Personal SAFe 5.0 Study Kit
What is the continuous learning culture?
What: describes a set of values and practices that encourage individuals and the enterprise to increase knowledge, competence, performance, and innovation continually. How: Organizations become a learning organization by committing to relentless improvement and promoting a culture of innovation
What is the organizational agility?
What: describes how Lean-thinking people and Agile teams optimize their business processes, evolve strategy with clear and decisive new commitments, and quickly adapt the organization as needed to capitalize on new opportunities.
What is the team and technical agility?
What: 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. Why: The result is increased productivity, better quality, faster time-to-market, and predictable delivery of value.
What is Lean-Agile leadership?
What: how Lean-Agile Leaders drive and sustain organizational change by empowering individuals and teams to reach their highest potential How: They do this by leading by example, adopting a Lean-Agile mindset, and leading the change to new ways of working. Why: The result is more engaged employees, increased productivity and innovation, and successful organizational change.
What does each ART build and maintain (or shares)?
a Continuous Delivery Pipeline with the assets and technologies needed to deliver solution value as independently as possible. The first three elements of the pipeline work together to support the deployment of small batches of new functionality, which are released to meet market demands.
What is built-in quality? Note: The bigger the system, the more important endemic quality is, so there can be no ambiguity about the importance of built-in quality in large-scale systems
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 likely results.
What are Flow metrics?
help determine how fast is the value stream at creating and delivering value and are represented by Flow Distribution, Flow Velocity, Flow Time, Flow Load, Flow Efficiency, and Flow Predictability
What are Outcome metrics?
help ensure that what has been delivered, provides benefit to the customer and to the business. Value Stream KPIs are primarily used to measure these outcomes
What is a business owner?
key stakeholder of the ART and have ultimate responsibility for the business outcomes of the train. Customers are the ultimate buyers of the solution.
Give an example of a growth mindset
"I like to try new things" "Failure is an opportunity to grow" "Feedback is constructive" Positivity
Give an example of a fixed mindset
"I'm either good at it, or I'm not" "Failure is the limit of my abilities" "When I've frustrated, I give up" Negativity
The most effective ARTs have the following attributes
- 50 - 125 people - Focused on a holistic solution or related set of products or services - Long-lived, stable teams that consistently deliver value - Minimize dependencies with other ARTs - Can release independent of other ARTs
Operationally, the LACE typically functions as an Agile team and applies the same iteration and PI cadences. This allows the LACE to plan and inspect and adapt in harmony with the ARTs, serving as an exemplar for Agile team behavior. As a result, similar roles are needed: ____________________________________________________
- A Product Owner works with stakeholders to prioritize the team's transformation backlog - A Scrum Master facilitates the process and helps remove roadblocks - The team is cross-functional - Credible people from various functional organizations are integral members of the team. That allows them to address backlog items wherever they arise, whether they're related to organization, culture, development process, or technology. - A C- level leader typically acts as the team's Product Manager.
What are some tips that help Lean Portfolio Management?
- Apply participatory budgeting - Eliminate projects and timesheets - Master Lean Startup practices - Make an explicit Enterprise Architecture roadmap
What kind of event agenda helps lower the transaction costs associated with a system demo?
- Briefly, review the business context and the PI Objectives (approximately 5 - 10 minutes) - Briefly, describe each new feature before demoing (about 5 minutes) - Demo each new feature in an end-to-end use case (around 20 - 30 minutes, total) - Identify current risks and impediments - Open discussion of questions and feedback - Wrap up by summarizing progress, feedback, and action items
Inputs to PI Planning include...?
- Business context (see 'content readiness' below) - Roadmap and vision - Top 10 Features of the Program Backlog
A successful PI planning event delivers two primary outputs:
- Committed PI objectives - A set of SMART objectives that are created by each team with the business value assigned by the Business Owners. - Program board - Highlighting the new feature delivery dates, feature dependencies among teams and relevant Milestones
What are some examples of the responsibilities a LACE has?
- Communicating the business need, urgency, and vision for change - Developing the implementation plan and managing the transformation backlog - Establishing the metrics - Conducting or sourcing training for executives, managers and leaders, Agile teams, and specialty roles such as Product Owner, Product Manager, Scrum Master, and Release Train Engineer - Facilitating Value Stream Identification Workshops (using supporting toolkit) and helping define and launch Agile Release Trains (ARTs) - Providing coaching and training to ART stakeholders and teams - Participating in critical, initial events like Program Increment (PI) Planning and Inspect and Adapt (I&A) - Fostering SAFe Communities of Practice (CoPs) - Communicating progress - Implementing Lean-Agile focus days with guest speakers, and presenting internal case studies - Benchmarking and connecting with the external community - Promoting continuing Lean-Agile education - Extending Lean-Agile practices to other areas of the company, including Lean Budgets, Lean Portfolio Management, contracts, and human resources - Helping to establish relentless improvement (see Accelerate in the Implementation Roadmap)
To help ARTs optimize the flow of value, SPCs must coach ART leaders to look beyond the current PI and current capabilities. As roles and events are mastered, the focus must shift to the Continuous Delivery Pipeline and the enterprise competency of Agile Product Delivery. This involves both managing and continuously improving the speed and quality of the ART's capability to:
- Continuously Explore: Sense and respond to market/business needs to build and maintain the program Vision, Roadmap, Backlog and Architectural Runway. - Continuously Integrate: Build, validate and learn from working system increments - Continuously Deploy: Deliver validated features into production, where they are ready for release
What activities are involved in preparing for ART Launch?
- Define the ART - Set the launch date and cadence for the program calendar - Train ART leaders and stakeholders - Establish the Agile teams - Train Product Managers and Product Owners (POs) - Train Scrum Masters - Train System Architects/Engineers - Assess and evolve launch readiness Prepare the program backlog
Why would you an objective be uncommitted?
- Dependencies with another team or supplier that cannot be guaranteed. - The team has little to no experience with functionality of this type. - In this case the teams may plan 'Spikes' early in the PI to reduce uncertainty. There are a large number of fairly critical objectives that the business is depending on and the team is already loaded close to full capacity.
What are some tips that improve continuous learning culture?
- Develop and visualize both quantitative and qualitative metrics to assess the tangible results of relentless improvement - Expand Gemba visits to customers, partner organizations, and enterprises in unrelated markets to gain new insights that can spark fresh innovation initiatives - Invest in advanced digital systems for knowledge sharing, collaboration, and rapid access to accurate information
What are some tips to improve team and technical agility?
- Double down on the principles that drive Agile Teams and Agile Release Trains. - Train all teams in built-in practices, with software-centric teams getting trained in Agile Software Engineering - Ensure all teams apply and improve built-in quality practices
What are some tips to improve Enterprise Solution Delivery?
- Ensure specification and roadmaps build and validate the solution and its Continuous Delivery Pipeline together - Include continuous delivery concerns and the cost of delayed value in system architecture decisions - Measure and improve 'continuish' integration practices across the entire supply chain
What's the business benefits of PI Planning?
- Establishing face-to-face communication across all team members and stakeholders - Building the social network the ART depends upon - Aligning development to business goals with the business context, vision, and Team and Program PI objectives - Identifying dependencies and fostering cross-team and cross-ART collaboration - Providing the opportunity for 'just the right amount' of architecture and Lean User Experience (UX) guidance - Matching demand to capacity and eliminating excess Work in Process (WIP) - Fast decision-making
What are some tips that improve Lean-Agile Leadership?
- Evolve the focus from developing individual Lean-Agile leaders to building high-performing leadership teams - Form Communities of Practice specifically for leaders interested in connecting with peers who are also developing as Lean-Agile leaders - Launch a leader development initiative using one or modules of the Leading in the Digital Age series from Scaled Agile
ARTs and Solution Trains, throughout every PI and every iteration in the PI, continuously
- Explore user value - Integrate and demo value - Continuously deploy to production - Release value whenever the business needs it
What are some tips to improve Agile Product Delivery?
- Focus on Customer Centricity and Design Thinking to help drive better solutions. - Train Product Management in Agile Product and Solutions Management to better understand the practices and apply the tools - Map the delivery pipeline to identify the delays to flow, guide investments in automation, and achieve the goal of release on demand.
Why should you have respect for people and culture at a company?
- Generative culture (a culture that regenerates based on what you give it) - People do all the work - Your customer is whoever consumes your work - Build long-term partnerships based on trust - To change the culture you have to change the organization
Describe in detail what Epics are
- Implemented by stable, cross-functional Value Streams and ARTs - No definitive start and end date; scope is variable. Continue until WSJF says otherwise. - Progress is measured as outcomes against the benefit hypothesis - Lean Business Case, based on benefit hypothesis and definition of a MVP - Implementation follows the build -- measure -- learn SAFe Lean Startup Cycle - After the Lean Business Case is approved, commitment is to the evaluation of the MVP
Hub-and-spoke LACE team distributions work well when...?
- In the largest enterprises, a small LACE typically serves as the hub for decentralized spokes. Each spoke operates as the local center of coordination for distribution, consultants, supplier resources, tooling and technology, and sources of funding - certain core practices are developed centrally in the hub and then shared and adapted locally. Effective local practices are communicated back to the hub for sharing with other spokes - Funding for hub personnel, as well as common tooling, may be centralized. The costs for spoke personnel, as well as outside consulting and coaching, are typically funded locally
What are some benefits of Kanban systems?
- Increase visibility into existing and upcoming work, and better understand the flow of work - Ensure continuous refinement of new value definition and acceptance criteria - Foster collaboration across disciplines, functions, and levels - Support economic decision-making by setting the policies for the pull-based mechanism - Establish connections between the ARTs, Solution Train, and Portfolio
What is entailed in innovation at an organization? Why innovate?
- Innovative people - Time and space for innovation - Go See - Experimentation and feedback - Pivot without mercy or guilt - Innovative riptides
Initially, team coaching will likely focus on mastering the team level SAFe roles and events, including:
- Iteration planning - refine and adjust initial iteration plans developed during - PI Planning Backlog refinement - refine and adjust the scope and definition of user stories defined during PI Planning - Daily stand-ups - to help the team stay aligned on progress toward iteration goals, raise impediments and get help - Iteration Reviews and System demos - to get feedback from stakeholders and assess progress toward PI Objectives - Iteration Retrospectives - to review team practices and identify ways to improve - Scrum-of-Scrums, PO Sync and ART to maintain alignment and resolve issues with other teams on the ART
The Agile Program Management Office (APMO) takes an active, leadership role in the SAFe transformation. In so doing, they model the Lean-Agile Principles, behaviors, and practices, including:
- Lead the change and foster relentless improvement - Align development value streams to enterprise strategy - Establish enterprise value flow - Implement Lean financial management and budgeting - Align portfolio demand to implementation capacity and Agile forecasting - Evolve leaner and more objective governance practices - Foster a leaner approach to contracts and supplier relationships
To be effective, the guiding coalition for guiding organizational transformation requires...?
- Leaders who can set the vision, show the way, and remove impediments to change - Practitioners, managers, and change agents who can implement specific process changes - Sufficient organizational credibility to be taken seriously - The expertise needed to make fast, intelligent decisions.
What are the steps in accelerating SAFe?
- Measure the performance of the portfolio - Reinforce the basics - Progress toward mastery - Anchor new behaviors in the culture - Apply learnings across the enterprise
Why is flow important at an organization?
- Optimize sustainable value delivery - build in quality - understand, exploit, and manage variability - move from projects to products
coaching the ART typically starts with the essential SAFe roles and events, including:
- PI Planning - create alignment and shared commitment to a common set of objectives - System Demos - close the rapid feedback loop through integration and validation of working systems - Inspect & Adapt Workshops - enable relentless improvement and systems thinking - Scrum-of-Scrums, PO Sync, and ART Sync - maintain alignment, resolve issues, and enable attainment of PI Objectives
When you launch more ARTs and value streams, enterprise leaders drive and facilitate the broader implementation of SAFe. These ARTs and development value streams' success creates a buzz in the organization about the new and better way of working. Launching more ARTs and value streams also exposes the traditional, phase-gated processes at higher-levels that impede performance. Inevitably, this puts pressure on the portfolio and triggers additional changes to improve strategic flow further. These issues typically include:
- Perpetual overload of demand versus capacity, which jeopardizes throughout and undermines the strategy - Project-based funding (bringing the people to work), cost accounting friction, and overhead - No understanding of how to apply capitalization in Agile - Overly detailed business cases based on speculative, lagging ROI projections - Strangulation by the iron triangle (fixed scope, cost, and date projects) - Traditional Supplier management and coordination—focus on lowest cost, rather than the highest lifecycle value - Phase-gate approval processes that don't mitigate risk and discourage incremental delivery
Who are the attendees of a System Demo?
