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For medium-sized and large companies, SAFe cannot simply be integrated in passing. They tend to aggregate such a change much more slowly than their smaller competitors. The reasons for this are primarily to be found in a corporate culture that has grown and established over the years and the size of the organisation, which should not be ignored. This size also has policy and process-related hurdles, i.e. an overkill of bureaucracy, which is quite normal in this environment.

Nevertheless, many companies are still trying to understand the advantages of Agile - even though they don't really go together. In such circumstances, we turn to the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) to change this and minimise the risks to project success. SAFe offers medium-sized and large companies a framework for becoming more agile and bringing products to market faster.

Scaled Agile Framework - SAFe

The Scaled Agile Framework contains a set of basic principles, processes and best practices that help large companies to adapt agile methods such as Lean or Scrum in order to develop better quality products and services.

SAFe is particularly suitable for complex projects and agile transformations involving a large number of teams at different levels. The current version (SAFe 5.1) focuses on five core competencies which, in the words of the provider, are intended to help companies “successfully navigate through digital disruption and have an effective response to volatile market conditions, changing customer needs and emerging technologies”:

• Lean Agile Leadership: Leaders should support and drive business change and effective overall operations. Ultimately, only leadership has the authority to influence individuals and teams to maximize their potential.
• Technical agility: Certain skills must be present within a team and certain lean and agile methods must be applied in order to design good solutions quickly. It is particularly important that the technical agility of a team is ensured - after all, it produces the product that is delivered to the customer.
• DevOps: A consistent, continuous pipeline for products or services is essential in order to meet the needs of your customers in the long term.
• Lean systems engineering: The more companies push agile methods to drive blueprints, development and deployment, the greater their innovative strength.
• Lean portfolio management: A coherent corporate strategy that harmonizes financial considerations, portfolio management and compliance aspects is the basic prerequisite for success with the Scaled Agile Framework.

The advantages of the Scaled Agile Framework

SAFe enables large companies to utilize the advantages of Scrum and Kanban in a scalable manner. This allows companies to manage large and complex projects in a much more agile way and also provide the stakeholders involved with significantly faster feedback. This accelerated feedback loop in turn leads to higher employee engagement, increased productivity and satisfaction - and ultimately to an improved quality of work.

The Scaled Agile framework principles

SAFe is structured around various key principles based on existing lean management and agile methods:

1. Adopt an economic perspective for optimal lead time while delivering the best quality and greatest added value
2. Include all facets of software development in the implementation of systems
3. Maintain flexible choices and encourage innovative ideas
4. Develop incrementally with rapid, integrated learning cycles that allow for customer feedback and reduce risk
5. Set milestones and evaluate working systems to ensure economic benefit
6. “Reduce work in progress as much as possible, reduce batch sizes and manage queues to ensure a continuous workflow
7. Synchronize across departments to identify new business opportunities and implement necessary corrections when needed
8. Empower knowledge workers with intrinsic motivation to unlock their full potential
9. Decentralize decision making for greater agility and effectiveness

How a SAFe implementation can work

To implement a Scaled Agile Framework, a step-by-step approach is recommended. Here is a sample implementation:

• Communicate the need for change: There are many factors that can trigger change in companies. A change in the legal framework in certain industries, best practices or even the desire to achieve certain goals. The management level of a company must identify and communicate the reasons for the switch to SAFe. Managers must always accompany this change and motivate all project stakeholders to act in line with the shared vision.
• Deploy change agents: The management level should identify those people in the company who can act as “change agents” and ideally establish them as certified “program consultants and coaches”. In return, they will not only provide technical guidance to stakeholders on the Scaled Agile Framework, but also to managers.
• Onboarding: Only managers who exemplify agile methods to their employees fulfill their role model function. SAFe training for the C-level is therefore mandatory.The “Lean Agile Center of Excellence”: In order to establish lean and agile methods across the entire company, it makes sense to create a “Center of Excellence”. This contributes to a company-wide optimized performance of these methods.
• Identify agile release trains (ARTs): ARTs are the agile teams that develop value-adding solutions. The combination of people, internal processes and technologies brings this value to the customer.
• Prioritization and development of the roadmap: Once the objectives are available, they must be prioritized and a corresponding roadmap drawn up in order to achieve the overall objectives of the SAFe transformation. During implementation, a “value stream” is selected first, followed by an ART.
• Defined parameters: In order to successfully establish an ART, it must first be defined. This is followed by deadlines, agile teams, training personnel and a readiness assessment. It is also important to prepare a corresponding backlog program.
• Know your role: The people who develop the systems in the team are essential for the success of the respective ARTs. It is therefore imperative that each of these team members knows their role, fulfills it and has the necessary skills to do so successfully.
• Expansion to portfolio level: All of the above steps have been completed and should now be transferred to portfolio level in order to consolidate the corporate culture as a whole and improve the company's performance and overall target achievement.
• Company-wide process efficiency: The sustainability of business processes depends on the timely identification and implementation of new business opportunities. At this level, the entire management level of a company has a Lean and Agile mindset.