and limit WIP, Address bottlenecks, Minimize handoffs and dependencies, Get faster feedback ,Work in smaller batches (reduce batch size for higher predictability, increase feedback, lower rework and lower cost) ,Reduce queue length ,Optimize time 'in the zone', Remediate legacy practices and policies. **\#7 Apply cadence, synchronize with cross-domain planning:** Having Cadence (**Think teams or ART**) helps convert unpredictable events into predictable occurrences and lowers cost, it supports regular planning and cross-functional coordination, limits batch size to fit an interval, controls work that comes in and provides scheduled integration points. Synchronization (**Think System/ ARTS**) Causes multiple events to happen simultaneously, facilitates cross-functional trade-offs, provides routine dependency management, supports full-system integration and assessment and provides multiple feedback perspectives. **\#8 Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers:** Intrinsic motivation in workers can be unlocked with **Autonomy**, **Mastery** and **Purpose**. How should knowledge workers be managed? Workers are given the opportunity to make decisions about their work, workers are treated with respect, autonomy and innovation are promoted **\#9 Decentralize decision-making:** Let knowledge workers make decisions on the work they do. Decentralized decisions are often frequent (routine everyday decisions), time critical (high cost of delay) and requires local information meanwhile Centralized decisions are infrequent, long lasting and significant economies of scale. **\#10 Organize around value** What 3 competencies provide the technical practices needed to build and deploy meaningful business solutions? - Team and Technical Agility - Agile Product Delivery - Enterprise Solution Delivery **Team and Technical Agility** **What are the 3 aspects of Team and Technical Agility?** - **Agile Teams** (should be organized and cross-functional) - **Built in Quality** (shift learning left meaning research problems and take corrective action with minimal impact sooner, pairing/peer review means when 2 devs work together the ability to have multiple viewpoints will enhance work quality and increase flow, Collective ownership/T-shape means if each person in a dev team have deep knowledge in 1 skill and average knowledge in other skills this could help reduce bottlenecks, **Having Artifacts and DoD ensures consistent** quality for each work product, Workflow automation enables small batches and reduce errors.) - **Teams of Agile Teams:** ARTs should be aligned to a common mission via single ART backlog, synchronized on a common cadence-a PI, with 5-12 teams (50-125+ individuals) ,cross-functional (business, prod mgmt. , hardware, software, quality , testing, compliance, operations and security) How should an Agile Team be and function? It should be high performing, Cross-functional and anchor the competency by applying effective Agile principles and practices What does "Built in Quality" Mean? This means the Agile team should share the goals and principles of Built in quality. These Agile practices help create high-quality, well-designed solutions that support current and future business needs. What do Teams of Agile Teams operate? Agile teams operate within the context of a SAFe Agile Release Train (ART), a long-lived team of Agile teams that provides a shared vision and direction and is ultimately responsible for delivering solutions. **How is value organized in an ART (Team Topology)? Stream aligned team** (delivers value to customer), **Complicated subsystem team** (requires deep specialty skills and expertise), **Platform team** (provide dev and support of platforms that require services to others) and **Enabling team** (Organized to assist other teams with **specialized capabilities** and help them become proficient in new technologies) **Agile Product Delivery** Business Agility demands that enterprises rapidly increase their ability to deliver innovative products and services. To ensure that the enterprise creates the *right solutions* for the *right customers* at the *right time, it* must balance its *execution* *focus *with a ***customer* *focus***.  **Missed question** How can an Enterprise ensure that they create the right solutions for the right customer and at the right time? It must balance its execution focus with a customer focus Name the 3 aspects of Agile Product Delivery? - Customer Centricity and Design Thinking - Develop on Cadence, Release on Demand - DevOps and the Continuous Delivery Pipeline Puts the customer at the center of every decision. Applies design thinking to ensure the solution is desirable, feasible, viable, and sustainable. What is this aspect of Agile Product Delivery? Customer Centricity and Design Thinking. What is the characteristic of a good customer product or solution? The product or solution is desirable, sustainable, feasible, and viable What is a benefit of developing on a cadence? Developing on cadence helps manage the variability inherent in product development. What ensures customers can get what they need when they need it? Decoupling the release of value from that cadence What creates a foundation that enables enterprises to release value, in whole or in