- Product Managers and Product Owners, who are usually responsible for running the demo - One or more members of the System Team, who are often responsible for setting up the demo in the staging environment - Business Owners, executive sponsors, customers, and customer proxies - System Architect/Engineering, IT operations, and other development participants
What's the benefit of PI Objectives?
- Provide a common language for communicating with business and technology stakeholders - Creates the near-term focus and vision - Enables the ART to assess its performance and the business value achieved via the Program Predictability Measure - Communicates and highlights each team's contribution to business value - Exposes dependencies that require coordination
What are some tips that improve Organizational Agility?
- Reinforce the principles with book club readings - Share best practices and learnings from optimizing value streams - Incorporate Gemba in everyone's work activities - Share strategy agility success stories
What are the parts of the SAFe committment?
- Teams agree to do everything reasonably in their power to meet the committed objectives - During the course of the PI, if it's discovered that some objectives are not achievable, then the teams agree to escalate immediately so that stakeholders are informed and corrective action can be taken
What are the signs of change?
- The new vision is being communicated around the company - Principal stakeholders are aligning - Something big is in the air, and people are catching on
There are a number of elements of Agile at scale that are unique to SAFe. These include:
- The role of the team in PI planning, Inspect and Adapt (I&A), and the IP iteration - Focus on and participation in the System Demo - Applying Features, user stories, and acceptance criteria to define and validate system behavior - Using story points as the measure of velocity and estimating - Understanding the flow of work through the Kanban systems, including the team's local Kanban - Collaboration with other teams and other roles, including Product Management and System Architecture - Introduction/application of Built-In Quality practices, including Continuous Integration, Test-First with test automation, and pair work - Building the larger team-of-teams that constitutes the ART (see below)
Decentralized LACE team distributions work well when...?
- There are independent business units, each with their own, largely autonomous SAFe portfolios. Each business unit's context varies enough that SAFe may be applied in different ways - Funding for LACE personnel, tooling, and coaching all comes from the individual business unit's budget - cross-business unit collaboration is effective enough to provide the necessary knowledge sharing
Centralized LACE team distributions work well when...?
- There is a single portfolio with a single instance of SAFe in a modest sized development enterprise (hundreds of practitioners) - Value streams and ARTs operate under a common budget - Funding for LACE personnel, tooling, and coaching, all operate under the same budget
What are some guidelines you should keep around system demos?
- Timebox the demo to one hour. A short timebox is critical to keep the continuous, biweekly involvement of key stakeholders. It also illustrates team professionalism and system readiness. - Share demo responsibilities among the team leads, Product Owners, and even team members who have new features to demo - Demo using the staging environment - Minimize demo preparation. - Demo the working, tested capabilities, not slideware. - Minimize demo presentation time. - Demo screen snapshots and pictures where appropriate - Discuss the impact of the current solution on NFRs
List some examples of the primary SAFe change agents that appear on the scene as certified SPCs
- Trusted consulting partners (find a Scaled Agile partner) - Internal business and technology leaders - Portfolio/program/project managers - Architects Analysts Process leads
When full integration at every iteration is too costly, the teams should consider:
- Using Test Doubles to speed integration and testing by substituting slow or expensive components with faster, cheaper proxies - Integrating a subset of Capabilities, components, or subsystems - Integrating to illustrate a particular feature, capability, or Nonfunctional Requirement (NFR) - Partial integration with the support of prototypes and mock-ups in place of scarce or expensive components - Less frequent integration (e.g., every other iteration) until it's feasible to do it more often
What makes PI objectives unique, especially over features?
- Validate understanding of the intent - Focus alignment on outcomes rather than process - Summarize data into meaningful and steerable information Features and acceptance criteria are excellent tools to help understand, capture, and collaborate around the work that needs to be done, but it's all too easy to get caught up in 'finishing the features' and missing the overall goals hiding inside. PI objectives help shift focus away from developing features to achieving the desired business outcomes.
To identify operational value streams at an enterprise for digitally enabled products and companies, what questions should one ask?
- What are the products and services that you serve to consumers and/or other businesses? - What market segments do you serve?
To identify operational value streams at an enterprise for internal IT?
- What key business processes do you enable? - What departments do you support? - What customers do they serve? How do these departments describe the services you provide? - What key business initiatives are targeted?
To identify operational value streams at an enterprise for embedded and cyber-physical systems builders and manufacturers?
- What products do you sell and support? - What are the larger subsystems of these products? - What key system operational capabilities are you enabling? - What critical non-functional requirements are being enhanced?
To identify operational value streams at an enterprise for independent software vendors?
- What software products and services do you sell? - What market segments do you serve?
What is the mentality of having relentless improvement? What is entailed?
- constant sense of danger - optimize the whole - problem-solving culture - reflect at key milestones - base improvements on facts
How do you effectively sense an opportunity?
- market research - customer feedback - direct observation of the customers in the marketplace
What are the steps of the organizational model in identifying value streams and Agile Release Trains that is optimized to facilitate the flow of value across functional silos, activities, and boundaries?
-Identify the Operational Value Streams - Identify the Solutions the operational value stream use of provide to customers -Identify the people who develop and support the solutions - Identify the Development Value Streams that build the solutions - Add the people needed to build the full business solution - Realize development value streams into ARTs
What are Kotter's stages for guiding organizational transformation and what it takes to make it stick? This is his approach to change management
1) Establishing a sense of urgency 2) Creating the guiding coalition 3) Developing a vision and strategy 4) Communicating the change vision 5) Empowering employees for broad-based action 6) Generating short-term wins 7) Consolidating gains and producing more change 8) Anchoring new approaches in the culture
Explain the steps you should take when developing your value stream
1) Identify operational value stream steps 2) Identify the Solutions the Operational Value Stream use, or Provide to Customers 3) Identify the People who Develop and Support the Solutions 4) Identify the Development Value Streams that Build the Solutions 5) Add the People Needed to Build the Full Business Solution 6) start to understand how to form Agile Release Trains(ARTs) to realize them; development value streams cross boundaries 7) Realize Development Value Streams into ARTs
What are the Agile Manifesto principles?
1) Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software 2) Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage 3) Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference for the shorter timescale 4) Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project 5) Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done. 6) The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation. 7) Working software is the primary measure of progress 8) Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely. 9) Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility 10) Simplicity -- the art of maximizing the amount of work not done -- is essential 11) The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams 12) At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
How can Lean Thinking be summarized
1) Precisely specify value by product 2) Identify the value stream for each product 3) Make value flow without interruptions 4) Let the customer pull value from the producer 5) Pursue perfection
What are the steps in implementing SAFe according to the implementation roadmap for businesses to get the best results?
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
What are the pillars of the House of Lean?
1) Respect for people and culture 2) Flow 3) Innovation 4) Relentless improvement
What steps must an organization take to create a SAFe coalition that is sufficiently powerful to institute change?
1) Train Lean-Agile change agents as Certified SAFe® Program Consultants (SPCs). They provide the knowledge and horsepower needed to implement the change. 2) Train executives, managers, and other leaders. They sponsor the change and support the implementation. Leading SAFe® is a two-day course designed for this purpose. 3) Charter a Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (LACE). This working group becomes the focal point and continuous source of inspiration and energy for change management activities.
How long is PI Planning typically?
2 days
How big is a Agile Release Train typically?
50-125 people
What's a good amount of PI objectives a team could establish?
7-10
IN DETAIL, explain the concept of respecting people and culture.
A Lean-Agile approach doesn't implement itself or perform any real work—people do. Respect for people and culture is a basic human need. ~When treated with respect, people are empowered to evolve their practices and improve.~ Management challenges people to change and may steer them toward better ways of working. However, it's the teams and individuals who learn problem-solving and reflection skills and are accountable for making the appropriate improvements. The driving force behind this new behavior is a generative culture, which is characterized by a positive, safe, performance-centric environment [8]. Achieving this culture requires the enterprise and its leaders to change first. The principle of respect for people and culture also extends to relationships with Suppliers, partners, customers, and the broader community that supports the Enterprise. When there's an urgency for positive change, transforming culture is possible. First, understand and implement the SAFe values and principles. Second, deliver winning results. The culture will change naturally over time
Before a successful change effort can begin, there must be a clear and compelling impetus for change: a general acknowledgment that the current ways of working are inadequate to deliver the performance needed either now or in the future. Organizations who are able to establish such a shared awareness typically meet one of two conditions:
A burning platform - Sometimes the need to change a product or service is obvious. The company is failing to compete, and the existing way of doing business is obviously inadequate to achieve a new solution within a survivable time frame. Jobs are at stake. This is the easier case for change. While there will always be those who are resistant, they are likely to be overcome by the wave of energy that drives a sense of urgency for mandatory change through the organization. Visionary leadership - In the absence of a burning platform, leadership must drive change proactively by taking a stand for a better future state. Lean-Agile Leaders must exhibit what Toyota [2] would call "a constant sense of danger"—a never-ending sense of potential crisis that fuels continuous improvement. This is often the less obvious reason to drive change, as the people in the organization may not see or feel the urgency to do the additional hard work that comes with change. After all, they are successful now. Why should they assume that they won't continue to be successful in the future? Isn't change risky? In this case, leaders must create a clear and compelling vision for change that answers why change is needed [3]. They must constantly communicate and impress the need for change on all, making it clear that maintaining the status quo is simply unacceptable. In rare instances, organizations have both a burning platform and visionary leadership with the courage to lead the change. With SAFe as the blueprint for scripting the change, such organizations can experience a rapid and dramatic turnaround from a bleak crisis to strong, positive business results and a bright future with strong, positive business results
What/why do you decentralize decision-making?
Achieving fast value delivery requires decentralized decision-making. This reduces delays, improves product development flow, enables faster feedback, and creates more innovative solutions designed by those closest to the local knowledge. However, some decisions are strategic, global, and have economies of scale that justify centralized decision-making. Since both types of decisions occur, creating a reliable decision-making framework is a critical step in empowering employees and ensuring a fast flow of value.
It's the _____ ____ _____ competency that enables the shortest sustainable lead-time to value
Agile Product Delivery
Explain the Agile Teams principle ART operates on
Agile Teams embrace the 'Agile Manifesto' and SAFe Core Values and Principles. They apply Scrum, Extreme Programming (XP), Kanban, and other Built-In Quality practices
What is an Epic?
An Epic 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, epics require the definition of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and approval by Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) before implementation. Portfolio epics are typically cross-cutting, typically spanning multiple value streams and Program Increments (PIs). SAFe recommends applying the Lean Startup build-measure-learn cycle for epics to accelerate the learning and development process, and to reduce risk
Who provides a Guardrail on budgetary spend in PI Planning?
Business Owners
Attendees of PI Planning include
Business Owners, Product Management, Agile Teams, System and Solution Architects/Engineering, the System Team, and other stakeholders, all of whom must be notified in advance to be well prepared.
What's involved in Day 1 of PI Planning?
Business context - A Business Owner or senior executive describes the current state of the business, shares the Portfolio Vision, and presents a perspective on how effectively existing solutions are addressing current customer needs. Product/solution vision - Product Management presents the current vision (typically represented by the next top 10 upcoming features) and highlights any changes from the previous PI planning event, as well as any forthcoming Milestones. Architecture vision and development practices - System Architect/Engineering presents the architecture vision. Also, a senior development manager may introduce Agile-supportive changes to development practices, such as test automation, DevOps, Continuous Integration, and Continuous Deployment, which are being advanced in the upcoming PI. Planning context and lunch - The RTE presents the planning process and expected outcomes. Team breakouts #1 - In the breakout, teams estimate their capacity for each Iteration and identify the backlog items they will likely need to realize the features. Each team creates their draft plans, visible to all, iteration by iteration. During this process, teams identify risks and dependencies and draft their initial team PI objectives. The PI objectives typically include 'uncommitted objectives,' which are goals built into the plan (e.g., stories that have been defined and included for these objectives), but are not committed to by the team because of too many unknowns or risks. Uncommitted objectives are not extra things to do in case there is time. Instead, they increase the reliability of the plan and give management an early warning of goals that the ART may not be able to deliver. The teams also add the features and associated dependencies to the program board, as shown in Figure 3. Draft plan review - During the tightly timeboxed draft plan review, teams present key planning outputs, which include capacity and load, draft PI objectives, potential risks, and dependencies. Business Owners, Product Management, and other teams and stakeholders review and provide input. Management review and problem-solving - It's likely that the draft plans present challenges such as scope, people and resource constraints, and dependencies. During the problem-solving meeting, management may negotiate scope changes and resolve other problems by agreeing to various planning adjustments. The RTE facilitates and keeps the primary stakeholders together for as long as necessary to make the decisions needed to reach achievable objectives. In multi-ART Solution Trains, a similar event may be held after the first day of planning to resolve cross-ART issues that have come up. Alternatively, the RTEs of the involved trains may talk with each other to raise issues that are then resolved in each ART's specific management review and problem-solving meeting. The Solution Train Engineer (STE) helps facilitate and resolve issues across the ARTs.
