What is Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)? | A Complete Guide

What are the Five Core Values of SAFe?

The Scaled Agile Framework core values ensure that everyone involved in the project understands how to behave and act to ensure effective and timely delivery. Let’s discuss each of them in detail.

1. Alignment

Like cars out of alignment, misaligned companies can develop serious problems. They are hard to steer and don’t respond well to changes in direction. Even if it’s clear where everyone thinks they’re headed, the vehicle is unlikely to get them there. — © Scaled Agile, Inc.

This value of the Scaled Agile Framework promotes the collaboration between management and teams so that all the efforts are driven toward customer satisfaction. Alignment helps respond to change and maintain a competitive edge while managing work across geographically distributed teams.

It is about preserving the process’s cadence while ensuring everyone is on the same page and understands the system’s ins and outs.

2. Built-in-Quality

SAFe includes built-in-quality practices to ensure that all the increments or microservices of the overall product adhere to the quality standards. In simple words, SAFe believes in embedding quality at every stage of the development process instead of adding it later.

3. Transparency

Miscommunication can easily seep into the product development teams. This, in turn, leads to delays, waste of resources, and mismanaged priorities. Transparency is required to mitigate the effect of such failures, which, in turn, builds trust. If the teams communicate regularly and maintain clarity of facts, everyone can confidently rely on each other and prove productive.

4. Program Execution

To ensure timely and continuous delivery, the Scaled Agile Framework relies on Essential SAFe. It comprises manageable roles, sprints, and artifacts as a part of the Agile Release Train (ART), which offers guidelines to streamline program execution. These guidelines include team and technical agility (skills and guidelines for teams), Agile product delivery ( focuses on customer needs), and lean-agile leadership (focuses on how leaders motivate and empower teams).

5. Leadership

Active lean-agile leadership support is also essential besides the above-mentioned four core values. Only leaders can change the system and encourage a continuous learning environment to create customer value. Without strong leadership, your SAFe, agile initiative will fail to embrace all core values and fall like a house of cards.

Scaled Agile Framework Principles

The SAFe framework relies on some fundamental principles based on agile and lean principles. Here’s an insight into each of them:

1. Take an Economic View

The organization and the teams should understand the economic impact of decisions they make in the earlier stages of the scaled agile development. The principle implies that any business should consider economics to make informed decisions at all stages.

2. Apply System Thinking

The system thinking principle ensures that all aspects of the system and its environment are applied to the software development lifecycle stages. There are three aspects to system thinking: the solution is a fully-fledged system, the enterprise building the system is a system in itself, and how the whole process helps optimize the entire value stream.

3. Assume Variability; Preserve Options

According to this principle, technical and market variability exist throughout the development process. Ignoring variability altogether is the wrong solution for the development practice. Instead, the goal should be to predict and accept variabilities and manage them while preserving options by following the set-based design approach.

4. Build Incrementally with Fast, Integrated Learning Cycles

This principle implies that the solution should be built incrementally over a series of agile scrums similar to Agile Development. Every sprint should result in a workable part of the system, i.e., following a microservice architecture. All the microservices, when combined, should be able to build a comprehensive system.

5. Base Milestones on Objective Evaluation of Working Systems

According to this principle, all the stakeholders involved should collaborate to analyze the economic benefits of the process throughout the development lifecycle. This is to ensure that the said solution offers value and economic benefits.

6. Visualize and Limit WIP, Reduce Batch Sizes, and Manage Queue Lengths

Any product under development aims to steer clear of roadblocks while maintaining a continuous flow of processes. This can be done by visualizing and limiting work in the process, reducing the batch size of the requirement, design, implementation, conducting testing phases, and reducing queue lengths to ensure timely delivery.

7. Apply Cadence, Synchronize with Cross-Domain Planning

According to this principle, cadence, synchronization, and cross-domain planning are needed for quality system delivery. Cadence ensures that the flow of events is systematic so that everything stays on track and follows a pre-decided routine. Synchronization ensures that different system parts are understood, analyzed, and integrated smoothly. And cross-domain planning offers the opportunity to integrate and test business and technical solutions of the system.

