How do you get stakeholders to collaborate on a roadmap? What are the seven deadly sins of Agile portfolio management? How do you avoid a “train” wreck with your ARTs? What are some techniques for managing the modern workforce? How did Travelport create psychological safety among its C-level leaders?
The 2020 European SAFe Summit, 10-11 June in The Hague, will answer all these questions and more: each day we’re adding new sessions designed to make this Summit the best one yet. The European SAFe Summit is the largest conference for the top SAFe practitioners, experts, and thought leaders working in Agile today.ay.
Last year’s attendees gave us a diversity of reasons why they appreciated the European SAFe Summit—from the informative keynotes and practical sessions to the helpful staff and delicious food. But here are my top five reasons for why you won’t want to miss it.
1. Gain access to SAFe insiders
From the SAFe founder Dean Leffingwell to the SAFe Fellows and SPCTs, the Summit gives you the chance to learn from and share feedback with the SAFe leaders whose experiences and thinking to shape the framework. Come to the SPCT coaching station to sit one-on-one with experts and discuss solutions to your unique challenges.
2. Hear from SAFe customers
Come and hear from some of the largest organizations in Europe about how they’re using SAFe to improve their planning, portfolio strategy, product quality, and time-to-market. Leaders and change agents from Europe’s top companies will be presenting their experiences, learnings, and advice for making SAFe work inside your own organization.
3. Learn best practices
We know, and you know, that organizations are complex, messy, and resistant to change. That’s why it’s so helpful to hear what works—and what doesn’t—across different types of environments. We invite SAFe customers, trainers, and framework experts to share their insights at the Summit because attendees tell us again and again how valuable SAFe best practices are in accelerating adoption and supporting a culture of change.
4. Make connections that support your business
As Agile adoption has expanded across Europe, the Agile community has become dedicated, tight, and strong. The Summit unites those of us practicing, leading, and experiencing Agile at scale so you can easily make connections and build your network with other coaches, thought leaders, and change agents. Meet other people working with SAFe, identify opportunities to cultivate working relationships, and evaluate service or platform companies that can accelerate your work.
5. Get in-depth training
Stay through 12 June for a dedicated day of hands-on workshops. Enhance your results—and your professional skills—by diving deep into specific topics including business agility, SAFe for really big systems, Agile product management, and Lean portfolio management.
These are just five of the reasons why the European SAFe Summit has become one of the best-attended Agile conferences in Europe. This conference sold out last year, so don’t miss your chance to attend, learn, network, and grow.
Andrew Sales is a SAFe Program Consultant Trainer (SPCT) and a member of the Scaled Agile Framework team. He has been supporting organizations with their Agile transformations for the last 10 years and is a regular speaker at Agile conferences and contributor to the Agile community. Andrew previously led the Agile Services Practice across EMEA for CA Technologies (formerly Rally).
Now that SAFe® 5.0 is live, I wanted to take a minute to reset the baseline on what exactly a framework is, what it isn’t, and what’s required to win with SAFe.
One of the most inspiring things I’ve experienced in working with SAFe is seeing the excitement and energy that it brings out in others. After learning in the classroom, many well-intentioned people run back to their organizations to ‘do the thing,’ but often forget to first understand the problem to be solved and the significance of the change ahead. Many proceed without first rooting themselves in what it is that they, and others, must do. Unfortunately, bypassing this step and failing to broadly communicate the vision can lead to many false starts.
In this post, I’ll explore patterns to consider for improved outcomes when using the Framework, offer some tips to apply tools found in SAFe and relate them to your context, and identify patterns to help avoid making Framework guardrails feel overly rigid.
The case for change
Change for the sake of change is rarely a successful undertaking. And change is hard—really hard. Consider any change you’ve tried to make in your life: a new fitness routine, a new diet.
Without a compelling case to make the change, many of us abandon these new habits before they’re integrated into our lifestyle (culture or lifestyle change is the result of changing; not a reason for change.)
Example: A 5 a.m. run, the second week of January, when it’s cold and you’re sore.
The result: Abandoned change.
Example: Out with coworkers at a pizza joint the second week of a new diet when your body is craving sugar/fat/salt.
The result: Abandoned change.
