What are the core values of SAFe?
- Built-in Quality
- Program execution
- Alignment
- Transparency
Train
a team of agile teams
Value Stream
a team of trains
Value steams deliver value via
Capabilities
A train delivers value via
features and benefits
An agile portfolio delivers value via
Epics
Eight big mistakes when trying to make a change:
- Allowing too much complacency
- Failure to create a sufficiently powerful guiding coalition
- Underestimating the power of vision
- Under-communicating the power of vision by 10-100x
- Permitting obstacles to block the new vision
- Failure to create short term wins
- Declaring victory too soon
- Neglecting to anchor changes firmly in the corporate culture
ART
Agile Release Train
VSE
Value Stream Engineer
How many people are on a scrum team?
7 +/- 2
Which line of the agile structure is optional?
Value Stream
Who is concerned with what institute the work comes from?
The epic owner
What are the parts of the SAFe house of lean?
Base: Leadership
Pillars: Respect for people and culture, Flow, Innovation, and Relentless improvement
Top: Value
What is the purpose of the SAFe house of lean?
Achieve the sustainably shortest lead time with:
-Best quality and value to people and society
-High morale, safety and customer delight
What does a Respect for People and Culture entail?
Your culture must support change and you must anchor new behavior and then your culture will change. You must change the organization in order to change the culture.
What does a Flow entail?
This prevents bottle necks and there is no stopping and starting. There is no room for the unknown is this is at max capacity.
What does Innovation entail?
Producers innovate and customers validate; pivot without mercy or guilt; like undercover bosses
What does Relentless Improvement entail?
Reflect at key milestones and identify and address shortcomings.
What does Leadership mean as the base of the SAFe House of Lean?
leadership must be on board in order for the system to change; the system is how we are getting our work done so we might need a structural change to the organization
What is the Agile Manifesto?
We have come to value:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan.
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
What are the 12 parts of the Agile Manifesto?
- Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
- Welcoming changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.
- Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference for the shorter timescale.
- Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
- Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
- The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
- Working software is the primary measure of progress.
- Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
- Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
- Simplicity– the art of maximizing the amount of work not done — is essential
- The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
- At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
SAFe Lean-Agile principles
SAFe for Lean Enterprises
A knowledge base of proven, integrated principles, practices, and competencies for achieving Business Agility by implementing Lean, Agile, and DevOps at scale.
Critical ART success factors
1) SAFe Lean-Agile Principles
2) Real Agile Teams and Trains
3) Cadence and Synchronization
4) PI Planning
5) Customer Centricity, DevOps and Release on Demand
6) System Demo
7) Inspect & Adapt
8) IP Iteration
9) Architectural Runway
10) Lean-Agile Leadership
SAFe Configurations
1) Full Configuration
2) Large Solution Configuration
3) Portfolio Configuration
4) Essential Configuration
The Core Competencies of Business Agility
1) Team and Technical Agility
2) Agile Product Delivery
3) Enterprise Solution Delivery
4) Lean Portfolio Management
5) Organizational Agility
6) Continuous Learning Culture
7) Lean-Agile Leadership
The ways Design Thinking measures success
1) Desirable
2) Feasible
3) Viable
4) Sustainable
Team and Technical Agility
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. (Business Agility Core Competency)
Agile Product Delivery
A customer-centric approach to defining, building, and releasing a continuous flow of valuable products and services to customers and users. (Business Agility Core Competency).
SAFe Implementation Roadmap
Consists of an overview graphic and a twelve-article series that describes a strategy and an ordered set of activities that have proven to be effective in successfully implementing SAFe.
SAFe Implementation Roadmap Steps
1) Reaching the Tipping Point
2) Train Lean-Agile Change Agents
3) Train Executives, Managers, and Leaders
4) Create a Lean-Agile Center of Excellence
5) Identify Value Streams and ARTs
6) Create the Implementation Plan
7) Prepare for ART Launch
8) Train Teams and Launch the ART
9) Coach ART Execution
10) Launch More ARTs and Value Streams
11) Extend to the Portfolio
12) Accelerate
Customer Centricity
A mindset and a way of doing business that focuses on creating positive experiences for the customer through the full set of products and services that the enterprise offers.
Empathic Design
Our ability to put aside our preconceived ideas and develop solutions from the perspective of our customers.