What are the two types of Epics?
Business epics directly deliver business value, while enabler epics are used to advance the Architectural Runway to support upcoming business or technical needs
How do you base milestones on objective evaluation of working systems?
Business owners, developers, and customers have a shared responsibility to ensure that investment in new solutions will deliver economic benefit. The sequential, phase-gate development model was designed to meet this challenge, but experience shows that it does not mitigate risk as intended. In Lean-Agile development, integration points provide objective milestones at which to evaluate the solution throughout the development life cycle. This regular evaluation provides the financial, technical, and fitness-for-purpose governance needed to assure that a continuing investment will produce a commensurate return.
What is applying cadence and synchronizing with cross-domain planning?
Cadence creates predictability and provides a rhythm for development. Synchronization causes multiple perspectives to be understood, resolved, and integrated at the same time. Applying development cadence and synchronization, coupled with periodic cross-domain planning, provides the mechanisms needed to operate effectively in the presence of the inherent development uncertainty.
Why do we choose to respond to change over following a plan?
Change is a reality that the development process must reflect. The strength of Lean-Agile development is in how it embraces change. As the system evolves, so does the understanding of the problem and the solution domain. Business stakeholder knowledge also improves over time, and customer needs evolve as well. Indeed, those changes in understanding add value to our system. Of course, the manifesto phrase "over following a plan" indicates that there is, in fact, a plan! Planning is an important part of Agile development. Indeed, Agile teams and programs plan more often and more continuously than their counterparts using a waterfall process. However, plans must adapt as new learning occurs, new information becomes visible, and the situation changes. Worse, evaluating success by measuring conformance to a plan drives the wrong behaviors (e.g., following a plan in the face of evidence that the plan is not working)
What are operational value streams?
Contains the steps and the people who deliver end-user value using solutions created by the development value streams
What are development value streams?
Contains the steps and the people who develop solutions used by operational value streams
Why do we choose customer collaboration over contract negotiation?
Customers are the ultimate deciders of value, so their close collaboration is essential in the development process. To convey the rights, responsibilities, and economic concerns of each party, contracts are often necessary—but recognize that contracts can over-regulate what to do and how to do it. No matter how well they're written, they don't replace regular communication, collaboration, and trust. Instead, contracts should be win-win propositions. Win-lose contracts usually result in poor economic outcomes and distrust, creating contentious short-term relationships instead of long-term business partnerships. Instead, favor customer collaboration.
Why should we chose individuals and interactions over processes and tools?
Deming notes, "If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, then you don't know what you are doing." So, agile processes in frameworks like Scrum, Kanban, and SAFe do matter. However, a process is only a means to an end. When we're captive to a process that isn't working, it creates waste and delays. So, favor individuals and interactions, then modify processes accordingly. In a distributed environment, tools are critically important to assist with communication and collaboration (e.g., video conferencing, text messaging, ALM tools, and wikis). This is especially true at scale. However, tools should supplement, rather than replace, face-to-face communication.
Design thinking inspires new ways to measure the success of our efforts. What are these ways?
Desirable - Do customers and users want the solution? Feasible - Can we deliver the right solution through a combination of build, buy, partner, or acquire endeavors/activities? Viable - Is the way we build and offer the solution creating more value than cost? For example, in a for-profit enterprise, are we profitable? Sustainable - Are we proactively managing our solution to account for its expected product-market lifecycle?
What four bodies of knowledge is SAFe grounded in?
DevOps, Lean, Agile, systems thinking
How do you build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles?
Developing solutions incrementally in a series of short iterations allows for faster customer feedback and mitigates risk. Subsequent increments build on the previous ones. Since the 'system always runs', some increments may serve as prototypes for market testing and validation; others become minimum viable products (MVPs). Still others extend the system to with new and valuable functionality. In addition, these early, fast feedback points help determine when to 'pivot,' where necessary to an alternate course of action.
Explain the known velocity principle ART operates on
Each ART can reliably estimate how much cargo (new features) can be delivered in a PI.
Explain the new system increment in every 2 weeks principle ART operates on
Each train delivers a new system increment every two weeks. The System Demo provides a mechanism for evaluating the working system, which is an integrated increment from all the teams.
What are Key Performance Indicators used for?
Each value stream defines a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), which can be used to evaluate the ongoing investment in a particular value stream
What is the primary responsibility of leadership?
Establishing a vision for change
The leaders, the SPCs, and the LACE will again play an active role. Their tasks may include
Establishing roles - Fill the three large solution roles—Solution Train Engineer (STE), Solution Management, and Solution Architect/Engineering. Establishing Solution Intent - Determine the responsibilities, process, and tools to define and document Solution Intent. For high-assurance systems, establish and/or evolve Lean-Agile verification and validation practices (see Compliance). Establishing a large solution Vision, Roadmap, and Metrics - Many elements of the spanning palette may be required for large value streams. These include vision, roadmap, metrics, Shared Services, System Team, and DevOps strategies, Lean User Experience (UX), Milestones, and releases. Introducing Capabilities and the Solution Backlog - Larger value streams benefit from the use of the capabilities backlog item, in which case the Solution Kanban must also be established. Implementing Pre- and Post-PI Planning, Solution Demo, and large solution Inspect and Adapt (I&A) - These events are required to prepare for individual ART PI planning, to follow up and coordinate Solution Objectives after planning, and to demonstrate the full solution to stakeholders. Integrating Suppliers - Large value streams typically have internal and/or external Suppliers. Whether they are already embracing Lean-Agile and SAFe principles or not, they must be integrated into the new way of working. Lean enterprises often take an active role in helping their suppliers adopt SAFe, as it improves the economics of the larger value stream. Whatever the case, the suppliers must at least be integrated into SAFe events at the large solution level.
How do you take an economic view?
Everyday decisions must be made in a proper economic context. This includes the strategy for incremental value delivery and the broader economic framework for each value stream. This framework highlights the trade-offs between risk, Cost of Delay (CoD), manufacturing, operational, and development costs. In addition, every development value stream must operate within the context of an approved budget, and be compliant to the guardrails which support decentralized decision-making.
What's included in content readiness?
Executive briefing - A briefing that defines the current business context Product vision briefing(s) - Briefings prepared by Product Management, including the top 10 features in the Program Backlog Architecture vision briefing - A presentation made by the CTO, Enterprise Architect, or System Architect to communicate new Enablers, features, and Nonfunctional Requirements (NFRs)
What SAFe practices provide transparency?
Executives, Lean Portfolio Management, and other stakeholders can see the Portfolio Kanban and program backlogs, and they have a clear understanding of the PI Objectives for each Agile Release Train or Solution Train. ARTs have visibility into the team's backlogs, as well as other Program Backlogs. Teams and programs commit to short-term, visible commitments that they routinely meet. Inspect and Adapt occurs with all relevant stakeholders and creates backlog improvement items from lessons learned. Teams and Agile Release Trains (ARTs) can see portfolio business and enabler Epics. They have visibility into new initiatives. Progress is based on objective measures of working solutions. (Principle #5) Everyone can understand the velocity and WIP of the teams and programs; strategy and the ability to execute are visibly aligned. Programs execute reliably, as noted below. Lean-Agile Leaders also play a critical role in creating an environment that fosters trust and transparency.
What is the turning point?
Existing business either master the new technology or decline and become relics of the last age
During PI planning, the teams get presented with new ____ and plan the _____ they need to deliver these alongside stories that represent work from their local context
Features; Stories
In detail, explain the concept of innovation
Flow builds a solid foundation for value delivery. But without innovation, both product and process will steadily decline. To support this critical part of the SAFe House of Lean, Lean-Agile Leaders engage in the following practices: - Hire, coach, and mentor innovation and entrepreneurship in the organization's workforce - Go see...get out of the office and into the actual workplace where the value is produced, and products are created and used (known as gemba). As Taiichi Ohno put it, "No useful improvement was ever invented at a desk." - Provide time and space for people to be creative to enable purposeful innovation. This can rarely occur in the presence of 100 percent utilization and daily firefighting. SAFe's Innovation and Planning Iteration is one such opportunity. - Apply Continuous Exploration, the process of constantly exploring the market and user needs, getting fast feedback on experiments, and defining a Vision, Roadmap, and set of Features that bring the most promising innovations to market. - Validate the innovation with customers, then pivot without mercy or guilt when the hypothesis needs to change. - Engage both top-down strategic thinking with organic team-based innovations to create a synergistic 'innovation riptide' that powers a tidal wave of new products, services, and capabilities
But in order to achieve Business Agility, the right things must be measured at the right time. SAFe addresses this via three measurement domains that can be applied to any value stream. What are these domains?
Flow, Outcomes, and Competency
Customer centricity is a mindset: Whenever a customer-centric enterprise makes a decision, it deeply considers the effect it will have on its end users. This motivates us to:
Focus on the customer - Customer-centric enterprises use segmentation to align and focus the enterprise on specific, targeted user segments Understand the customer's needs - Customer-centric enterprises move beyond merely listening to customers who ask for features. Instead, they invest the time to identify underlying and ongoing customer needs Think and feel like the customer - Customer-centric enterprises try to see the world from their customer's point of view Build whole product solutions - Customer-centric enterprises design a complete solution for the user's needs, ensuring that the initial and long-term experience of the customer is always ideal and evolving as needed Know customer lifetime value - Customer-centric enterprises move beyond a transactional mentality and instead focus on creating longer term relationships based on a clear and accurate understanding of how the customer derives value from the solution
What should you keep track of in a LACE mission statement
For (some business) who (this business does that) the (product) is a (explain what product is) that (explain what product does) Unlike (problem we are addressing) we (way of us addressing the problem In scope, out of scope, success criteria
What's the difference between Agile and Lean?
From a leadership perspective, Lean is different than Agile. Agile was developed as a team-based process for a small group of cross-functional, dedicated individuals who were empowered, skilled, and needed to build working functionality in a short time box. Management was not part of this definition. But excluding management from the way of working doesn't scale in an enterprise. By contrast, in Lean, managers are leaders who embrace the values of Lean, are competent in the basic practices, and teach these practices to others. They proactively eliminate impediments and take an active role in driving organizational change and facilitating relentless improvement
What are the types of operational value streams?
Fulfillment value streams represent the steps necessary to process a customer request, deliver a digitally-enabled product or service, and receive remuneration. Examples include providing a consumer with an insurance product or fulfilling an eCommerce sales order. Manufacturing value streams convert raw materials into the products customers purchase. Examples include consumer products, medical devices, and complex cyber-physical systems. Software product value streams offer and support software products. Examples include ERP systems, SaaS, and desktop and mobile applications. Supporting value streams include end-to-end workflows for various supporting activities. Examples include the lifecycle for employee hiring and retention, supplier contracting, executing the annual budget process, and completing a full enterprise sales cycle.
How are Program Epics structured?
Funnel - All big program initiatives are welcome in the 'funnel' state. There is no WIP limit. Reviewing - This is where subject matter experts and stakeholders perform the review of the epics and prioritize them using WSJF to determine which ones should move on for more in-depth exploration. Again, WIP limits apply. Analyzing - During this diagnostic and exploration state, subject matter experts and stakeholders are encouraged to: Refine size estimates, and WSJF relative to other epics Consider solution alternatives Identify possible Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) and Minimum Marketable Features (MMF) Determine the costs involved, technology and architectural enablement, infrastructure, using a Lean business case (described in the epics article). Guided by analysis and insights, Product Management along with Business Owners (and typically Lean Portfolio Management personnel) approve or reject the epics. Approved epics then get split into features and transitioned to the funnel of the program Kanban, where they will be prioritized based on WSJF. WIP limits also apply to the analyzing state.
