Large enterprises need to be agile like smaller, leaner organizations to remain competitive. They need a solution that helps them cater to changing customer requirements and market conditions. They need to scale Agile to realize the fast, flexible benefits enjoyed by many software development teams.
With the clear-cut methodology provided by a scaled Agile framework, an enterprise can better predict delivery dates of products, manage cross-team dependencies, and focus on customer satisfaction, helping to boost market share and revenues.
The ability for an organization to adapt, innovate, and respond to customer needs with speed and precision is a baseline requirement for success. Large enterprises face the dual challenge of maintaining operational stability while fostering the nimbleness typically associated with smaller, leaner organizations. This has led to the widespread adoption of Agile methodologies, which promise to transform how businesses deliver value. However, the journey from adopting Agile within a single team to embedding its principles across an entire enterprise is fraught with complexity.
Problems can arise when organizations attempt to use a single-team Agile methodology to solve enterprise-wide problems or for particularly complex projects. The Agile process needs to be scaled to meet these increased demands and address enterprise issues, such as inadequate stakeholder support or a shortage of user experience designers, security specialists, and other IT resources needed to support the scaled Agile effort.
This post will cover:
Agile value propositions.
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools: This value places a premium on direct communication and collaboration among team members, recognizing that people are the most significant contributors to success.
- Working software over comprehensive documentation: The primary measure of progress is the delivery of products that provide value to the customer, not the volume of documentation created.
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation: Agile methodologies create a partnership between the development team and the customer, incorporating feedback throughout the development lifecycle to ensure the final product meets their actual needs.
- Responding to change over following a plan: Agile processes are designed to adapt to changing requirements, even late in development.
What is scaled Agile?
Scaled Agile is the large-scale development and delivery of enterprise-class systems and software, involving many teams. In truth, scaled Agile means different things to different organizations, but the idea generally is that Agile practices are spread across various teams and departments throughout the enterprise.
Agile frameworks, such as Scrum and Kanban, enable software teams to deliver solutions to customers faster, with more reliable results. Implementing Agile at the individual team level is relatively easy. In its most basic form, it works best in teams of five to nine.
Various scaling Agile frameworks seek to solve the challenges posed by agility at scale by setting down the guidelines, techniques, processes, and roles that enable multiple teams and departments across an enterprise to stay coordinated and well-managed.
What are scaled agile frameworks?
Suppose Agile is an overall approach to software development, iterating quickly and frequently to keep customers happy. In that case, an Agile framework is a specific approach based on the Agile philosophy articulated in the Agile Manifesto.
These frameworks are methodologies or processes that are typically customized to meet a particular team’s or project’s needs. There are several Agile frameworks developed to meet the challenges of Agile at scale, specifically:
The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is a large-scale solution created by Dean Leffingwell, which comes from his writing on software scaling agility. SAFe encompasses planning at the team, program, and portfolio levels, enabling organizations to build a solution for the whole enterprise, rather than focusing on a single team or project. At the team level, SAFe is like Scrum, with the addition of a few extreme programming practices. The program level aligns the teams around common events to form an Agile Release Train (ART). The portfolio level is the highest level, in which executives and leaders determine the organization’s vision, business goals, and strategies.
Large Scale Scrum (LeSS)
Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) is a framework for scaling Agile development to multiple teams in an enterprise, building on Scrum principles such as empiricism and cross-functional, self-managing teams. It is formed around three central knowledge bodies: Agile software development, lean product development, and systems thinking. It promotes alignment, collaboration, and delivery across many different Agile teams. It has been defined as a regular Scrum plus a set of additional rules and tips that make it more suitable for large, multi-team, multisite, and offshore Agile development initiatives.
Disciplined Agile (DA)
Disciplined Agile (DA) is a learning-oriented process decision framework for delivering IT solutions. The approach prioritizes individual people and provides light guidance to help teams optimize their processes according to a specific project’s special needs. It employs Scrum and Kanban, along with transformative knowledge on areas that include HR and finance, governance, DevOps, portfolio management, and culture.
See the comparison table below:
How to determine if you’re ready to scale Agile.
- Do team leaders/sponsors and company management have a clear vision of what they want to accomplish, even if the scope of the project(s) is not known?
- Are teams prepared to cope with and welcome evolving project requirements and changes that come in late in the process?
- Can projects remain flexible even though time and costs are fixed?
- Are project teams committed to only delivering usable features?
- Is the enterprise prepared to have customers fully involved in projects?
- Are stakeholders happy to receive small but frequent deliveries of working software parts?
Scale Agile with Workfront.
The ultimate objective for scaling agile is to internalize the core principles of the Agile Manifesto—customer collaboration, responding to change, empowering individuals, and delivering value. True business agility emerges when an organization moves beyond the mechanics of a framework and embraces a leadership style that champions learning, encourages experimentation, and creates an environment of psychological safety where teams are trusted to solve complex problems.
The choice of a scaling framework is an important starting point—it provides the initial scaffolding for change. The real work lies in the continuous process of inspection, adaptation, and evolution. The most successful organizations will be those that use their chosen framework as a guide, not a gospel, and remain relentlessly focused on the goal: building an enterprise that can thrive in an era of constant change. This is not a one-time implementation project but a perpetual journey, and having the right partners and platforms to support that journey is the key to sustained success.
Watch the overview video to see how Workfront can help you implement scaled agile frameworks and maximize workflow efficiency.
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