8. Unlock the Intrinsic Motivation of Knowledge Workers

According to this principle, all knowledge workers should be continuously encouraged and motivated to perform better. This can be done by understanding that money or incentives are not sole employee motivators; instead, the leaders need to motivate by giving purpose and minimal possible constraints while respecting the opinions of everyone across the teams.

9. Decentralize Decision-making

According to this principle, delivering value in the speculated time frame is only possible with decentralized decision-making. When the decisions depend on the higher authorities, who often lack clarity due to limited local context, there are chances of a drop in their quality.
Moreover, if the waiting period for a go-ahead from the concerned authority is long, the facts on which the decisions need to be taken can either become redundant or completely change owing to the time lag. Thus, decisions should be decentralized (except decisions that are infrequent, permanent, and offer economies of scale) to improve the overall product development flow.

10. Organize Around Value

In today’s world, product development efforts are labeled successful if they can respond to change promptly and offer value. To achieve this agility, enterprises must organize the work culture around standard values. When the customer and market demands change, the enterprise can quickly adapt to the new requirements around the organized flow of values.

12-Point Checklist for Implementing SAFe

Scaled Agile, Inc. has introduced a SAFe implementation roadmap for a safe SAFe transformation.
Here is the SAFe implementation roadmap:

Scaled Agile Framework Benefits

Implementing a Scaled Agile Framework means better project management at an enterprise level. It helps untangle the complexities of product development by offering principles and values for execution.
The benefits of the Scaled Agile Framework include:

1. Enhanced Quality

A scaled agile framework provides the flexibility to innovate by reducing the roadblocks in the path towards execution. The quality of the software depends on customer satisfaction.
With SAFe, you can expect to:

• Reduce the number of bugs
• Decrease warranty expenditure
• Increase client and user satisfaction

2. Increased Productivity

SAFe promotes collaboration and engagement among teams by breaking the silos across the organization. Everybody is productive and contributes equally to the ultimate goal, making Scaled Framework a preferable framework for distributed agile teams.
With SAFe, you can expect to:

• Increase the overall quality of the product
• Boost cross-functional culture across the organization
• Reduce iterations and defect rate

3. Streamlined Product Execution

SAFe offers a set of values and principles that bring cadence to the development process. From planning to execution, everything falls into place, leaving no loopholes behind. The upshot of all this is a reputed organization that stands true to its promise of quality and timely delivery.
With SAFe, you can expect to:

• Pre-plan the project delivery timeline
• Ensure timely delivery
• Create a positive net promoter score from the business

4. Process Transparency

SAFe product development helps maintain transparency, which builds team trust. Once there is trust — performance, motivation, innovation, and continuous improvement become evident.
With SAFe, you can expect to:

• Keep the expectations realistic and manageable
• Improve trust among the teams
• Provide insights into dependencies and risks in advance

SAFe vs. other scaled agile frameworks

Many large enterprises favor SAFe over other agile practices. Still, a few other agile frameworks have been getting popular recently. Understanding the core difference between SAFe and these frameworks can help you make the right decision. Let’s compare these agile frameworks with SAFe:

1. SAFe vs. Scrum@Scale

A network of scrum teams come together to form an ecosystem in the Scrum@Scale approach. The idea is to create an extensive network of scrum teams so that the team can quickly scale up without having to introduce new process dynamics or change the existing roles.

For example, if you have a large product with 25 scrum teams working on it, one scrum of scrum (SoS) may not be enough, and you may need to be creative by organizing a Scrum of Scrum of Scrums (SoSoS) with a Scrum of Scrum of Scrums Master (SoSM).

Scrum@Scale is less prescriptive yet answers an essential question, i.e., Will your productivity suffer or your performance increase if you add more people to your team?

Here’s when it’s wise to use the Scrum@Scale approach:

• You have an object-oriented technology stack
• Your team operates on product-centric values and with minimum bureaucracy
• The executive team wants to practice scrum and remove roadblocks for the organization
• You don’t need an agile or Agile Lifecycle Management (ALM) tool until practices are second nature

2. SAFe vs. Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS)

Compared to SAFe, Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS) takes the minimalism route to roles, structure, and artifacts. Also, where SAFe offers four configurations to accommodate teams of greater size and increasingly complex solutions, LeSS provides two configurations, i.e., LeSS for two to eight teams and LeSS Huge for more than eight teams.