What can senior executives do to get a rich source of ideas and possibilities to create value at their businesses?
Have a "go-see" mentality
Explain the Innovation and Planning principle ART operates on
IP Iterations occur at the end of every PI and provide an estimating guard band (buffer) as well as dedicated time for PI planning, innovation, continuing education, and infrastructure work
What are the stations on the tracks?
Identify station - (See Create the Implementation Plan) This station includes the following types of work: Communication of the change vision, Identifying trains using the ART canvas, Preparing for the first ART launch, inc`luding setting the date for PI planning Scope and structure of the ART is determined, and the needed practitioners are identified, and Establishing a training plan ~Data captured: number of practitioners in each ART, including the PI cadence (start and end date) for each ART Preparation station - (See Prepare for ART Launch) Typical activities include: Defining the ARTs, Organizing teams into feature and component teams, Performing Leading SAFe training, Training Product Owners, Product Managers, and Scrum Masters, Assessing and evolving launch readiness, Preparing the program backlog ~Data captured: the PI cadence (start and end date) for each ART, the number of people trained for each role Launch station - (See Train Teams and Launch the ART) Typical activities include: Conducting SAFe for Teams training, Conducting the first PI planning event ~Data captured: date of first PI planning, the total time (cycle time) for a train in this state First PI station - (See Coach ART Execution) Typical activities include: Coaching the ART, Finalizing establishment of roles, including any specialty training required, Executing the first PI, Conducting the first System Demo, Holding the first I&A workshop, Reinforcing the Lean-Agile mindset and SAFe principles, Ensuring successful events ~Data captured: start and end date for each ART, estimated date of second PI planning event, estimated coaching end date, first PI predictability measure Second PI station - (See Coach ART Execution) Typical activities include: Observing improvement items from first I&A, Completing the second I&A workshop, Assessing PI predictability and other relevant objective measures, Observing and coaching self-managing and self-improving behaviors, Assessing progress toward a relentless-improvement mindset, Observing significant events, including system demo, and ensuring that events are occurring on a regular cadence, Observing next PI planning event ~Data captured: PI predictability measure, PI performance metrics, date of the second PI planning event Aftercare station - (See Coach ART Execution) The aftercare station timing is a little more subjective, but it usually occurs after two to four PIs. Typical activities and measures include: PI predictability achieving target zone (80-100 percent) Planning future coaching needs Exhibiting self-reflection and relentless improvement ~Data captured: start and end date for each ART in this state, PI predictability measures
What are some benefits of uncommitted objectives?
Improved economics - Without uncommitted objectives, a team is committing to a 100 percent scope in a fixed timebox. This forces teams to trade off quality or build other buffers into the system. The other buffers can accumulate, and convert 'uncertain earliness to certain lateness', resulting in less overall throughput. Increased reliability - Uncommitted objectives represent variable scope, allowing confidence in the delivery of the main priorities. In turn, delivering on the stated commitments is the most important factor in building trust between the teams and the stakeholders. Adaptability to change - To reliably deliver on a cadence, uncommitted objectives provide the capacity margin needed to meet commitments, yet alter priorities if necessary, when fact patterns change.
What are the states of the railway?
Input funnel - Used for numerous purposes, this state's primary role is to act as an opportunity for stakeholders to volunteer their value streams for transformation. Other purposes include collecting feedback, offering suggestions for improvement or points of discussion, or identifying challenges. In short, whatever is needed. There are no WIP limits for the funnel. When ready, a value stream is pulled into the transformation backlog state. (Note: At Northwestern Mutual, the funnel state also features the barn, a holding place for a small herd of what they label 'impediment cows,' which are explained below.) Transformation backlog - The transformation backlog is the to-do state. This is where value streams are prioritized for transformation based on opportunity and support from relevant stakeholders. Value streams stay here until they meet the following exit criteria: Leadership prepared - Development value stream stakeholders have been trained in the new way of working, established and communicated a sense of urgency, built the guiding coalition, and developed and communicated the change vision. ARTs identified - The operational and development value streams have been analyzed, and prospective ARTs have been identified (see Identify Value Streams and ARTs). Development Value Stream Canvas defined - The development value stream itself is further defined and the development value stream canvas is created (see Create the Implementation Plan). SPCs trained - In order to provide the knowledge and coaching expertise, additional SPCs in the value stream are trained (see Train Lean-Agile Change Agents). A coaching plan is created. This state is WIP limited, ensuring adequate LACE and SPC support. The tracks - The tracks represent the doing state, where the ARTs are structured, launched, and operated to achieve the aim of the development value stream. There are five intermediate stations on this track, described below. The tracks are WIP limited in two ways: there are only a small number of tracks (value streams) available, and there can be no more than 'X' trains on each track. Sustain and improve - Once an ART can run independently, without the constant attention of coaches, the train is moved to the sustain and improve state on the BVIR. This section displays all the SAFe value streams and ARTs in the organization that have been launched to date. This state is not WIP limited; the more the merrier! As the name indicates, the arrival of each train at the sustain and improve state is not the end of its journey. It's only a milepost. Once it arrives, each train's relentless improvement journey begins. In fact, as of version 5.0 of SAFe, this final state has been renamed to "Accelerate" with new guidance and tools to Measure & Grow using self-assessments that can help diagnose where the organization is in its adoption of SAFe along 7 competencies and 21 dimensions. This is consistent with the value of Relentless Improvement that has long been part of the foundation of SAFe.
What are the three phases of technological, "world-shaking" disruptions?
Installation Period, Turning Point, Deployment Period
What is iteration planning?
It aligns all team members to the common goals described by the Team PI Objectives and to the outcome to be demoed at the iteration review and system demos. During this event, all team members collaborate to determine how much of the Team Backlog they can commit to delivering during the upcoming iteration based on the available team capacity. The team summarizes the work as a set of committed Iteration Goals. The specifics of planning, however, will differ based on whether the team works in ScrumXP or Kanban
What is purpose?
It clarifies the direction for the change and sets the mission for all to follow. It avoids the potentially confusing details and focuses everyone on the why, not the how, of the change.
What is motivation?
It starts to move people in the right direction. After all, change is hard, and pain is inevitable, especially in the early stages. People's jobs will change. The vision helps motivate people by giving them a compelling reason to make the change. Perhaps most importantly, it underlines the fact there is really no job security in the status quo.
What does Leading SAFe teach?
It teaches leaders the SAFe Lean-Agile mindset, principles and practices, and the most effective leadership values for managing the new generation of knowledge workers. It also teaches how to: - Execute and release value through ARTs - Build large systems with Large Solution SAFe - Build an Agile portfolio - Lead a Lean-Agile transformation at enterprise scale
What's the basic building block of Agile development?
Iterations
What's the primary mechanism to achieve SAFe Principle #6 - Visualize and limit WIP, reduce batch sizes, and manage queue length, as well as the Lean concept of flow.
Kanban systems
What is needed to create the guiding coalition?
Kotter says a "sufficiently powerful guiding coalition" of stakeholders is needed
What serves as a focal point of activity, a continuous source of energy that can help power the enterprise through the necessary changes?
LACE
Think of this stage as a train picking up steam and moving at an accelerated pace. The larger business opportunity has arrived, enabling the enterprise to "consolidate gains and produce more change" by launching more Agile release trains and value streams [1]. This allows the business to start realizing the fuller benefits of SAFe, effectively shifting to the next higher gear of the transformation.
Launch More ARTs and Value Streams
Who is ultimately responsible for the adoption of the Lean-Agile approach?
Leaders
What is Lean-Agile leadership in a House of Lean context?
Leaders apply Lean-thinking as the basis for decision-making, model the Lean-Agile mindset in daily activities, and teach it to others
What is visionary leadership?
Leadership must drive change proactively by taking a stand for a better future state. Lean-Agile Leaders must exhibit what Toyota [2] would call "a constant sense of danger"—a never-ending sense of potential crisis that fuels continuous improvement. This is often the less obvious reason to drive change, as the people in the organization may not see or feel the urgency to do the additional hard work that comes with change. After all, they are successful now. Why should they assume that they won't continue to be successful in the future? Isn't change risky? In this case, leaders must create a clear and compelling vision for change that answers why change is needed [3]. They must constantly communicate and impress the need for change on all, making it clear that maintaining the status quo is simply unacceptable.
The target for choosing the first ART when creating an implementation plan is often one that best meets the following criteria:
Leadership support - Some senior leaders may have already been trained in SAFe and will be anxious to put their training to work. Moreover, it's likely that many of these leaders have had previous experience with Agile development. Clear products or solutions - SAFe is most easily applied to a clear and tangible solution, something the company sells directly or values highly. Collaborating teams - Somewhere in the enterprise there are already teams collaborating on building a larger solution. Some may already be Agile, some not. But given the business's current challenges, the teams may be ready to embrace this change. Significant challenge or opportunity - Change is hard. The smart enterprise selects a subject that is truly worthy of its effort, ideally a large existing challenge or a new opportunity. Creating a short-term win in these areas of the organization will produce immediate benefits and facilitate faster and broader adoption.
What thing informed by Strategic Themes and appropriate Guardrails, enables development value streams and ARTs to move fast and make decentralized decisions while staying aligned to Portfolio-level objectives?
Lean Budgets
How do you visualize and limit WIP, reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lengths?
Lean enterprises strive to achieve a state of continuous flow, where new system capabilities move quickly and visibly from concept to cash. Keys to implementing flow are: 1. Visualize and limit the amount of work in process (WIP). This increases throughput and limits demand to actual capacity. 2. Reduce the batch sizes of work to facilitate fast and more reliable flow. 3. Manage queue lengths to reduce the wait times for new functionality.
Explain the differences between the traditional approach and the Lean-Agile approach
Lean-Agile >>> Traditional Approach 1) Decentralized decision making > Centralized Control 2) Demand management; continuous value flow > project overload 3) Light-weight, epic-only business cases > Detailed Project Plans 4) Decentralized, rolling-wave planning > Centralized annual planning 5) Agile estimating and planning > Work breakdown structure 6) Lean-Agile budgeting and self-managing Agile Release Trains > Project based funding and control 7) Objective, fact-based measures and milestones > Waterfall milestones
How do you unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers?
Lean-Agile leaders understand that ideation, innovation, and employee engagement are not generally motivated by individual incentive compensation. Such individual incentives can create internal competition and destroy the cooperation necessary to achieve the larger aim of the system. Providing autonomy and purpose, minimizing constraints, creating an environment of mutual influence, and better understanding the role of compensation are keys to higher levels of employee engagement. This approach yields better outcomes for individuals, customers, and the enterprise.
What is the foundation of the House of Lean?
Lean-Agile leadership
Who manages a Program Kanban?
Local content authority, Product Management, and System Architects manage this Kanban.
What's included in logistics readiness?
Locations - Each planning location must be prepared in advance Technology and tooling - Real-time access to information and tooling to support distributed planning or remote attendees Communication channels - Primary and secondary audio, video, and presentation channels must be available
What does establishing enterprise flow include?
Managing the flow of work from portfolio level initiatives is an essential step in the maturity cycle. This flow requires implementing the Portfolio Backlog and Kanban system, filling the role of Epic Owners by adopting the Epics construct, and the Lean business case. Also, Enterprise Architects establish enabler epics that provide common technological underpinnings, which support the broader use cases across the full portfolio.
Why do you organize around value?
Many enterprises today are organized around principles developed during the last century. In the name of intended efficiency, most are organized around functional expertise. But in the digital age, the only sustainable competitive advantage is the speed with which an organization can respond to the needs of its customers with new and innovative solutions. These solutions require cooperation amongst all the functional areas, with their incumbent dependencies, handoffs, waste and delays. Instead, Business Agility demands that enterprises organize around value to deliver more quickly. And when market and customer demands change, the enterprise must quickly and seamlessly reorganize around that new value flow.
What is the result of technological disruptions?
Massive societal change, disruption, and a new economic order
Explain the dedicated people principle ART operates on
Most people needed by the ART are dedicated full time to the train, regardless of their functional reporting structure
What are possible scenarios for the ART design?