part, at any time it's needed? DevOps and the Continuous Delivery Pipeline **Enterprise Solution Delivery (ESD)** What makes building and evolving large enterprise solutions is a monumental effort? Their systems require hundreds or thousands of engineers. They demand sophisticated, rigorous practices for engineering, operations, and support Name the 3 dimensions of ESD? - Lean Systems Engineering - Coordinating Trains and Suppliers - Continually Evolve Live Systems What practice is applied to align and coordinate all the activities necessary to specify, architect, design, implement, test, deploy, evolve, and ultimately decommission these systems? Lean- Agile Practices This ESD dimension deals with the coordination and alignment of extended set of value streams to a shared business and technology mission. It uses the coordinated Vision, Backlogs, and Roadmaps with shared PIs and synchronization points? Coordinating Trains and Suppliers It ensures that both the development pipeline and the large systems support continuous value delivery during and after release into the field. Continually Evolve Live Systems **LEAN PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT (LPM)** Which competency addresses the more significant issue of *why those solutions* are required, *how they are funded* and *governed*, and *what other solutions are necessary to deliver total enterprise value?* Lean Portfolio Management How does the *Lean Portfolio Management* competency align strategy and execution? By Applying Lean and Systems thinking What are the 3 collaborations for LPM - Strategy and Investment Funding - Agile Portfolio Operations - Lean Governance This dimension requires a cooperation between Business Owner, Enterprise Architect, Portfolio Stakeholders and technologist? Strategy and Investment funding What ensures the alignment and funding of the portfolio? Strategy and Investment funding Why should a portfolio be aligned and funded? To create and maintain solutions needed to meet business targets. How is operational excellence enabled and what dimension does this fall under? Operation excellence is enabled when there's a coordination and support of decentralized execution. This falls under Agile Portfolio Operation which is a dimension of LPM (one of the core competencies) \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-- manages spending, audit and compliance, forecasting expenses, and measurement. It requires the engagement of the VMO/LACE, Business Owners, and Enterprise Architects? Lean Governance **Organizational Agility** Which competency help enterprises change quickly to respond to the challenges and opportunities of today's rapidly evolving markets? Organizational Agility How does SAFe help businesses address today's challenges with *Organizational Agility?* *By use of the Organizational Agility's 3 dimensions. This includes:* - Lean-Thinking People and Agile Teams - Strategy Agility - Lean Business Operations \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-- This state occurs when everyone involved in solution delivery is trained in Lean and Agile methods and embraces and embodies the values, principles, and practices.? **Lean-Thinking People and Agile Teams** **What is Strategy Agility?** occurs when an organization demonstrates the ability and adaptability needed to sense the market and continuously change strategy when necessary What principles do teams apply to understand, map, and continuously improve the business processes that support the business's products and services.? Lean Principles A team that applies Lean Principles to understanding, mapping and continuously improving the Business's processes that support their products and services, is practicing which dimension in the Organizational Agility competency? Lean Business Operations **Continuous Learning Culture** What are the 3 dimensions of Continuous Learning Culture? - Learning Organization - Relentless Improvement - Innovation Culture What dimension talk about personal mastery, shared vision, team learning, mental models and systems thinking? Learning Organization What are the 5 keys to relentlessly improving? - Constant Sense of Urgency - Problem Solving Culture - Reflect and Adapt Frequently - Fact-Based Improvement - Optimize the Whole What are the steps an Enterprise should take to have an Innovative Culture? 1. Innovative People 2. Time and Space (IP) 3. Go See 4. Experimentation and Feedback 5. Pivot without Mercy or Guilt 6. Innovation Riptides (innovation current of anxiety or tension) - In a --\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\--, Employees at every level are learning and growing so that the organization can transform and adapt to an ever-changing world.? - In a --\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-- organization, every part of the enterprise focuses on continuously improving its solutions, products, and processes.? - In an --\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\--, Employees are encouraged and empowered to explore and implement creative ideas that enable future value delivery? - Mindsets, Values and Principles (Lean- Agile mindset, Core Values and SAFe Principles) - Leading by Example (insatiable learning, authenticity, emotional intelligence, courage ,growing others, & decentralized decision-making. - Leading Change (Change Vision Coalition for Change Change Leadership Psychological Safety Training) What does it mean when they say you had a shift from a fixed mindset to a **GROWTH** mindset? It means that you now have a Lean-Agile mindset, you believe and practice the core values and SAFe principles. Leaders gain earned authority **by modeling the desired behaviors** for others to follow, inspiring them to incorporate the leader's example into their development journey. What is this called? Leading by Example Leaders *lead* (rather than support) the transformation by creating the environment, preparing the people, and providing the necessary resources to realize the desired outcomes. What is this called? Leading Change **BUSINESS AGILITY** - [Business Agility - Scaled Agile Framework](https://scaledagileframework.com/business-agility/) The ability to compete and thrive in the digital age by quickly responding to market changes and emerging opportunities with innovative, digitally enabled business solutions, is called? **Business Agility** How can Enterprises achieve customer's delight at the speed of the market? This requires validating innovations with customers and then pivoting without mercy or guilt' when the hypothesis needs to change. What is the second Operating System organized around? Development Value Stream (Each DVS builds, supports, and maintains Solutions for Operational Value Streams (OVS). These solutions are delivered by the OVS to the enterprise's external or internal Customers) This new virtual organization breaks down the traditional functional silos that inhibit flow and innovation. Why do we need Hierarchy in a Dual Operating System? For Stability and Execution. We need the Network for speed of innovation. What's the fastest way to reducing time to market and optimize the full value stream? Reducing delays is the fastest way to reduce time-to-market. Steps in the Business Agility Value Stream (BAVS) 1. Sense Opportunity **Built In Quality \[[Built-In Quality - Scaled Agile Framework](https://scaledagileframework.com/built-in-quality/)\]** What are some Agile quality practices to apply to every team, whether business or technology? ► Shift learning left -- Reveal problems sooner, take corrective action with minimum impact ► Pairing and peer review -- Multiple viewpoints enhance work quality and grow knowledge ► Collective ownership and T-shaped skills --Reduce bottlenecks and increase flow ► Artifact standards and definition of done --Ensure consistent quality for each work product ► Workflow automation -- Enable small batches and reduce errors. The use of this \-\-\-\-\-\-- makes everyone on the team have consistent quality for each product.? **Artifact standards and definition of Done** What happens when team members lack the skills to do a particular type of work? **This creates bottlenecks** Define Built-In Quality? a set of practices to help ensure that the outputs of Agile teams in business and technology domains meet appropriate quality standards throughout the process of creating customer value. **Focus on Customer Centricity with Design Thinking** What are the benefits of designing a whole-product solution with a deep understanding of customer needs? Benefits include: ► Greater revenue ► Increased employee engagement ► More satisfied Customers ► Alignment to mission ► Better product resiliency and **sustainability** **What is Customer Centricity:** is a mindset that helps organizations make decisions that are based on a deep understanding of its effect on customers and end-users**.** Organizations that truly practice customer centricity focus on the customer, understand their needs, think and feel like the customer, build whole product solutions and know customer lifetime value. What's the foundation of customer-centric enterprise? Market (primarily drives product strategy; it focuses on the who & what, larger samples evaluated) and User (primarily drives product design; it focuses on how and why, small sample evaluation) research; it creates actionable insights into the problems customers face. How can one design with empathy? Design from customer's perspective Market Research help determine types of solutions. Name 2 types of solution? General solution and custom-built solutions. Other solution type includes Deep & Narrow, and Multisegmented Solution **Whole System Thinking** This is a holistic approach to solution development, it involves creating a great product, with great user experience and support of product. So, everything from creating a product, customer having a create experience purchasing and using plus customer support incase product needs maintenance or upgrade. For example, buying an iPhone that doesn't have the capability to connect to Wi-Fi will anger so many customers.  **Prioritizing the ART Backlog** What is a Product Vision? The product Vision is a description of the future state of the product What fulfills the product Vision and where are they kept? Features fulfill the Product Vision and are kept in the Art Backlog. What's the ART Backlog? The ART Backlog is the holding area for upcoming Features that will address user needs and deliver business benefits for a single Agile Release Train (ART). To prioritize based on Lean economics, we need to know two things: ► The cost of delay (CoD) in delivering value ► How long it takes to implement value **PI PLANNING** What is PI Planning? Planning Interval (PI) Planning is a cadence-based event that serves as the heartbeat of the Agile Release Train (ART), aligning all teams on the ART to a shared mission and Vision. What are some activities done after **Final Plan review**? - ART PI Risks - PI confidence vote - Plan rework if necessary - Planning retrospective and moving forward There was also a question **Business Owners allocating BV to objectives (***Business Owners collaboratively assign 'business value' to each team's objectives face-to-face***)**. This happens in Team breakout just before Final Plan readout **Develop on cadence, release on demand** During the IP iteration, the team innovate and plan. What are some innovative activities? **Innovation** - Opportunity for innovation, hackathons, and infrastructure improvements **[Continuous Delivery Pipeline]** **A Continuous Delivery Pipeline with DevOps** What does the Continuous delivery pipeline represent? It represents the workflows, activities, and automation needed to deliver new functionality more frequently. CDP is a significant element of the Agile Product Delivery. What is a critical practice of an ART? Continuous Integration What does Continuous Integration consist of? Development, building, end to end testing and staging. How can we get our solution to production early? Through continuous deployment. What are some activities that make up the continuous deployment process? Deploy verify monitor respond What are the 4 aspects of Continuous Delivery Pipeline? CE, CI, CD and Release on Demand What's the foundation of the customer-centric enterprise? Market and User Research What does the Market and User Research tell you about the customer's needs? It creates actionable insights into the problems customers face, the [Solution Context](https://scaledagileframework.com/solution-context/), and requirements. Market research helps drive *strategy*, while user research drives *design* Design thinking also inspires new ways to measure the success of our efforts: - **Desirable -- **Do customers and end-users want the solution? - **Feasible --** Can we deliver the right solution through a combination of build, buy, partner, or acquire activities? - **Viable** -- Is the way we build and offer the solution creating more value than cost? For example, in a for-profit enterprise, are we profitable? - **Sustainable -- **Are we proactively managing our solution to account for its expected product-market lifecycle? Are we delivering tangible economic, social, and environmental benefits throughout the product lifecycle? More on this topic: ► "Customer Centricity" https://www.scaledagileframework.com/ customer-centricity/ ► "Design Thinking" https://www.scaledagileframework.com/ design-thinking/ "PI Planning" https://www.scaledagileframework.com/ pi-planning/ https://www.scaledagileframework.com/ continuous-delivery-pipeline/ 1. What does the core value "Transparency" mean? Create a trust-based environment , communicate directly, openly and honestly, Turn mistakes into learning moments, visualize work and provide ready access to needed information. 2. What are the activities of coaching flow? [Accelerating Flow with SAFe - Scaled Agile Framework](https://scaledagileframework.com/accelerating-flow-with-safe/) 3. Why is a SAFe implementation plan created 3 PI rolling? This implementation is done incrementally to inspect and adapt for course correction. 4. Does resolving bottlenecks address throughput of value? Yes, resolving bottlenecks increases skill sets in an Agile Team thus increasing Dev development speed and increasing throughput (how much value is being delivered per unit of time) of value. 5. What are a series of activities that help the successful implementation of SAFe? 6. Define SAFe implementation roadmap? Series of activities mapped out to implement SAFe in an organization. The ART rollout can be done sequentially or in parallel 7. What agile quality practice ensures consistent quality for each product? Artifact and DoD, peer/pair review , collective T-shape skill ,automation 8. What does quickstart approach mean? 9. SAFe principle \#1 supports economics of scale and satisfying customers through early and continuous delivery. Exemplifying SAFe Core Values Alignment ► Communicate the vision, mission, and strategy ► Connect strategy to execution ► Speak with a common language ► Constantly check for understanding ► Understand your customer **Transparency** ► Create a trust-based environment ► Communicate directly, openly, and honestly ► Turn mistakes into learning moments ► Visualize work ► Provide ready access to needed information **Respect for People** ► Hold precious what it is to be human ► Value diversity of people and opinions ► Grow people through coaching and mentoring ► Embrace 'your customer is whoever consumes your work' ► Build long-term partnerships based on mutual benefit **Relentless Improvement** ► Create a constant sense of urgency ► Build a problem-solving culture ► Reflect and adapt frequently ► Let facts guide improvements ► Provide time and space for innovation What are