Gemba Walk
Visiting the place where the customer work is done
Components of the Continuous Delivery Pipeline
Continuous Exploration (CE)
Continuous Integration (CI)
Continuous Delivery (CD)
Release on Demand (RoD)
Kotter’s Steps for Leading Organizational Change
1) Establish a sense of urgency
2) Create a powerful guiding coalition
3) Develop the vision and strategy
4) Communicate the vision
5) Empower employees for broad-base action
6) Generate short-term wins
7) Consolidate gains and produce more wins
8) Anchor new approaches in the culture
Enterprise Solution Delivery
Describes 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. (Business Agility Core Competency)
Lean Portfolio Management
Aligns strategy and execution by applying Lean and systems thinking approaches to strategy and investment funding, Agile portfolio operations, and governance.
SAFe Core Values
Alignment, Built-in Quality, Transparency, Program Execution
Primary bodies of knowledge on which SAFe is based
Agile development, systems thinking, Lean product development, and DevOps.
Characteristics of Alignment
Occurs when everyone is working toward a common direction. Enables empowerment, autonomy, and Decentralized Decision-making, allowing those who implement value to make better local decisions.
Transparency
An enabler of trust.
Program Execution
Intense focus on working systems and business outcomes.
DevOps
A mindset, a culture, and a set of technical practices, that provides communication, integration, automation, and close cooperation among all the people needed to plan, develop, test, deploy, release, and maintain a Solution.
SAFe’s approach to DevOps
CALMR
1) Culture of shared responsibility
2) Automation of continuous delivery pipeline
3) Lean flow accelerates delivery
4) Measurement of everything
5) Recovery enables low risk releases
Continuous Learning Culture
A set of values and practices that encourage individuals—and the enterprise as a whole—to continually increase knowledge, competence, performance, and innovation.
Dimensions of a Continuous Learning Culture
1) Learning Organization
2) Innovation Culture
3) Relentless Improvement
Characteristics of an Innovation Culture
1) Innovative People
2) Time & Space
3) Go See
4) Experimentation & Feedback
5) Pivot Without Mercy or Guilt
6) Innovation Riptides
Measure and Grow
The way portfolios evaluate their progress towards business agility and determine their next improvement steps.
Design Thinking
A customer-centric development process that creates desirable products that are profitable and sustainable over their lifecycle.
WSJF
Weighted Shortest Job First
Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF)
A prioritization model used to sequence jobs (e.g., Features, Capabilities, and Epics) to produce maximum economic benefit.
Program Backlog
The ___________ is the holding area for upcoming Features, that will address user needs and deliver business benefits for a single Agile Release Train (ART).
Portfolio Backlog
The __________________ is the highest-level backlog in SAFe. It provides a holding area for upcoming business and enabler Epics intended to create and evolve a comprehensive set of Solutions.
Epic
An _____ is a container for a significant Solution development initiative that captures the more substantial investments that occur within a portfolio.
Due to their considerable scope and impact, an ___ requires the definition of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and approval by Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) before implementation.
Solutions
Products, services, or systems delivered to the customer, whether internal or external to the Enterprise. Each Value Stream produces one or more of these.
Value Streams
Represent the sequence of steps that an enterprise uses to deliver value to its customer.
Solution Backlog
The holding area for upcoming Capabilities and Enablers, each of which can span multiple ARTs and is intended to advance the Solution and build its architectural runway.
Solution Management
Responsible for the Solution Backlog
Product Management
Responsible for the Program Backlog
Feature
A service that fulfills a stakeholder need. Each _ includes a benefit hypothesis and acceptance criteria, and is sized or split as necessary to be delivered by a single Agile Release Train (ART) in a Program Increment (PI).
Capability
A higher-level solution behavior that typically spans multiple ARTs. A __ is sized and split into multiple features to facilitate their implementation in a single PI.
Program Increment (PI) Planning
A cadence-based event that serves as the heartbeat of the Agile Release Train (ART), aligning all the teams on the ART to a shared mission and Vision.
Portfolio Canvas
Based on the Business Model Canvas; defines Development Value Streams that are included in the SAFe portfolio, the value propositions and the Solutions they deliver, the customers they serve, the budgets allocated to each value stream, and other key activities and events required to achieve the portfolio vision.
Strategic Themes
Differentiating business objectives that connect a portfolio to the strategy of the Enterprise. They influence portfolio strategy and provide business context for portfolio decision-making.
Minimal Viable Product (MVP)
An early and minimal version of a new product or business solution that is used to prove or disprove the epic hypothesis.