Multiple development value streams can fit within a single ART - When several related products or solutions can be produced with a relatively small number of people, a single ART may deliver multiple value streams. A single development value stream can fit within an ART - Often, a Value Stream can be realized with 100 or fewer practitioners. Many development groups are already organized into units of about that size, so this is a common case. In this case, the ART is roughly the same as the value stream. Everyone is in that ART! Multiple ARTs are required for large development value streams - When a lot of people are involved, the development value stream must be split into multiple ARTs, as described in the next section, and form a Solution Train.
How are program Kanbans structured?
New ideas begin with Continuous Exploration and may originate locally from the ART or come from an upstream Kanban (e.g., solution or Portfolio Kanban). The following process states describe its flow: Funnel - All new ideas are welcome here. They may include new functionality, enhancement of the existing system functions, or Enabler work. Analyzing - New ideas that align with the Vision and support the Strategic Themes are further explored by Agile Teams when they have available capacity. Refinement includes the collaboration to turn the loosely-formed idea into one or more well-formed features with descriptions, business benefit hypotheses, acceptance criteria, and sizes in normalized story points. Each feature may require prototyping or other forms of exploration by Agile Teams. The WIP limit for this state must account for the availability of Product Management as well as the capacity of teams and other subject matter experts. Program Backlog - The highest-priority features that were analyzed and approved by Product Management advance to this state, where they are prioritized with Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF), relative to the rest of the backlog, and await implementation. Implementing - At every Program Increment (PI) boundary the ART pulls the top features from the program backlog and moves them into the implementing state. Through the PI Planning process, they get split into stories, planned into iterations and subsequently implemented by teams during the PI. Validating on staging - During each iteration, features that are ready for feedback get pulled into this state. The teams integrate and test them with the rest of the system in a staging environment (or its closest proxy) and then present to Product Management and other stakeholders for approval. Approved features move to the 'ready' part of this state, where they're prioritized again using WSJF to await deployment. Deploying to production - When capacity becomes available for deployment activities (or immediately in a fully automated continuous delivery environment) the feature gets moved to production. In systems that separate deployment from release (see Continuous Deployment for more details), the feature moves to the 'ready' part of this state to await release. In other systems, the feature automatically moves to the releasing state because once it arrives in the production environment, users can immediately access it. This state is WIP limited to avoid the buildup of features that are deployed but not yet released. Releasing - When there's sufficient value, market need, and opportunity, features are released to some or all of the customers, where the evaluation of the benefit hypothesis happens. While the feature moves to the 'done' state, new work items may be created based on the learning gathered from the feature.
What is the installation period?
New technology and financial capital combine to create a bunch of new innovations over a relatively short time
How many uncommitted objectives should a team have?
No more than 2-3; However, teams do their best to deliver them, and they are included in the capacity and plan for the PI. However, since these they might not be finished in the PI, stakeholders plan accordingly
Is every adoption of SAFe identical?
No, it is not identical
Is there a perfectly sequential step-by-step implementation of SAFe in any enterprise?
No, there is not a perfectly sequential step-by-step implementation of SAFe in any enterprise
What are the two types of value streams called?
Operational value streams and development value streams
What does PI planning need to be successful?
Organizational readiness - Strategic alignment and teams and trains setup Content readiness - Management and development preparedness Logistics readiness - Considerations for running a successful event
And most importantly, the first ____ ______ have illustrated the effectiveness of adopting SAFe and continuously improving the competencies of the Lean Enterprise.
PI deliverables
The process of setting realistic ____ ____ also helps avoid too much work in process in the system, in addition to alignment
PI objectives
SAFe is based on the empirical _________________________ model, so there is no such thing as perfect readiness for a launch.
Plan-Do-Check-Adjust (PDCA)
What's included in Day 2 of PI Planning?
Planning adjustments - the event begins with management presenting any changes to planning scope, people, and resources. Team breakouts #2 - Teams continue planning based on their agenda from the previous day, making the appropriate adjustments. They finalize their objectives for the PI, to which the Business Owners assign business value, as shown in Figure 4. Final plan review and lunch - During this session, all teams present their plans to the group. At the end of each team's time slot, the team states their risks and impediments and provides the risks to the RTE for use later in the ROAMing exercise. The team then asks the Business Owners if the plan is acceptable. If the plan is accepted the team brings their team PI objective sheet to the front of the room so everyone can see the aggregate objectives unfold in real-time. If the Business Owners have concerns, teams are given the opportunity to adjust the plan as needed to address the issues identified. The team then presents their revised plan. Program risks - During planning, teams have identified program risks and impediments that could impact their ability to meet their objectives. These are resolved in a broader management context in front of the whole train. One by one, the risks are discussed and addressed with honesty and transparency, and then categorized into one of the following categories: Resolved - The teams agree that the risk is no longer a concern. Owned - Someone on the train takes ownership of the risk since it cannot be resolved during PI planning. Accepted - Some risks are just facts or potential problems that must be understood and accepted. Mitigated - Teams identify a plan to reduce the impact of the risk. Confidence vote - Once program risks have been addressed, teams vote on their confidence in meeting their team PI objectives. Plan rework - If necessary, teams rework their plans until a high confidence level can be reached. This is one occasion where alignment and commitment are valued more highly than adhering to a timebox. Planning retrospective and moving forward - Finally, the RTE leads a brief retrospective for the PI planning event to capture what went well, what didn't, and what can be done better next time, as shown in Figure 6. Typically a discussion about the next steps, along with final instructions to the teams, follows. This might include: - Cleaning up the rooms used for planning - Capturing the team PI objectives and stories in an Agile project management tool - Reviewing team and ART events calendars - Determining Iteration Planning and daily stand-up (DSU) locations and timings.
What questions should you ask yourself to determine if there is organizational readiness?
Planning scope and context - Is the scope (product, system, technology domain) of the planning process understood? Do we know which teams need to plan together? Business alignment - Is there reasonable agreement on priorities among the Business Owners? Agile teams - Do we have Agile teams? Are there dedicated team members and an identified Scrum Master and Product Owner for each team?
The ______ ____ system describes the process 'states' that an epic goes through on its way from creation through completion.
Portfolio Kanban
What is the deployment period?
Production capital of the new technological giants starts to take over (like Google)
Not everything that was envisioned by the various business stakeholders will likely be achieved in the PI timebox. Lower-priority work items get moved back into the _____ ______
Program Backlog
What is PI Planning?
Program Increment (PI) Planning is a cadence-based, face-to-face 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.
The vision for change provides what key benefits?
Purpose - It clarifies the purpose and direction for the change and sets the mission for all to follow. It avoids the potentially confusing details and focuses everyone on the why, not the how, of the change. Motivation - It starts to move people in the right direction. After all, change is hard, and pain is inevitable, especially in the early stages. People's jobs will change. The vision helps motivate people by giving them a compelling reason to make the change. Perhaps most importantly, it underlines the fact there is really no job security in the status quo. Alignment - It helps to start the coordinated action necessary to assure that hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of people work together toward a new and more personally rewarding goal. With a clarity of vision, people are empowered to take the actions necessary to achieve the vision without the constant need for management supervision or check-ins.
What's the fastest way to reduce time to market?
Reducing delays in the value stream is always the fastest way to reduce time-to-market
What roles help ensure successful execution of the ART?
Release Train Engineer (RTE) is a servant leader who facilitates program execution, impediment removal, risk and dependency management, and continuous improvement. Product Management is responsible for 'what gets built,' as defined by the Vision, Roadmap, and new features in the Program Backlog. They work with customers and Product Owners to understand and communicate their needs, and also participate in solution validation. System Architect/Engineering is an individual or team that defines the overall architecture of the system. They work at a level of abstraction above the teams and components and define Nonfunctional Requirements (NFRs), major system elements, subsystems, and interfaces. Business Owners are key stakeholders of the ART and have ultimate responsibility for the business outcomes of the train. Customers are the ultimate buyers of the solution.
What course should you take if you want to become a Product Owner or Product Manager?
SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager course
What course should you take if you want to become a Scrum Master?
SAFe Scrum Master course
What course should you take if you want to become a System Architect?
SAFe System and Solution Architect course
What SAFe course trains teams in SAFe?
SAFe for Teams
Who is part of the sufficiently powerful guiding coalition for change to lead SAFe?
SPCs AND other stakeholders and senior executives must step in, step up, and lead the change.
Who leads the implementation of initial ARTs?
SPCs, supported by SAFe-trained ART stakeholders and members of the Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (LACE)
What are the two specialty roles in an Agile Team?
Scrum Master and Product Owner
Name some Agile practices
Scrum, XP, Kanban
What does value mean in the House of Lean? What does it entail?
Shortest sustainable lead time. Best quality and value to people and society. High morale, safety, customer delight.
When dealing with the planning of the ARTs that will impact each other, some work will be pushed back into the _____ _______ for re-evaluation in a later PI.
Solution Backlog
What team topologies does SAFe implement to simplify the job of team design when you have several Agile teams under one Agile Release Train?
Stream-aligned team - organized around the flow of work and has the ability to deliver value directly to the customer or end user. Complicated subsystem team - organized around specific subsystems that require deep specialty skills and expertise. Platform team - organized around the development and support of platforms that provide services to other teams. Enabling team - organized to assist other teams with specialized capabilities and help them become proficient in new technologies.
What following functions play an essential part in ART success?
System Teams typically assist in building and maintaining development, continuous integration, and test environments. Shared Services are specialists—for example, data security, information architects, database administrators (DBAs)—that are necessary for the success of an ART but cannot be dedicated to a specific train.
Which most common problems with the traditional Agile development do ARTs address?
Teams working on the same solution operate independently and asynchronously. That makes it extremely difficult to integrate the full system routinely. In other words, 'The teams are iterating, but the system isn't.
Explain the Face-to-Face planning principle ART operates on
The ART plans its work at periodic, mostly face-to-face PI Planning events/
What are ARTs organized around?
The Enterprise's significant Development Value Streams
_________ _________ _________ help Agile Release Trains (ARTs) and Solution Trains match demand to capacity based on Work in Process (WIP) limits, and visualizing bottlenecks in each process state helps identify opportunities for relentless improvement (described in the SAFe House of Lean). They also include policies governing the entry and exit of work items in each state.
The Kanban systems
What is LACE, why is it important, and what's the recipe to make up a LACE?
The Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (LACE) is a small team of people dedicated to implementing the SAFe Lean-Agile way of working. Creating a LACE is often one of the key differentiators between companies practicing Agile in name only and those fully committed to adopting Lean-Agile practices and getting the best business outcomes. The LACE is the third element of the 'sufficiently powerful guiding coalition' for change, which is made up of three primary ingredients: -Train a number of Lean-Agile change agents as SAFe Program Consultants (SPCs) - Train executives, managers, and other leaders - Charter a LACE
What is the cornerstone of a new management approach and an enhanced company culture that enables Business Agility?
The Lean-Agile mindset
Name a method to visualize and manage the flow of Features and Capabilities from ideation to analysis, implementation, and release through the Continuous Delivery Pipeline
The Program and Solution Kanban systems
What represents the fundamental beliefs that are key to SAFe's effectiveness?
The SAFe Core Values
Leaders are expected to embrace and apply...?
The SAFe principles
Business Agility
The ability to compete and thrive in the digital age by quickly responding to market changes and emerging opportunities with innovative, digitally-enabled business solutions - respond to market changes and opportunities - How? Innovative, DIGITALLY-enabled business solutions
What part of the Implementation Roadmap establishes the urgency for change (and the critical mass of informed and dedicated people needed to implement SAFe effectively?
The first four steps of the Implementation Roadmap: - Reaching the Tipping Point -Train Lean-Agile Change Agents - Train Executives, Managers, and Leaders - Create a Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (LACE)
Explain the foundation of leadership in the House of Lean
The foundation of Lean is leadership, a key enabler for team success. Leaders are ultimately responsible for the successful adoption of the Lean-Agile approach. According to management consultant and efficiency expert W. Edwards Deming, "Such a responsibility cannot be delegated" [9] to direct reports, Lean-Agile champions, working groups, a Program Management Office (PMO), process teams, outside consultants, or any other party. Therefore, leaders must be trained in these new and innovative ways of thinking and exhibit the principles and behaviors of Lean-Agile leadership. From a leadership perspective, Lean is different than Agile. Agile was developed as a team-based process for a small group of cross-functional, dedicated individuals who were empowered, skilled, and needed to build working functionality in a short time box. Management was not part of this definition. But excluding management from the way of working doesn't scale in an enterprise. By contrast, in Lean, managers are leaders who embrace the values of Lean, are competent in the basic practices, and teach these practices to others. They proactively eliminate impediments and take an active role in driving organizational change and facilitating relentless improvement. Additional guidance on leadership as the foundation of Lean-Agile transformation using SAFe can be found in the Lean-Agile Leadership competency article.