Example:The beginning of the second PI Planning when there’s no architectural runway, leaders can’t decide on priorities, managers are frustrated with understanding the new way of working, and teams are being pressured to just deliver something.
The result: Abandoned change.
I’m guessing you can probably relate to at least one of these scenarios.
Now, reexamine the same scenarios with a clearly articulated “why” and consider how understanding the case for change may yield different outcomes.
Embracing a new fitness routine [BECAUSE] it’s difficult to keep up with the kids.
The result: Maybe that cold morning is a little more bearable.
Adopting a new diet [BECAUSE] your current one has contributed to pre-diabetes.
The result: Amazing smells or not, that pizza is now a little easier to say no to.
Adopting a new way of working [BECAUSE] your business is at risk of being disrupted by smaller, faster companies who are talking directly to your customers.
The result: Maybe we need to work a little harder to figure out our priorities.
As John Kotter points out, many people underestimate the power of vision 10x. Before starting your journey toward business agility, take a moment to understand the need for change, share it broadly with the impacted parties, and keep the vision visible.
Framework = toolbox
Allow me to be direct: The Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe) is not prescriptive. It’s not intended to be a method to perpetuate command and control and it’s not an organizational structure. SAFe is intended to be a second-tier operating system that filters together the right people to solve a problem and gives them the focus and support they need to deliver the highest business value items in the shortest sustainable lead time.
If an organization chooses to use the Framework in a manner other than intended, then the result may feel rigid. Though, that has nothing to do with the Framework. SAFe is a toolbox containing proven methods and practices that help businesses solve many of the complex issues they face today. With that in mind, it’s up to the practitioners and leaders to understand their problems, understand the tools available, and determine the Leanest subset of tools needed to address those problems.
Businesses can be complex, and each operating environment is unique. No matter your starting point, it’s the right place for you and your organization. SAFe won’t solve all problems overnight but it will help drive the right conversations at the right time. What SAFe does is help you surface many underlying issues within the system, and as W. Edwards Deming so famously points out, “… only management can change the system.”
Mindset. Values. Principles.
With so much flexibility built into the Framework, people often ask me if one decision or another aligns with SAFe. It’s important to remind yourself that the goal is to delight the customer by delivering high-quality value as quickly as possible—and to do the right thing. The best way to make the best decision in these scenarios is to refer back to the Lean Mindset, SAFe Core Values, and Lean-Agile Principles and ask yourself, “Does this decision move me closer to or further away from these points of reference?” If the decision aligns with the values/mindset/principles, it’s probably the right decision.
The essential elements
The basics are the basics for a reason: they’re the minimum elements required for success in an undertaking, which in our case is scaling an Agile mindset in a complex organization. The basic element of SAFe is the need to bring together more than a few teams to deliver value and delight the customer. If you can accomplish this with one two/three/four team(s), then you probably don’t need SAFe. However, as organizations, architecture, and organizational challenges become more complex, the need to scale becomes apparent. To scale Agility to the team of teams for solution delivery, we must consider the essential competencies and elements.
Three core competencies
Team and Technical Agility describes the critical skills and Lean-Agile principles and practices that high-performing Agile teams and teams of Agile teams use to create high-quality solutions for their customers. Agile Product Delivery is a customer-centric approach to defining, building, and releasing a continuous flow of valuable products and services to customers and users. Lean-Agile Leadership describes how Lean-Agile Leaders drive and sustain organizational change and operational excellence by empowering individuals and teams to reach their highest potential.