business values assigned during PI planning? **Day 2 Agenda** - **Planning adjustments** -- The next day, the event begins with management presenting changes to the planning scope, people, and resources. - **Team breakouts \#2** -- Teams continue planning and making the appropriate adjustments. They finalize their objectives for the PI, to which the Business Owners assign business value **Portfolio Vision through Epics** Define Portfolio? Future state of a value streams and solutions. Portfolio vision is a critical input to identify an Epic needed to achieve future state. What are the characteristics of a portfolio vision? Aspirational, yet realistic and achievable, motivational to engage others on journey. What is a SAFe Portfolio canvas? defines the Development Value Streams(*DVS builds the system or capabilities that enables business processes in OVS or provide services and products to OVS*) included in a SAFe portfolio, the value propositions and the Solutions they deliver, the customers they serve, the budgets allocated to each value stream, and other vital activities and events required to achieve the portfolio vision. What's the difference between SWOT and TOWS analysis? A SWOT analysis is a great way to uncover the **current situation** of your value stream, product, or portfolio. At the same time, TOWS is used primarily for identifying strategic options to create a **better future state**. [Portfolio Vision - Scaled Agile Framework](https://scaledagileframework.com/portfolio-vision/) [Epic - Scaled Agile Framework](https://scaledagileframework.com/epic/) [Portfolio Flow - Scaled Agile Framework](https://scaledagileframework.com/portfolio-flow/) EPIC What is an Epic? A significant solution development initiative. - Epics require a definition of MVP and approval by Lean Portfolio Differentiate between Business Epic and Enabler Epic?  Business epics directly deliver business value, while enabler epics advance the [Architectural Runway](https://scaledagileframework.com/architectural-runway/) to support upcoming business or technical needs. How is an Epic flow managed? With Portfolio Kanban What does Portfolio Flow describe?  Portfolio Flow describes a state where Lean Portfolio Management provides a continuous flow of new epics to Solution Trains and ARTs to achieve the portfolio's vision and strategic themes **Build a Powerful Guiding Coalition** What's the importance of building a guiding coalition? ► Transformations led by a sole leader or a low-credibility committee rarely succeed ► There is a need for an effective team that has: \- Enough powerful people to drive change and deter blocks \- The expertise to make informed and quick decisions \- The credibility to be taken seriously \- Leaders who can set the Vision and leaders who can implement **Enterprise Solution Delivery** What does the Enterprise Solution Delivery describe? how to apply Lean-Agile principles and practices to specification, development, deployment, operation, and evolution of the world's largest and most sophisticated software applications, networks, and cyber-physical systems. "Enterprise Solution Delivery" https://www.scaledagileframework.com/ enterprise-solution-delivery/ Launching More ARTs and Value Streams based on wins, scale implementation, celebrate short term wins, keep urgency high and support existing trains How can we apply **Lean Systems Engineering** to specification, development, deployment, operation and evolution of large sophisticated cyber-physical systems? - Incremental Solution should be specified in small batches and frequently integrated. Replace upfront designs with continuous exploration. - **Apply Planning Horizons:** Daily Plan Iteration planning PI planning PI Roadmap Solution Roadmap - **Design for Change:** Adding modularity in designs or implementing modular designs (a design principle that subdivides a system in smaller parts called modules) , enable frequent integration, let ARTs and teams evolve their designs independently ,Set- Based Designs should be encouraged because it supports exploration of independent design sets. - **Continue to address compliance concerns:** Solution and compliance should be built incrementally. Organize for value, build quality and compliance in. Release validated solutions on demand. Why should the development team frequently integrate their solutions? Integrating small changes to a system and early validation decreases risk. When an integration point slips a project is in trouble. Manage Supply Train - Strive to have suppliers behave like an ART with aligned cadence driven by shared vision and Roadmap Build end to end Continuous Delivery Pipeline - Build and maintain solutions - Change mindset from building a huge solution at once to MVP and evolving it A diagram of a delivery process Build an end-to-end Continuous Delivery Pipeline ► ManylargeSolutionsremaininusefordecades ► Changethemindsetfromabig-bangSolutiondeliveryfollowedby maintenance to delivering an MVP and evolving it **Coordinate Continuous compliance:** A Lean-Agile quality management system (QMS) improves quality and makes compliance more predictable. Which 5 SAFe Principles particularly influence large solutions builder's adoption of ESD practices? 