IN DETAIL, explain the concept of relentless improvement
The fourth pillar, relentless improvement, encourages learning and growth through continuous reflection and process enhancements. A constant sense of competitive danger drives the company to pursue improvement opportunities aggressively. Leaders and teams do the following: - Optimize the whole, not the parts, of both the organization and the development process - Reinforce the problem-solving mindset throughout the organization, where all are empowered to engage in daily improvements to the work - Reflect at key milestones to openly identify and address the shortcomings of the process at all levels - Apply Lean tools and techniques to determine the fact-based root cause of inefficiencies and apply effective countermeasures rapidly Additional guidance on the importance of innovation and relentless improvement in achieving business agility can be found in the Continuous Learning Culture competency article
IN DETAIL, explain the concept of flow
The key to successfully executing SAFe is to establish a continuous flow of work that supports incremental value delivery based on constant feedback and adjustment. ~Continuous flow enables faster sustainable value delivery, effective Built-In Quality practices, relentless improvement, and evidence-based governance based on working components of the solution. ~ The principles of flow are an essential part of the Lean-Agile mindset. ~These include understanding the full Development Value Stream, visualizing and limiting Work in Process (WIP), and reducing batch sizes and managing queue lengths. Additionally, Lean focus on identifying and continuously removing delays and waste (non-value-added activities).~ One critical move that organizations must address to achieve flow is the shift from a start-stop-start project management process to an agile product management approach aligned to long-lived development value streams. Lean-Agile principles provide a better understanding of the system development process by incorporating new thinking, tools, and techniques. Leaders and teams can use them to move from a phase-gated approach to a DevOps approach with a Continuous Delivery Pipeline that extends flow to the entire value delivery process.
What is a Program Epic?
The primary purpose of this system is to analyze and approve program epics, splitting them into features that will be further explored and implemented using the program Kanban. Depending on how frequently program epics occur in the local context of the ART, this system may not be required.
How do you launch more ARTs?
The same way you launch a single ART - Prepare for ART launch - Train teams and launch the ART - Coach ART execution However, a cautionary note is warranted. The same attention and effort must be devoted to the next few ARTs as was paid to the first.
How many individuals does it take to create an effective LACE team?
The size of an effective coalition seems to be related to the size of the organization. Change often starts with just two or three people. The group in successful transformations then grows to half a dozen in relatively small firms or in small units of larger firms." For perspective, it's commonly observed that in SAFe-practicing companies, small teams of four to six dedicated people can support a few hundred practitioners, while teams of about twice that size support proportionally larger groups.
What is lead time in a value stream?
The time from the trigger to the delivery of value. Shortening the lead time reduces the time to market. The easiest way to shorten lead time is to identify and reduce (or remove) non-value added activities and wasteful delays. That's the primary focus of Lean thinking.
Explain the fixed schedule principle ART operates on.
The train departs the station on a known, reliable schedule, as determined by the chosen Program Increment (PI) cadence. If a Feature misses a timed departure and does not get planned into the current PI, it can catch the next one
What is included in embracing the Lean-Agile mindeset?
Thinking Lean - Much of the thinking in Lean is represented in the SAFe House of Lean icon. It is organized around six key constructs. The roof represents the goal of delivering value. The pillars support that goal via respect for people and culture, flow, innovation, and relentless improvement. Lean leadership provides the foundation upon which everything else stands. Embracing agility - SAFe is built entirely on the skills, aptitude, and capabilities of Agile teams and their leaders. While there is no one definition of what an Agile method is, the Agile Manifesto provides a unified value system that helped introduce Agile practices into mainstream development.
What is the Implementing SAFe with SPC certification class all about?
This four-day course prepares SPCs to become the change agents who lead the transformation. Attendees will learn how to effectively apply the principles and practices of SAFe and organize, train, and coach Agile teams.
What are the benefits of training all the team members at the same time?
This practice has raised some eyebrows in the industry. Many picture 100-plus people in a room being trained simultaneously, compare it to the more intimate setting of a small team with a single instructor, and can't imagine that it delivers equivalent benefits. In reality, it delivers far more value, for example: Accelerated learning - This training happens in two days, rather than over a period of months. That speeds up the timing and assimilation by all the members of the train, which accelerates the launch. A common scaled Agile paradigm - All team members receive the same training, at the same time, from the same instructor. This eliminates the variability of different training sessions over time, by different instructors, using different courseware. Cost-efficiency - One of the challenges with Agile implementation at scale has been the availability and expense of training. Talented, proven instructors are hard to find and not consistently available, and their value and cost are commensurately high. The Big Room approach is typically three to five times more cost-effective than individual team training. Collective learning - There is no substitute for the learning experience of big room training. Face-to-face interaction is one of the critical ingredients of Agile at scale. Training everyone together starts building the social network that the ART relies upon and creates a far better experience than what can be accomplished when working separately from each other. There can be a transformative aspect to it, something you have to experience to believe. The teams will be fully formed - The whole team can sit at the same table. Not only do they get to learn together and share insights, it's actually a very powerful team formation event. Teams choose their names on day one, and we watch team identity grow before our eyes. Teams engage in collective learning - This provides a chance for the team to resolve their different interpretations in discussions and exercises. They're not reliant on one mind—the Scrum Master—to ensure they get value from the Agile approach. Instead, they have many minds, and each captures different nuances. The features for the PI will be ready - The team training exercises involving the identification, splitting, and estimating of stories are done on the real features the teams will be dealing with in PI planning. Teams form their own identities - Teams sit together, choose a name for their team, and begin to form the shared identity of the ART. As team discussions and debriefs of exercises occur, they start to learn about each other's worlds
How do you assume variability; preserve options?
Traditional design and life cycle practices encourage choosing a single design-and-requirements option early in the development process. Unfortunately, if that starting point proves to be the wrong choice, then future adjustments take too long and can lead to a suboptimal design. A better approach is to maintain multiple requirements and design options for a longer period in the development cycle. Empirical data is then used to narrow the focus, resulting in a design that creates optimum economic outcomes.
Explain the anatomy of a value stream
Trigger - Some important event triggers the flow of value, perhaps a customer purchase order or new feature request. It ends when some value—a shipment, customer purchase, or solution deployment—has been delivered. Steps - The chevrons in the middle are the steps the enterprise uses to accomplish this feat [1]. Value - The customer receives value when the value stream executes all of its steps. People and systems - A value stream also contains the people who do the work, the systems they operate, and the flow of information and materials. Lead time - The time from the trigger to the delivery of value is the lead time. Shortening the lead time reduces the time to market. The easiest way to shorten lead time is to identify and reduce (or remove) non-value added activities and wasteful delays. That's the primary focus of Lean thinking.
What's important to note in a value stream?
Type of value stream, name, description, customer, triggers, value received to enterprise, value received to customer
________ _______ help improve the predictability of delivering business value since they are not included in the team's commitment or counted against teams in the program predictability measure.
Uncommitted objectives
Why is alignment important in the vision for change?
Unity. It helps to start the coordinated action necessary to assure that hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of people work together toward a new and more personally rewarding goal. With a clarity of vision, people are empowered to take the actions necessary to achieve the vision without the constant need for management supervision or check-ins.
What is the goal of the House of Lean?
Value
Before an organization can appreciate the benefits of SAFe, what must it identify, establish, and implement?
Value Streams and Agile Release Trains (ARTs), implement a Lean-Agile portfolio, build quality in, and establish the mechanisms for continuous value delivery and DevOps
What is the organizational backbone of a SAFe implementation?
Value streams and ARTs
Decreasing excess ____ reduces overhead and thrashing, and it increases productivity and velocity
WIP
What are the values of the Agile Manifesto?
We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others to do it 1)Individuals and interactions over processes and tools 2) Working software over comprehensive documentation 3) Customer collaboration over contract negotiation 4) 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
Why do we organize around value streams?
We want to accelerate the time to value (or market). We do that by optimizing the flow of value through the system as a whole
What is the agile product delivery?
What: a customer-centric approach to defining, building, and releasing a continuous flow of valuable products and services to customers and users. Why: This competency enables the organization to provide solutions that delight customers, lower development costs, reduce risk, and outmaneuver the competition.
What is the Lean Portfolio Management?
What: aligns strategy and execution by applying Lean and systems thinking approaches to strategy and investment funding, Agile portfolio operations, and governance. Why: These collaborations give the enterprise the ability to align strategy to execution, meet existing commitments reliably, and enable innovation.
Does the Agile Manifesto scale?
Yes, it scales
What should guide you as you write PI objectives?
You should be guided by SMART to make SMART ones. Specific - States the intended outcome concisely and explicitly as possible. (Hint: Try starting with an action verb.) Measurable - It should be clear what a team needs to do to achieve the objective. The measures may be descriptive, yes/no, quantitative, or provide a range. Achievable - Achieving the objective should be within the team's control and influence. Realistic - Recognize factors that cannot be controlled. (Hint: Avoid making 'happy path' assumptions.) Time-bound - The time period for achievement must be within the PI, and therefore all objectives must be scoped appropriately.
What does Scaled Agile provide to help identify value streams?
a Value Stream and ART identification workshop toolkit
What is required of leaders to drive the organizational change required to adopt Lean and Agile at scale across the entire enterprise?
a broader and deeper Lean-Agile mindset
A LACe needs something different than an Agile team for extra alignment.
a common mission
What kinds of team distributions of LACE is better for large enterprises of more than 500-1,000 practitioners?
a decentralized model or a hub-and-spoke model
What is a clear indicator of larger problems within an ART?
a lagging system demo; such as continuous integration maturity or System Team capacity
What is the Portfolio Kanban?
a method to visualize and manage the flow of portfolio Epics, from ideation through analysis, implementation, and completion.
Explain a burning platform
a problem too severe to solve using the enterprise's current way of working. It creates the level of urgency needed to inspire significant change. Sometimes the need to change a product or service is obvious. The company is failing to compete, and the existing way of doing business is obviously inadequate to achieve a new solution within a survivable time frame. Jobs are at stake. This is the easier case for change. While there will always be those who are resistant, they are likely to be overcome by the wave of energy that drives a sense of urgency for mandatory change through the organization.
Innovation and Planning iterations provide...?
a regular, cadence-based opportunity, every Program Increment (PI), for teams to work on activities that are difficult to fit into a continuous, incremental value delivery pattern. These may include: - Time for innovation and exploration, beyond the iterations dedicated to delivery - Work on technical infrastructure, tooling, and other impediments to delivery - Education to support continuous learning and improvement - Cross training to develop skills in new domains, development languages, and systems - Dedicated time for the Inspect & Adapt (I&A) event, backlog refinement, including final prioritization of - Features using Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF), and PI planning
What is a Release Train engineer?
a servant leader who facilitates program execution, impediment removal, risk and dependency management, and continuous improvement
What is a System Demo?
a significant event that provides an integrated view of new Features for the most recent Iteration delivered by all the teams in the Agile Release Train (ART).
How many ARTs does it take to implement a smaller value stream?
a single ART
What kind of team distribution of LACE is better for a smaller enterprise?
a single centralized LACE can balance speed with economies of scale
What is an iteration?
a standard, fixed-length timebox, where Agile Teams deliver incremental value in the form of working, tested software and systems. They provide a regular, predictable cadence for teams to produce an increment of value, as well as to refine those previously developed. Each of them anchors an integration point, a 'pull event' that assembles various system aspects—functionality, quality, alignment, and fitness for use—across all the teams' contributions.
What are the SAFe Core Values?
alignment, built-in quality, transparency, and program execution
Operationally, LACE functions as...?
an Agile team
Define a successful enterprise
an adaptive 'entrepreneurial network' of people working to leverage an opportunity
Identifying operational value streams require...?
an awareness of the organization's broader purpose and an explicit understanding of how specific elements of value flow to the customer.
