Scaled agile framework

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Software Engineering KMITL

5 min readApr 17, 2020

What is a scaled agile framework ???

Before knowing SAFe

To explain what is the Scaled agile framework, we will start by explaining what is the philosophy of agile framework first, in order to understand its principles.

Agile software development comprises various approaches to software development under which requirements and solutions evolve through the collaborative effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams and their customer/end user. Most importantly, It advocates adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery, and continual improvement, and it encourages rapid and flexible response to change. Therefore, plans can change and adapt to any problem encountered in any stage of work, given the ability to tackle the issue on hand.

History of SAFe

The SAFe framework was introduced in 2011. It was originally called the “Agile Enterprise Big Picture” by software-industry veteran Dean Leffingwell, who published the bestselling book Agile Software Requirements. The Big Picture described how to leverage existing agile frameworks such as Lean, Kanban, Scrum, and XP — and apply them at the Team, Program, and Portfolio.

Today, SAFe’s entire catalog of knowledge and success patterns is all available for free, and it has become one of the most popular agile frameworks.

What is the Scaled agile framework?

The Scaled Agile Framework, or SAFe, is one of the methodology of an agile framework. It is used for development teams, and built on the basis of these three pillars which are Team, Program, and Portfolio.

SAFe was created for achieving business agility using Lean, Agile and DevOps. It is designed in such a way that gives a team flexibility, and to help manage some of the challenges larger organizations have when practicing agile.

Furthermore, SAFe has another meaning which is a set of organization and workflow patterns intended to guide enterprises in scaling lean and agile practices.It is constantly being improved, and its latest version is 4.5.

Level of SAFe

SAFe Full Configuration consists of four levels: Team, Program, Large Solution and Portfolio.

As above figure we can see different levels of SAFe we will discuss about them.

Portfolio level

The portfolio level is the highest level where executives and leaders determine the organization’s visions, business goals, and strategies. SAFe aids organizations to handle challenges like funding, product road mapping, and management of changes. It also instructs how to use Lean principles for measuring progress in attaining their goals.

Program and Team level

At the team level, SAFe is almost identical to Scrum. It is at the program level that SAFe uses the concept of the Agile Release Train (ART) to deliver the value expected from a specific project. Each ART is associated with a specific value stream (goal). Once organizational goals have been established, goals must be a priority and a roadmap must be set out to accomplish the overall vision for your SAFe transformation. This is the first place that ART is created or selected. The Agile team members of a team, usually five to ten teams of ten members each, work together to deliver the business value goal they were assigned.

Large Solution level

Large Solution SAFe describes additional roles, practices, and guidance to build and evolve the world’s largest applications, networks, and cyber-physical systems.

When you should use a SAFe

When the size of your project is quite big and many people need to work together. You can use a SAFe to solve problem in your project
When each team wants to work independently.
When you want to scale Agile across the organization but not sure what new roles may be needed or what existing roles (i.e., management) need to change and how.
When you have attempted to scale the Agile across your organization but struggling in alignment to achieve uniform or consistent strategy across business departments from portfolio to program and team levels.

Advantages of SAFe

- It is easy to divide and handle a complex system development.

- It is increase productivity by 20–50%

- Quality of work has increased more than 50%.

- It takes less time to develop something.

- SAFe is increase employee engagement and job satisfaction

Disadvantages of SAFe

It requires too much upfront planning and process definition.So some believe this framework is not pure agile
It takes more of a top-down approach rather than a team-based approach

How SAFe different from other Agiles practices

It’s publicly available and free to use.
Available in a highly approachable and usable form.
It’s lightweight, practically proven results and specific to level.
It constantly/regularly modifies/maintains most commonly used agile practices.
Offers useful extensions to common agile practices.
Grounds agile practices to an enterprise context.
Offers a complete picture of software development.
Visibility or transparency is more on all the levels.
Continues or regular feedback on quality and improvement.

Challenges of scaling agile principles and practices coping with longer planning horizons

They often work with a plan. The time of plan is approximately 12–18 months.

Keeping agile at abstract levels of responsibility
SAFe delivers many of the same principles, such as cross-functional teams, to the groups that handle the more abstract levels of responsibility and planning (product and portfolio). SAFe has also been criticized for aggregating too many disparate practices.

Dealing with delegated authority
On large-scale developments, the organization wants a view across multiple team backlogs, such as provided by a product manager.Although SAFe assumes the product owner role sits with product management, it has nonetheless been criticized for separating product owners into the development organization.

Synchronizing deliverables
SAF is designed to enable the development team to be autonomous and free to design how they work. SAFe know that when you work with many people. Chaotic will come. SAF resolves it by using synchronizing deliverables which mean you can work together and release it together.

Allowing time for innovation and planning
The SAFe planning cycle recommends including an additional iteration after a release, so that teams can improve their practices and are ready for the next planning increment.

Implementation Underlying principles of SAFe
According to its authors, SAFe is based upon ten underlying concepts, which are derived from existing lean and agile principles, as well as observation:

1. Take an economic view

2. Apply systems 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 work-in-progress, reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lengths

7. Apply cadence (timing), synchronize with cross-domain planning

8. Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers

9. Decentralize decision-making

10. Organize around value

Conclusion

To conclude our research on scale agile framework, or SAFe. SAFe is one of many methods of agile software development. SAFe is particularly beneficial for organizations that need to work across teams, as its centralization makes multi-team coordination possible. Today, SAFe is one of the most common and well-known approaches to agile practices with a bit of criticism on the part of being too hierarchical and inflexible.

References

Scaled agile framework

Written by Sarin Wanichwasin