1. Principle 3: Assume variability and preserve options 2. Principle 4: Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles 3. Principle 5: Base milestones on objective evaluation of working systems 4. Principle 9: Decentralized decision-making 5. Principle 10: Organize around value **Continuously Improving ART performance with Inspect and Adapt** How do we improve results with Inspect and Adapt? - PI System Demo (Teams demonstrate current state of Solution) - Quantitative and Qualitative Measurement - Problem solving workshop ART Performance Metrics : Collect any other ART metrics the team has agreed to collect Functionality PI 1 PI 2 PI 3 ------------------------ ------ ------ ------ ART velocity Predictability measure \# Features planned \# Features accepted \# Enablers planned \# Enablers accepted \# Stories planned \# Stories accepted Quality Unit test coverage % Defects Total tests \% automated \# NFR tests This I&P event is 3-4 hours per pI and Attendees include Teams and Stakeholders. The ProblemSolving Workshop After a short retrospective, teams systematically address the larger impediments that are limiting velocity by using root cause analysis. **Build a Powerful Guiding Coalition** What's the importance of a 'sufficiently Powerful Guiding Coalition'? - Having a team of powerful people (Leaders who can set Vision and Leaders who can implement) to drive change, with expertise to make quick informed decisions and deter blocks because having a sole leader or a low-credibility committee will cause a transformation to rarely succeed. What is the Role of an SPC (Change Agent) - Embodying a Lean-Agile Mindset - Leading the Change - Implementing SAFe - Coaching Flow - Accelerating Business Agility **Business Agility assessment** - ►Capture baseline Metrics to determine how close your organization is to achieving Business Agility - ►Follow the recommendations and identify growth opportunities - ►Prioritize and take action **Portfolio Flow** **Lean Governance** Lean governance manages spending, audit and compliance, forecasting expenses, and measurement. Lean Governance activities include: - Forecast and budget dynamically - Measure Portfolio performance - Coordinate continuous compliance Who are the people involved in Lean Governance? Enterprise Architect, VMO/LACE, Business Owners. What does it mean to "Coordinate continuous compliance"? A Lean-Agile quality management system (QMS) improves quality and makes compliance more predictable. LPM Implementation [Lean Portfolio Management - Scaled Agile Framework](https://scaledagileframework.com/lean-portfolio-management/) What\'s the purpose of LPM? To align **Strategy to execution** by applying Lean and systems thinking approaches to strategy and investment funding, Agile portfolio operations, and governance. LPM provides alignment and governance model to a specific portfolio which contains a set DVS (*DVS builds, supports, and maintains Solutions for [Operational Value Streams (OVS](https://scaledagileframework.com/operational-value-streams/)*))for a business domain in an Enterprise. Why is LPM preferred in this digital age? Enterprises face a higher degree of uncertainty and must deliver Innovative solutions at a faster pace. Who is responsible for modernizing portfolio management practices? Portfolio Leadership. Who are the portfolio leaders? a team of people across business, technology, and finance. In smaller organizations with a single portfolio, this team is often the executive team. In larger organizations with multiple portfolios, the team is often comprised of the senior leaders accountable for each portfolio. What crucial role do Portfolio Leaders play? They play a crucial role in overseeing Lean Portfolio Management and ensuring that the portfolio's work aligns with its strategic themes and financial goals and those of the broader organization. What are the 3 dimensions of Lean Portfolio Management? Strategy and Investment Funding, Agile Portfolio Operations, Lean governance. - Strategy and Investment Funding: ensures the entire portfolio is aligned and funded to create and maintain the solutions needed to meet business targets. - Agile Portfolio Operations: coordinates and supports decentralized ART execution and fosters operational excellence - Lean Governance: oversight of spending, audit, compliance, expenditure, measurement, and reporting. **Strategy Funding and Investment** - People involved in this dimension include: Portfolio leadership and Enterprise execs, Business Owners and Enterprise Architects, including portfolio stakeholders and other technologist. - Portfolio leaders need to understand Portfolio's current state, develop plan to evolve to a better state, differentiated future state, and continuously adjust the vision and plan to address the changing business context. - Enterprise Strategy Portfolio DVS - Portfolio needs to be connected to Enterprise Strategy (because the portfolio strategy should support the enterprise's broader business objectives that's why connecting the portfolio to the enterprise strategy is the **primary responsibility** of the strategy and investment funding collaboration.) - Maintain and Realize Portfolio Vision through Epics - Establish Lean Budgets and Guardrails - Establish Portfolio Flow How is the Portfolio connected to Enterprise Business Strategy? Through Strategic Themes and Portfolio Budget **Realizing Portfolio Vision through Epics** Since Epics often have a lot of uncertainty, what good practice should one use for their implementation? SAFe Lean Startup Cycle (recommends a highly iterative build-measure-learn cycle for product innovation and strategic investments.)  **Establish Lean Budget and Guardrails:  Lean** budgets provide funding for value streams aligned with the business strategy and current strategic themes. Guardrails support these budgets by providing governance and spending policies and practices **Establishing Portfolio Flow:** LPM uses the portfolio Kanban system to visualize and limit work-in-process (WIP), work in smaller batch sizes, and reduce the length of development queues. Successfully establishing flow requires knowing the total capacity for new development work versus ongoing maintenance and support activities. The enterprise can objectively evaluate and originate epics only when this balance is understood. **Agile Portfolio Operations** The Agile portfolio operations collaboration and responsibilities require the Portfolio Leadership Team to actively engage with the Value Management Office (VMO), [Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (LACE)](https://scaledagileframework.com/lace/), Release Train Engineer (RTE), and Scrum Master/Team Coach CoP. **VMO & Lace / RTE and SM/TC CoP collaborate to do the following:** - **Coordinate Value Streams**: defines how to manage dependencies and exploit the opportunities that exist only in the interconnections between value streams. To this end, Lean-Agile leaders understand their value streams' challenges and opportunities. They make them as independent as possible while simultaneously interconnecting and coordinating them with the enterprise's larger purpose.) - **Support ART Execution:** The LACE is often responsible for leading operational excellence with the help of an *RTE and Scrum Master/Team Coach *CoP. Together, they can optimize, address, and debug issues from Agile Teams, ARTs, and value streams. The LACE and CoPs provide a forum for sharing effective Agile ART execution, flow practices, and other knowledge. They become a continuous energy source to power the enterprise through the necessary organizational changes.) - **Foster Operational Excellence** Operational excellence focuses on continually improving efficiency, practices, and results to optimize business performance. LPM plays a leadership role in operational excellence, helping the organization achieve its business goals. **Lean Governance** Effective Lean Governance requires the Portfolio Leadership Team to collaborate with the VMO, LACE, Business Owners, and Enterprise Architects to do the following: - Forecast and budget dynamically: This new model includes understanding each solution's historical and forecasted future costs and epics. LPM adjusts budgets on a cadence, typically every six months or when significant events warrant, as part of the strategic portfolio review or [Participatory Budgeting](https://scaledagileframework.com/participatory-budgeting/) events  - Measure portfolio performance: Measure and grow; outcome (OKR and KPI), flow, competency - Coordinate continuous compliance **Establish LPM events** The effective operation of the LPM function relies on three significant events: - ► Strategic portfolio review - ► Portfolio Sync - ► Participatory Budgeting **Portfolio Flow** It shows the state in which LPM provides a continuous flow of new epic to solution trains and ARTs to achieve the portfolio's vision and strategic themes Which SAFe Principle talks about flow? - Principle \#6: Make Value Flow without Interruptions. Name and explain SAFe 8 flow accelerators? 1. Visualize and Limit WIP: Describes how system overload undermines performance and value delivery. Imagine an Art or team bombarded with multiple Epics and Features respectively; this will cause delay in work completion , delayed Roi, employer burnout, decreased engagement and poor quality. Excess WIP does not equate to excess completion, the reverse is true. 2. **Address Bottlenecks:** - Help Ensure LPM has proper decision-making authority: Verify Portfolio Leadership has sufficient time and authority to participate and make portfolio decisions without escalation. - Increase pool of Epic Owner: Having limited Epic Owners is a common cause of portfolio bottlenecks. Leverage the knowledge of subject matter experts, [Business Owners](https://scaledagileframework.com/business-owners/), [Product Managers](https://scaledagileframework.com/product-management/), [Product Owners](https://scaledagileframework.com/product-owner/), and [Enterprise Architects](https://scaledagileframework.com/enterprise-architect/) to serve as Epic Owners. - Understand ART capacity - Ensure Lean Business Case is Lean 3. Minimize Handoffs and Dependency: Portfolio Workflow is critical, but the mechanism of the portfolio kanban is not particularly complex. Managing the flow of Epic through a Kanban board requires different skills and people, because often times multiple Teams or ARTs work on the same Epic. So, bringing the right people into a conversation at the right times facilitates portfolio flow. 4. Get Faster Feedback: Getting