SAFe for Teams features...?
an introduction to Agile development, including an overview of the Agile Manifesto and its values and principles. It also includes: - Core Scrum elements and an exploration of the roles of Scrum Master and Product Owner -The purpose and mechanics of the basic events, including Iteration Planning (IP), Iteration Execution, Daily Stand-up (DSU), Iteration Review, and Iteration Retrospective. - Preparation for Program Increment (PI) Planning - Building a Kanban board for tracking Stories In addition, teams prepare their Team Backlog, which identifies the work needed for the upcoming PI planning event.
A System Demo is a method for
assessing the Solution's current state and gathering immediate, Agile Release Train-level feedback from the people doing the work, as well as critical feedback from Business Owners, sponsors, stakeholders, and customers. The demo is the one real measure of value, velocity, and progress of the fully integrated work across all the teams.
System Demos occur when?
at the end of every Iteration
The most consistently effective way for organizations to reach the tipping point is to...?
attend Leading SAFe
Lean-Agile nonprofits benefit from...?
building resilience, sustainability, and the alignment needed to fulfill their mission
What do ARTs do to assure that a system is iterating as a whole?
cadence (how often a regularly schedule thing happens) and synchronization
Accepting ______ means accepting the possibility that individuals and organizations are not currently doing things the best way, or it may even challenge a person's long-held beliefs or values.
change
What is the architectural runway?
consists of the existing code, components, and technical infrastructure needed to implement near-term features without excessive redesign and delay. Architectural Runway supports the continuous flow of value through the Continuous Delivery Pipeline, providing the necessary technical foundation for developing business initiatives and implementing new Features and/or Capabilities. It is one of the primary tools used to implement the Framework's Agile Architecture strategy. Since the development of new features and capabilities consumes the architectural runway, a continual investment must be made to extend it by implementing Enablers.
What are manufacturing value streams?
convert raw materials into the products customers purchase. Examples include consumer products, medical devices, and complex cyber-physical systems.
Lean-Agile commercial businesses benefit from...?
creating higher profits, increasing employee engagement, and more thoroughly satisfying customer needs
It's important to include your organization's ____ into the transformation.
culture
What is design thinking?
customer-centric development process that creates desirable products that are profitable and sustainable over their lifecycle
ARTs include the teams that...?
define, build, and test features, as well as those that deploy, release, and operate the solution. Individual teams have a choice of Agile practices, based primarily on Scrum, XP, and Kanban
What to ARTs aim to do and what is it supported by?
deliver value to their customers continuously. This goal is supported by a Continuous Delivery Pipeline, which contains the workflows, activities, and automation needed to support the release of new features
Lean-Agile governments benefit from...?
delivering systems that better assure the safety, economy and general welfare of the general public
What is the SAFe implementation roadmap?
describes a strategy and an ordered set of activities that have proven to be effective in successfully implementing SAFe
In a successful SAFe enterprise, portfolios are transformed into...?
development value streams that align to one or more operational value streams
What kind of value streams does SAFe concern itself primarily with?
development value streams. After all, delivering new solutions in the shortest sustainable lead time is the focus of SAFe, and development value streams help organizations understand how to get there.
LACE also focuses in assessing and improving...?
each of the seven core competencies of the Lean Enterprise.
To effectively implement SAFe and provide the inspiration for relentless improvement, what must the enterprise leaders do?
embrace the Lean-Agile Mindset.
How leaders lead has a direct correlation to whether or not...?
employees buy into the change and contribute to its success
What does the Program Kanban do?
facilitates the flow of Features through the Continuous Delivery Pipeline.
Describe the aspects of the Continuous Delivery Pipeline
feedback loops that exist internally within and between the aspects, and externally between the customers and the enterprise, fuel improvements. Internal feedback loops often center on process improvements, while external feedback often centers on solution improvements. Collectively, the improvements create synergy in ensuring the enterprise is 'building the right thing, the right way' and delivering value to the market frequently. The paragraphs below describe each aspect. Continuous Exploration (CE) focuses on creating alignment on what needs to be built. In CE, design thinking is used to ensure the enterprise understands the market problem / customer need and the solution required to meet that need. It starts with an idea or a hypothesis of something that will provide value to customers, typically in response to customer feedback or market research. Ideas are then analyzed and further researched, leading to the understanding and convergence of what is needed as either a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) or Minimum Marketable Feature (MMF). These feed the solution space of exploring how existing architectures and solutions can, or should, be modified. Finally, convergence occurs by understanding which Capabilities and Features, if implemented, are likely to meet customer and market needs. Collectively, these are defined and prioritized in the Program Backlog. Continuous Integration (CI) focuses on taking features from the Program backlog and implementing them. In CI, the application of design thinking tools in the problem space focuses on refinement of features (e.g., designing a user story map), which may motivate more research and the use of solution space tools (such as user feedback on a paper prototype). After specific features are clearly understood, Agile Teams implement them. Completed work is committed to version control, built and integrated into a full system or solution, and tested end-to-end before being validated in a staging environment. Continuous Deployment (CD) takes the changes from the staging environment and deploys them to production. At that point, they're verified and monitored to make sure they are working properly. This step makes the features available in production, where the business determines the appropriate time to release them to customers. This aspect also allows the organization to respond, rollback, or fix forward when necessary. Release on Demand (RoD) is the ability to make value available to customers all at once, or in a staggered fashion based market and business needs. This provides the business the opportunity to release when market timing is optimal and carefully control the amount of risk associated with each release. Release on Demand also encompasses critical pipeline activities that preserve the stability and ongoing value of solutions long after release
Before committing to the roadmap, stakeholders should reflect on the existing culture and the ____ of the larger implementation strategy.
how; Yes, it's a committed change initiative, and that means it's a largely centralized decision (see Principle #9 - Decentralize decision-making). The change is not optional, but how it is received depends on many factors. Oftentimes, mandated change can be uninspiring to those who are on the receiving end of the decision. Organizations with this concern may want to try the approach described in Yuval Yeret's article, Invitation-based SAFe Implementation, which describes how to create a more collaborative organizational change effort.
Many enterprises report that _______ _______ was one of the toughest and yet most rewarding change initiatives that they have ever done.
implementing SAFe
What are the SAFe business benefits?
improved time to market, quality, productivity, and employee engagement
What are supporting value streams?
include end-to-end workflows for various supporting activities. Examples include the lifecycle for employee hiring and retention, supplier contracting, executing the annual budget process, and completing a full enterprise sales cycle.
Uncommitted objectives are not...?
included in the commitment of PI objectives
What is the standard agenda of PI Planning
includes a presentation of business context and vision, followed by team planning breakouts—where the teams create their Iteration plans and objectives for the upcoming Program Increment (PI). Facilitated by the Release Train Engineer (RTE), this event includes all members of the ART and occurs within the Innovation and Planning (IP) Iteration. Holding the event during the IP iteration avoids affecting the scheduling, or capacity of other iterations in the PI.
What does LACE do to encourage a steady pace for enterprises to transform with a Lean-Agile mindset?
it --- with the support of the entire guiding coalition—empowers the organization to generate short-term wins by defining and launching ARTs. It then consolidates those gains as additional ARTs are launched. This provides the positive momentum needed to tackle the larger organizational issues.
What does the organization of an ART do?
it determines who will plan and work together, as well as what products, services, features, or components the train will deliver
The portfolio Kanban is particularly important in that...?
it helps align strategy and execution by identifying, communicating, and governing the selection of the largest and most strategic initiatives (Epics) for a SAFe portfolio.
_____ _____ _____ _____ _____ ____ —the enterprise can start to realize an even greater return on their investment: faster time-to-market, higher quality, higher productivity, and increased employee engagement. These are the rewards that only a full and effective implementation of scaled Lean-Agile practices can deliver
launch more ARTs and value streams
"The more detailed we made our plans, the _____ our cycle times became."
longer; It's far better to plan a bit, execute a bit, and learn a bit. Then repeat. In other words, take an Agile, incremental approach to implementation just as is recommended with solution development.
What is the challenge in getting leadership in Scaled Agile?
most of the people qualified to drive the change have full-time responsibilities in their current roles. While a significant portion of their time can perhaps be devoted to ~supporting~ the change, a ~smaller~, more dedicated group of people is required to ~drive~ the transformation throughout the organization.
How many ARTs does it take to implement a larger value stream?
multiple ARTs
Before realizing SAFe's rewards, organizations must embrace what and understand and apply what?
must embrace a Lean-Agile Mindset as well as understand and apply Lean-Agile principles.
What are software product value streams?
offer and support software products. Examples include ERP systems, SaaS, and desktop and mobile applications.
However, the enterprise's ________ _______ _____ must be identified first to determine the development value streams that support them
operational value streams
Each System Demo gives ART stakeholders an objective measure of...?
progress during a Program Increment (PI)
What's a fulfillment value stream?
represents the steps necessary to process a customer request, deliver a digitally-enabled product or service, and receive remuneration. Examples include providing a consumer with an insurance product or fulfilling an eCommerce sales order.
What is the Continuous Delivery Pipeline?
represents the workflows, activities, and automation needed to shepherd a new piece of functionality from ideation to an on-demand release of value to the end user. As illustrated in Figure 1, the pipeline consists of four aspects: Continuous Exploration (CE), Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Deployment (CD), and Release on Demand, each of which is described in its own article.
People naturally ____ ____.
resist change
While training people and forming Agile Release Trains (ARTs) may feel like progress, these efforts inevitably stall in the face of organizational inertia unless supported by a _____ _____ ____ with a shared reason and vision for change that has reached the tipping point.
senior leadership team
What are shared services?
specialists—for example, data security, information architects, database administrators (DBAs)—that are necessary for the success of an ART but cannot be dedicated to a specific train
What is a trigger in a value stream?
starts the flow of value, perhaps a customer purchase order or new feature request. It ends when some value—a shipment, customer purchase, or solution deployment—has been delivered. Steps - The chevrons in the middle are the steps the enterprise uses to accomplish this feat [1]
What do cadence and synchronization assure?
that the focus is continuously on the evolution and objective assessment of the full system, rather than its elements. The system demo, which occurs at the end of every iteration, provides the objective evidence that the system is iterating
Name why development value streams cross boundaries
the ARTs will be geographically distributed
What other names does the Lean-Agile Center of Excellence go by?
the Agile Center of Excellence, Agile Working Group, Lean-Agile Transformation Team, Learning and Improvement Center
The vision for change must be rooted in an understanding of the ________ ______ and _______ _______?
the Lean-Agile Mindset and SAFe Principles.
What visualizes, manages, and measures the flow through a system?
the Program Kanban
PI planning is facilitated by
the RTE
What is the Lean-Agile mindset?
the combination of beliefs, assumptions, attitudes, and actions of SAFe leaders and practitioners who embrace the concepts of the Agile Manifesto and Lean thinking. It's the personal, intellectual, and leadership foundation for adopting and applying SAFe principles and practices.
From a change-management perspective, ____ ____ ____ is very important, with potentially far-reaching implications
the first ART This will be the first material change to the way of working and will generate the initial short-term wins that help the enterprise build momentum.
The system demo test and evaluates....
the full solution in a production-like context (often staging) to receive feedback from stakeholders. These stakeholders include Business Owners, executive sponsors, other Agile Teams, development management, customers (and their proxies) who provide input on the fitness for purpose for the solution under development. The feedback is critical, as only they can give the guidance the ART needs to stay on course or make adjustments.
Who is responsible for identifying value streams and ARTs?
the key enterprise development stakeholders gather to identify the flow of value through the organization. These stakeholders include SAFe Program Consultants (SPCs), members of the LACE, newly trained Lean-Agile Leaders, and other essential team members.
What is continuous exploration?
the ongoing process of exploring the market and user needs, and defining a Vision, Roadmap, and set of hypotheses to address those needs.
What does it mean for an enterprise to reach its "tipping point" in the SAFe Implementation Roadmap?
the point at which the overriding organizational imperative is to achieve the change, rather than resist it. People will naturally keep their old behaviors unless there is an exceptionally good reason to make a change. This reason must be so compelling that the status quo becomes simply unacceptable. The motivation must be so strong that change becomes the only reasonable way forward to success.
What is iteration execution?
the process of how the work takes place. During the iteration, the team completes the 'do' portion of the PDCA cycle by building and testing the new functionality. Teams deliver Stories incrementally, demoing their work to the Product Owner as soon as they are done, enabling teams to arrive at the iteration review ready to show their completed work. The daily stand-up (DSU) represents a smaller PDCA cycle within the iteration. Every day, team members meet to coordinate their activities, share information with each other about progress toward the iteration goals and raise blocking issues and dependencies. It is also common for Agile teams to spend some time during the iteration refining the backlog ahead of the next iteration planning event. The iteration cadence occurs within a larger Program Increment (PI), which itself is another PDCA cycle. The PI aggregates the value developed by each Agile team and measures the solution under development objectively at relevant Milestones.