Another significant difference between SAFe and LeSS is their stance on software development. In LeSS, product owners have complete content authority, while SAFe follows a democratic approach. Moreover, compared to SAFe, which emphasizes many factors, LeSS focuses more on customers.

Despite the differences, SAFe and LeSS are similar on many fronts. Both emphasize systems thinking, lean thinking, and similar guiding principles. However, LeSS focuses heavily on continuous improvement and waste reduction across the organization.

Here’s when you should use Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS):

• Your team has mastered Scrum.
• The leadership team is willing to restructure and experiment for the greater good.
• There’s alignment on the definition of the product and done.
• You have active support from external coaches and mentors.
• The organization wants to get rid of the project management paradigm completely.

3. SAFe vs. DA

Disciplined Agile (DA) is a toolkit to help organizations decide what way of working makes the most sense. It offers lightweight, agile governance rooted in Scrum and Kanban and transformation knowledge in HR and finance, governance, DevOps, and portfolio management. In DA, we situationally employ different scale levels for each project and emphasize decision-making enablement to help guide strategic direction.

Here’s when it’s wise to use the Disciplined Agile (DA) toolkit:

• Your organization wants to remain flexible and define its scale agile paths.
• The organization wants to preserve the process and framework choices

4. SAFe vs. Spotify Agile Model

The Spotify agile model was never intended to be a model or framework in the first place. It was a people-driven, autonomous set of practices for coordinating Agile teams that got so popular that many organizations started adopting it.

Spotify emphasizes self-organizing, cross-functional, and co-located teams called “squads” (the equivalent of a scrum team). Although SAFe doesn’t place necessity on the co-location of teams, it is encouraged for PI planning.

The squads are further organized into larger units called tribes. Squads are not much dependent on each other, and if there are dependencies, they’re handled through Scrum of Scrums. Knowledge sharing happens through chapters, guilds, and informal groups organized based on skill sets and interests.

Here’s when you should use the Spotify agile model:

• The organization emphasizes learning, allowing for mistakes, and taking controlled risks
• Your team and product and teams are loosely coupled and closely aligned to avoid dependency conflicts

Is SAFe the right choice for your company?

Just because SAFe works for many enterprises doesn’t mean it will also work for you. There are many things you need to keep in mind before you decide whether to use SAFe or not. Let’s begin:

Which Companies Use SaFe?

1. Cisco

Cisco’s Subscription Billing Platform was initially designed on the waterfall model, which slowed development, defects, extended-release cycles, and missing delivery pipelines. After adopting SAFe, the organization has reduced defects by 40% and improved its defect removal efficiency by 14%.

2. Fitbit

Fitbit has been using the Scrum approach to meet its rigid consumer holiday-driven product delivery schedule. However, as the company’s customer base grew, it needed to scale its process. That’s when Fitbit implemented SAFe, released four new products, and shipped more than 22 million devices thanks to its successful scaling effort.

3. Royal Philips

Royal Philips had release cycles averaging 18 months with its traditional development approach. However, with the SAFe approach, it reduced them to six months. Also, the feature cycle time was reduced from more than 240 days to fewer than 100.

4. LEGO Digital Solutions

Lego digital solutions initially had five development teams that could collaborate easily. However, as they grew up to 20 teams, client collaboration, cross-team alignment, and release planning became challenging.

To address this issue, Lego Digital solutions implemented the SAFe framework and witnessed a significant reduction in duplicate work and dependency issues, fewer dependency issues, and enhanced planning, thus improving customer trust.

Strengths and Weaknesses of SAFe?

Like other agile approaches, SAFe has its pros and cons. Let’s look at them:

When Should You Implement SAFe and When You Shouldn’t?

To understand if SAFe is the right approach for you, it’s also essential to know when and when not to use it.