quicker customer feedback is often beneficial because helps team course correct in the early stages. At the LPM level, getting feedback about an Epic ensures an Epic investment does not result in designing and building the wrong solution for customer. - \- **If epics require changes to the business model, test the assumptions. **Epics that impact the business model often come with significant opportunities and big challenges. During epic review and analysis, test business model assumptions with business owners, executives, and Customers helping avoid unrealistic assumptions, false starts, and future sunk costs. - **Validate viability by engaging with customers early. **While solution development resides with the teams, LPM stakeholders need fast feedback about these new initiatives to support decision-making. These decisions should happen long before the MVP by testing early mockups and low-fidelity prototypes. Additional Customer insights should also be captured in the Lean business case. - **Focus on the leading indicators for MVPs**. Verify that epics employ the right leading indicators to measure their progress toward the business outcome hypothesis. 5. Work in Smaller Batches: Working in small batches help you move code through the system quickly with less variability, fostering learning. In LPM, is good to have a few Epics flow through system because Epics are significant initiatives that take a long time to review, analyze and approve. So, having a large batch, Portfolio stakeholders may not have the the time to evaluate work in flight thus causing a delay in decision making and delayed flow through portfolio kanban - **Limit the number of epics reviewed during LPM events**. Experiment with how many epics LPM can realistically be considered during the LPM events, such as the Portfolio Sync. Then, adjust the limit based on context and history. - **Reduce the transaction cost of reviewing and analyzing epics**. For example, timebox each epic review to ensure discussions remain clear and concise. This also has the beneficial effect of increasing decentralization and fostering trust. - **Conduct low-fidelity tests during analysis. **Perform research spikes (explainer videos, landing pages, interviews, paper prototypes, fake product sign-ups, micro-surveys, etc.) to understand better the Customer's problems and the range of solutions. - **Leverage a common cadence**. Applying the same PI cadence across all value streams in the portfolio can help reduce batch sizes, providing a regular rhythm for reviewing portfolio work. 6. **Reduce Queue Lengths**: Long queues of portfolio work reduce strategy responsiveness and can cause the enterprise to miss critical market windows. This can have a direct effect on the overall competitiveness of the enterprise. - **Reroute non-portfolio work immediately elsewhere. **The portfolio can be a "catchall" for "everything important that needs to be discussed." Challenge why each item needs to be in the portfolio. Limit the portfolio queue to true epics that require portfolio attention due to their investment or impact. - **Understand and attend to critical market events and market rhythms. **Buying is an act of the Customer, not the producer. Portfolio epics must always be considered in light of the time criticality of the initiative from the Customer's perspective. - **Eliminate non-strategic and bad ideas quickly. **Since more effort and capacity are needed as an epic moves through the Kanban, LPM should quickly decide which will proceed or be removed. - **Replace fixed schedules with flexible roadmaps**. Inflexible roadmaps create long queues and delays in introducing new critical work. Limit longer-range commitments and replace fixed plans with flexible rolling-wave roadmaps. 7. **Optimize Time in the 'The Zone'**: It's challenging for busy execs to find time in the zone to develop, evolve strategic plans and engage ongoing work with peers who share responsibility for strategy. Leaders, change agents, and coaches need to facilitate a process and experience that creates time in the zone to formulate and execute strategy. - Ensure sufficient time is allocated to develop strategy - Hold effective Portfolio events - Recognize when Portfolio Epic no longer needs LPM focus - Eliminate redundant Portfolio governance practices - Invest in meeting facilitation to optimize the 'zone' 8. Remediate Legacy Policies and Practices What are the benefits of managing Epic flow with the Portfolio Kanban? - Increases visibility on large business initiatives and collaboration among key stakeholders - Provides WIP limits - Helps prevent unrealistic expectation - Provides a transparent and quantitative basis for economic decision-making Failed Section Hello Chatbox , can you please quiz me with content in this book and put more emphasis on the following topics :SAFe® as an Operating system for Business Agility ,Built-in Quality, Focus on Customer Centricity with Design Thinking ,PI PlanningDevelop on Cadence; Release on Demand , A Continuous Delivery Pipeline with DevOps , Portfolio Vision through Epics, Portfolio Flow ,Build a Powerful Guiding Coalition, Continuously Improve ART Performance with Inspect and Adapt ,Enterprise Solution Delivery ,Lean Governance and LPM Implementation.