What is Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)?

Alignment is needed to keep pace with fast change, disruptive competitive forces, and geographically distributed teams. While empowered, Agile Teams are good (even great), but the responsibility for strategy and alignment cannot rest with the combined opinions of the teams, no matter how good they are. Instead, alignment must rely on the Enterprise business objectives.

Built-in Quality ensures that every element and every increment of the solution reflects quality standards throughout the development lifecycle. Quality is not “added later.” Building quality in is a prerequisite of Lean and flow—without it, the organization will likely operate with large batches of unverified, unvalidated work. Excessive rework and slower velocities are the likely results.

To ensure openess—trust is needed. Trust exists when the business and development can confidently rely on another to act with integrity, particularly in times of difficulty. Without trust no one can build high-performance teams and programs, nor build (or rebuild) the confidence needed to make and meet reasonable commitments.  And without trust, working environments are a lot less fun and motivating.

Of course, none of the rest of SAFe matters if teams can’t execute and continuously deliver value. Therefore, SAFe places an intense focus on working systems and business outcomes. History shows us that while many enterprises start the transformation with individual Agile teams, they often become frustrated as even those teams struggle to deliver more substantial amounts of solution value, reliably and efficiently.