What is Continuous Deployment?
the process that takes validated Features in a staging environment and deploys them into the production environment, where they are readied for release
The Program Backlog defines and contains...?
the scope of the PI, or 'what gets built'; it contains the set of upcoming features, NFRs, and architectural work that define the future behavior of the system.
What is iteration retrospective?
the team evaluates its process and reviews any improvement stories it had from the previous iteration. They identify new problems and their causes—as well as emphasizing bright spots—and create improvement stories that enter the team backlog for the next iteration. This regular reflection is one of the ways to ensure relentless improvement (one of the pillars of the SAFe House of Lean) is happening within each team. Iteration retrospectives may also identify systemic problems that will need to be addressed at the next Inspect and Adapt (I&A) event. Before the next planning cycle begins, the backlog is refined to include the decisions from the iteration review and retrospective. The Product Owner refactors and reprioritizes new and old backlog items as needed.
In order for leaders to lead SAFe, what must they do?
they must take the time, as a group, to collaboratively explore, analyze, and validate for themselves the challenges facing the organization. They must evaluate how the current system contributes to those challenges and learn the mindset, principles, and practices they will need to adopt to achieve the transformative results they envision.
What is involved in creating the implementation plan?
this requires real and tangible changes to individual and organizational behavior. Specifically, it involves three activities: - Pick the first value stream - Select the first ART - Create a preliminary plan for additional ARTs and value streams
What was the genesis of SAFe?
to develop guidance for enterprises on how to apply the principles and practices of Lean and Agile in the world's largest organizations
Development Value Streams (and the ARTs and Agile Teams that enable them) exist for one reason. What is it?
to meet the portfolio's strategic goals
What will slow the Lean-Agile transformation (scaled agile) to a halt?
trying to remove all the major organizational impediments right at the start will slow the transformation to a halt
________ _______ are used to identify work that can be variable within the scope of a PI. The work is planned, but the outcome is simply not certain. Teams can apply _______ ____ whenever there is low confidence in meeting the objective.
uncommitted objectives
What is value in a value stream?
when the value stream executes all of its steps.
True Business Agility is achieved when?
when there is mastery of the 7 digital-age core competencies
When are leaders' efforts recognized as a half-hearted attempt at change?
when they support the Lean-Agile mindset only through words and not actions
What is iteration review?
where the teams demonstrate a tested increment of value to the Product Owner, and other relevant stakeholders, and receive feedback on what they've produced. It provides the opportunity to assess progress as well as make any adjustments ahead of the next iteration. The team will then do some final backlog refinement for the upcoming iteration planning. Following it, the team prepares and participates in the System Demo that gives an integrated view of the new Features for the most recent iteration, delivered by all the teams on the Agile Release Train (ART). This demo serves as a 'pull event' to ensure early and regular integration and validation. Additionally, within the iteration, the system increment is continuously integrated and evaluated as their system context allows.
How does SAFe offer a second operating system that enables business agility?
value streams instead of departments, SAFe offers a way for enterprises to focus on customers, products, innovation, and growth
What are the benefits of organizing SAFe portfolios around value streams?
- Fewer handoffs and delays, allowing the teams to work with smaller batch sizes - Enables long-lived, stable teams that focus on delivering value, instead of projects, which focus on task completion - Allows faster learning and shorter time-to-market - Contributes to higher quality and more productivity - Supports leaner development and budgeting methods
What are the 7 digital-age core competencies necessary for the dual operating system?
1) Lean-Agile Leadership 2) Enterprise Solution Delivery 3) Agile Product Delivery 4) Team and Technical Agility 5) Lean Portfolio Management 6) Organizational Agility 7) Continuous Learning Culture
What are all the steps involved in Business Agility?
1) Sense opportunity 2) Fund MVP 3) Organize around value 4) Connect to customer 5) Deliver MVP 6) Pivot or persevere 7) Deliver value continuously 8) Measure and adapt
What are the SAFe Lean-Agile principles?
1) Take an economic view 2) Apply system thinking 3) Assume variability; preserve options 4) Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles 5) Base milestones on objective evaluation of working systems 6) Visualize and limit WIP, reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lengths 7) Apply cadence, synchronize with cross-domain planning 8) Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers 9) Decentralize decision-making 10) Organize around value
Prior to the adoption of Lean-Agile practices, many enterprises organize people in functional silos, which causes a number of challenges. What are these challenges?
1) Value delivery is inhibited by hand-offs and delays 2) Adopting Customer-Centricity is problematic because of organizational boundaries/political boundaries can prevent cooperation 3) Systems are designed to optimize the work in silos, not the value delivered 4) Communication across silos is difficult 5) Silos encourage geographic distribution of functions
How big is an Agile team typically to cover all the roles necessary to build a quality increment of value every iteration?
5 - 11 dedicated individual contributors
What is the primary construct for understanding, organizing, and delivering value in SAFe?
A value stream
A SAFe portfolio contains one or more of what?
value streams, each of which is dedicated to build and support a set of solutions, which are the products, services, or systems delivered to the Customer, whether internal or external to the Enterprise
Explain the develop on cadence, release on demand principle ART operates on
ARTs apply cadence and synchronization to help manage the inherent variability of research and development. However, releasing is typically decoupled from the development cadence. ARTs can release a solution, or elements of a solution, at any time, subject to governance and release criteria.
What four primary bodies of knowledge is SAFe based on?
Agile development, Lean product development, systems thinking, and DevOps
How does SAFe supports alignment?
Alignment starts with the strategy and investment decisions at the Portfolio level and is reflected in Strategic Themes, Portfolio Vision, the Portfolio Backlog, and the outcomes of Participatory Budgeting. In turn, this informs the Vision, Roadmap, and the backlogs at all levels of SAFe. Continuous Exploration with Customer Centricity and Design Thinking gathers the inputs and perspectives from a diverse group of stakeholders and information sources to ensure that the items in the backlogs contain economically prioritized and refined work, ready for teams to implement. All work is visible, debated, resolved and transparent. Alignment is supported by clear lines of content authority, starting with the portfolio and then resting primarily with the Product and Solution Management roles, and extending to the Product Owner role. PI Objectives and Iteration Goals are used to communicate expectations and commitments. Cadence and synchronization are applied to ensure that things stay in alignment, or that they drift only within reasonable economic and time boundaries. Architectures and user experience guidance and governance help ensure that the Solution is technologically sound, robust, and scalable. Economic prioritization keeps stakeholders engaged in continuous, agreed-to, rolling-wave prioritization, based on the current context and evolving facts
Explain the applied synchronization principle ART operates on
All teams on the train are synchronized to the same PI length (typically 8 - 12 weeks) and have common Iteration start/end dates and duration.
Explain the Inspect and Adapt principle ART operates on
An I&A event is held at the end of every PI. The current state of the solution is demonstrated and evaluated. Teams and management then identify improvement backlog items via a structured, problem-solving workshop.
What is transparency?
An enabler of trust
What is applied systems thinking?
Deming observed that addressing the challenges in the workplace and the marketplace requires an understanding of the systems within which workers and users operate. Such systems are complex, and they consist of many interrelated components. But optimizing a component does not optimize the system. To improve, everyone must understand the larger aim of the system. In SAFe, systems thinking is applied to the system under development, as well as to the organization that builds the system.
What must senior executives do to sense an opportunity?
Have a "go-see" mentality = have a thorough involvement with the customer and the marketplace
Agile Teams can be focused in what?
Technology OR business
What are the common set of principles ARTs operate on?
The schedule is fixed - The train departs the station on a known, reliable schedule, as determined by the chosen Program Increment (PI) cadence. If a Feature misses a timed departure and does not get planned into the current PI, it can catch the next one. A new system increment every two weeks - Each train delivers a new system increment every two weeks. The System Demo provides a mechanism for evaluating the working system, which is an integrated increment from all the teams. Synchronization is applied - All teams on the train are synchronized to the same PI length (typically 8 - 12 weeks) and have common Iteration start/end dates and duration. The train has a known velocity - Each ART can reliably estimate how much cargo (new features) can be delivered in a PI. Agile Teams - Agile Teams embrace the 'Agile Manifesto' and SAFe Core Values and Principles. They apply Scrum, Extreme Programming (XP), Kanban, and other Built-In Quality practices. Dedicated people - Most people needed by the ART are dedicated full time to the train, regardless of their functional reporting structure. Face-to-face PI Planning - The ART plans its work at periodic, mostly face-to-face PI Planning events. Innovation and Planning (IP) - IP Iterations occur at the end of every PI and provide an estimating guard band (buffer) as well as dedicated time for PI planning, innovation, continuing education, and infrastructure work. Inspect and Adapt (I&A) - An I&A event is held at the end of every PI. The current state of the solution is demonstrated and evaluated. Teams and management then identify improvement backlog items via a structured, problem-solving workshop. Develop on Cadence, Release on Demand - ARTs apply cadence and synchronization to help manage the inherent variability of research and development. However, releasing is typically decoupled from the development cadence. ARTs can release a solution, or elements of a solution, at any time, subject to governance and release criteria.
What is an Agile Release Train?
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 Agile Release Trains align teams to a shared business and technology mission. Each is a virtual organization (typically 50 - 125 people) that plans, commits, develops, and deploys together. ARTs are organized around the Enterprise's significant Development Value Streams and exist solely to realize the promise of that value by building Solutions that deliver benefit to the end-user. ARTs are cross-functional and have all the capabilities—software, hardware, firmware, and other—needed to define, implement, test, deploy, release, and where applicable, operate solutions. An ART delivers a continuous flow of value
How do you measure the level of organizational competency?
accomplished via two separate assessment mechanisms; each is designed for significantly different audiences and different purposes. The SAFe Business Agility Assessment is designed for the business and portfolio stakeholders to assess their overall progress on the ultimate goal of true business agility. The SAFe Core Competency Assessments are used to help teams and trains improve on the technical and business practices they need to help the portfolio achieve that larger goal. There is one for each of the seven core competencies.
What is a system architect/engineer?
an individual or team that defines the overall architecture of the system. They work at a level of abstraction above the teams and components and define Nonfunctional Requirements (NFRs), major system elements, subsystems, and interfaces.
What is an MVP?
an initial solution sufficient to both test the business hypothesis and deliver a first solid increment of value
Business agility is the most significant factor in...?
deciding the winners and losers in the new economy
What is alignment?
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, it must rely on the Enterprise business objectives. it does not imply or encourage top-down command and control. It occurs when everyone is working toward a common direction. Indeed, it enables empowerment, autonomy, and Decentralized Decision-making, allowing those who implement value to make better local decisions
What is a complicated subsystem team?
organized around specific subsystems that require deep specialty skills and expertise.
What is a platform team?
organized around the development and support of platforms that provide services to other teams
What is a stream-aligned team?
organized around the flow of work and has the ability to deliver value directly to the customer or end user
What is an enabling team?
organized to assist other teams with specialized capabilities and help them become proficient in new technologies
What is a product manager?
responsible for 'what gets built,' as defined by the Vision, Roadmap, and new features in the Program Backlog. They work with customers and Product Owners to understand and communicate their needs, and also participate in solution validation.
What does the dual operating system achieve?
restores the speed and innovation of the entrepreneurial network while leveraging the benefits and stability of the hierarchical system
What is necessary for successful scaled Lean-Agile development and for the four core values of SAFe?
the active support of Lean-Agile Leadership and a Continuous Learning Culture
What is program execution?
the execution and process of continuously delivering value. SAFe places an intense focus on working systems and business outcomes enabled by alignment, transparency, and built-in quality
What is release on demand?
the process of making the value available to the end-user, measuring and learning from the results of the hypotheses, and operating the solutions.
What is continuous integration?
the process of taking features from the program backlog and developing, testing, integrating, and validating them in a staging environment where they are ready for deployment and release.
How do the cross-functional agile teams deliver an MVP quickly?
they are organized or reorganized around customer value
What are system teams?
they assist in building and maintaining development, continuous integration, and test environments
What is a value stream?
they represent the series of steps that an organization uses to implement Solutions that provide a continuous flow of value to a customer