Understanding the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) — and how to implement it.

Large enterprises have different levels of complexity compared to small companies. They face challenges that team-level Agile was never designed to address directly. These challenges include:

• Longer Planning Horizons: While a single team might plan in two-week sprints, an enterprise must manage 12 to 18-month roadmaps, annual budgets, and multi-year strategic initiatives.
• Delegated Authority and Governance: Determining how to delegate authority without creating chaos is a significant challenge. Large-scale development requires a clear view across multiple team backlogs, which necessitates roles and structures beyond what a single team needs.
• Synchronization of Deliverables: Coordinating the release of a complex product that depends on the synchronized output of many teams is a monumental task. Without a coordinating structure, release events can become stressful and chaotic.
• Alignment with Business Strategy: Ensuring that the work of hundreds of individual teams, each with its backlog, aligns with the strategic goals and financial constraints of the enterprise is perhaps the most critical challenge. A lack of alignment with the business vision is a primary reason that team-level Agile often fails to deliver its maximum benefit at the enterprise level.

These challenges form the core problem space that scaled agile frameworks aim to solve. They seek to provide the missing layer of coordination, management, and strategic alignment that connects Agile teams to executive leadership. This article will describe the key characteristics and benefits of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe).

This post will cover:

• What is the Scaled Agile Framework?
• SAFe - 10 Essential Principles.
• Scaled Agile Framework Implementation.
• Implement Scaled Agile Frameworks with Adobe Workfront.

The acronym SAFe stands for Scaled Agile Framework. It is a framework for applying the Agile methodology at a large scale. A scaled agile framework is a body of knowledge — a set of organizational and workflow patterns, principles, and practices — designed to guide enterprises in implementing Lean, Agile, and DevOps practices at scale. These frameworks extend beyond the individual team to encompass the program, large solution, and portfolio levels of an organization. They provide structured guidance on roles and responsibilities, planning and managing work, and fostering a culture that supports enterprise-wide agility.

Scaled agile frameworks seek to address the problems that arise when scaling beyond a single team. They provide a mechanism for information to flow effectively — upward from the teams doing the work, downward from leadership setting the strategy, and outward across teams working on different parts of the same solution. By doing so, they aim to help large organizations achieve the benefits of agility — faster time-to-market, higher quality, increased productivity, and greater employee engagement — without succumbing to the chaos of uncoordinated, large-scale development.

SAFe centers around ten guiding principles, many of which are similar to the Agile and Lean methodologies. These principles apply to all levels within the enterprise and encourage an Agile mindset:

1. Have an economic perspective.

To minimize lead time, taking the economic view requires keeping everyone aware of the impacts of decisions. This also makes sharing responsibility much easier to achieve, which creates greater efficiency due to the decentralization of decision-making.

With everyone actively working toward economic efficiency, lead times shorten and the flow of value through the company accelerates.

2. Apply a systems approach.

Systems thinking involves seeing all or parts of a project as a dynamic system of interacting parts instead of the sum of its parts. Leaders can apply this thinking to a project, the enterprise, or individual streams.

The benefits of a systems approach include understanding complex interactions and effects, solving problems and streamlining processes more effectively, and modifying processes for the future.

3. Maintain choice.

Embrace the fact that things can and will change. Assume variability and ensure a large pool of solutions is available for any problem that arises to put teams in a mindset to notice and tackle problems.

4. Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles.

Breaking projects up into incremental steps makes projects more manageable and allows for more frequent reflection. Teams can readily identify problems and opportunities and make changes to enhance the process for the next iteration.

5. Base milestones on an objective evaluation of working systems.

Determine how to measure the effectiveness of different working systems objectively. Objective measures can help businesses make more informed decisions and better present results to various stakeholders.

6. Visualize and limit work in progress (WIP).

Limiting the amount of WIP at any given time makes it easier to manage processes and transparently observe the value flow. Keeping batch sizes small and managing queue lengths makes it easier to adjust and modify processes for increased efficiency and value flow.

7. Apply cadence.

A cadence is a rhythm or a regular pattern. It often refers to things happening in a synchronized manner and with a regular and expected repetition. Implementing patterns in processes makes it easier to get work done efficiently. Cadence facilitates collaboration and clarifies expectations.

8. Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers.

By motivating knowledge workers, you ensure they are aware of and willing to strive toward the desired quality of outcomes. When workers are motivated, they can learn more quickly and understand all parts of the process. This makes it much easier to delegate authority and allow them to make decisions as needed.

9. Decentralize decision-making.

Decentralized decision-making can help increase efficiency. Empowering people to make decisions on the spot — rather than having to run every single decision up the ladder — eliminates time delays.

10. Organize around value.

Enterprises should organize around value to ensure that customer needs are met with new solutions quickly. It calls for arranging an enterprise around value streams, which is the sequence of steps an organization uses to deliver value to a customer.

Implementing SAFe depends on size and scope. The following steps provide a high-level outline of the implementation process:

• Communicate the need for SAFe implementation with leadership and workers, making the benefits clear.
• Identify leaders who can serve as change agents. Provide them with proper SAFe training.
• Train executives and management to prepare them for the transition.
• Create a Center of Excellence (CoE) for the Lean-Agile methodology. This creates a central hub for disseminating ideas and information.
• Identify value streams and Agile teams.
• Have change agents collaborate to create a plan for SAFe implementation.
• Clearly define success parameters for each part of the implementation.
• Provide training to all teams in the SAFe methodology and each team member’s role and responsibilities.
• Launch teams and/or projects in order of priority.
• Apply the SAFe methodology at higher levels, including portfolio and companywide.
• Work toward continuous improvement and effectiveness by applying Lean-Agile principles.

Successfully implementing SAFe at the enterprise level requires careful planning and training. Having the right project management technology in place can facilitate implementation. If you are ready to introduce your organization to Agile at scale, consider attending as you may wish to begin by reading more and looking into SAFe educational seminars.

Watch the overview video to see how Workfront can help you implement the SAFe framework to help maximize project workflow implementation.