The elements of Essential SAFe
An Agile Release Train (ART) is a long-lived team of Agile teams, which, along with other stakeholders, incrementally develops, delivers, and (where applicable) operates, one or more solutions in a value stream. A Continuous Delivery Pipeline describes the workflows, activities, and automation needed to consistently release value to end users. Customer Centricity is a mindset and a way of doing business that focuses on creating positive experiences, such as the customer journey, which takes buyers through the full set of products and services that the enterprise offers. Design Thinking is a customer-centric development process that creates desirable products that are profitable and sustainable throughout their lifecycle. Program Increment (PI) is a timebox in which an ART delivers incremental value. PIs are typically 8 – 12 weeks long, and the most common pattern for a PI is four development Iterations followed by one Innovation and Planning (IP) iteration. Iterations are fixed-length timeboxes that provide the development cadence for Agile teams building Features and components. Each iteration delivers a valuable increment of new functionality. Innovation and Planning (IP) Iteration provides teams with an opportunity to explore and innovate, dedicated time for planning, and learning through informal and formal channels. ScrumXP is a lightweight process for Agile Teams to continuously deliver value. ScrumXP uses the Scrum framework for project management and XP-derived quality practices. Team Kanban is a Lean method that helps teams facilitate the flow of value by visualizing workflow, establishing work in process (WIP) limits, measuring throughput, and continuously improving their process. Built-In Quality ensures that in every solution increment, teams (technical and non-technical) achieve high-quality goals and can readily adapt to change. DevOps is a mindset, culture, and set of technical practices. DevOps provides communication, integration, automation, and close cooperation among all the people needed to plan, develop, test, deploy, release, and maintain a system.
A state of perpetual change
With the significant additions that come with version 5.0 of the Framework, I ask that we all remain diligent along our learning journey. The Framework site offers an overview of the basics of many concepts to consider on the journey to business agility, but it isn’t a formula for assured success. SAFe courseware is intended to rapidly bring students to a new learning plateau and help each learner discover which areas of the Framework content they’re most interested in exploring deeper.
Pick a subject area, learn more, speak to other practitioners on the SAFe Community Platform, and think critically about how to best deploy SAFe tools to guide your organization and customers to a better place. As we discuss in the competency of developing a Continuous Learning Culture, the future belongs to those who learn the fastest.
Scaled Agile will continue to investigate the latest trends in the post-digital economy, and provide recommendations, toolkits, and learning to help the great organizations of the world survive and thrive with new ways of working.
—Adam
About Adam Mattis
Adam Mattis is a SAFe Program Consultant Trainer (SPCT) at Scaled Agile with many years of experience overseeing SAFe implementations across a wide range of industries. He’s also an experienced transformation architect, engaging speaker, energetic trainer, and a regular contributor to the broader Lean-Agile and educational communities. Learn more about Adam at adammattis.com.
“Working for an organization that practices SAFe means employees can be confident that their code will get to production and that their SAFe training will secure them transportable skills that add value to their career paths.”
Console Connect needed to deliver positive and on-time outcomes for its customers and partners and amplify its ability to attract talented technologists to the business.
Impact
Attracted and trained new staff in a competitive market
Improved business goal setting and ability to measure business value
Reduced the number of lower business value objectives to allow time for innovation
Quality
“SAFe brought a much-needed approach to scaling Agile and systems thinking that was critical to an organization of our size and complexity.”
—Brent Weaver, Director of Systems Implementation, CMS
CMS was charged with improving systems thinking within a deeply ingrained Waterfall culture. They sought a solution that could scale within the complex organization of the Center of Clinical Standards and Quality (CCSQ) and deliver on citizen expectations.
Impact
Improved quality – 55% decrease in help desk tickets from hospitals, demonstrating a direct impact on customer satisfaction
Budget shift to modernization versus maintenance – Now 60% of the budget goes toward innovation for the system, helping the agency deliver on citizen expectations
Happier employees – Surveys conducted before and after SAFe show a 27% increase in employee satisfaction
Time-to-market
30%
improvement in average process time for developing features.
Handelsbanken, a Swedish bank known for its innovative practices, wanted to cut its time to market and improve its customer offerings. They needed a collaborative partner to contribute to those goals. The bank explored SAFe and gained trust knowing that several large companies and banks in its region had found success with it.
Impact
With SAFe, Handelsbanken achieved its goal of enabling automated decisions for mortgages sooner than expected. The structure of the framework helped them think big, focusing on flow and results.
Six years ago, Mercedes-Benz had one or two product roll-outs a year in just a couple of markets. In 2022, they were able to introduce roughly 40 products in 34 markets. Moving away from Waterfall methods and adopting SAFe, they were able to launch better technology, better operating systems, AI and face recognition, integrate different data sources, and utilize better risk models.
Impact
SAFe allowed Mercedes-Benz to achieve the shift from hardware to software, master the electrification of vehicles, meet requirements for zero emission, and adapt to environmental, geopolitical, and consumer demands.
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