Scaled Agile

A set of nine double-sided SAFe Principle Cards. Handy cards for SAFe Product Owners and Managers to use to assess how well the SAFe Principles are understood and applied.

Many teams struggle to let go of their waterfall, silo mentality when they first transition to agile ways-of-working. In particular they shy away from collaboratively working on the definition, evolution and implementation of their backlog items insisting on up-front definition of Features and Stories, and clean handovers between the Product Owners and the Development Teams. This is an issue that we see with all the various agile methods but which always seems to get compounded whenever teams try to scale. So what are the worst things you can do to compromise the agility of your program when using Features? In Part 3 of this series, Ian Spence provides guidance on what it means for a Feature to be Ready.

The SAFe® principles are very powerful but our coaching and consulting experiences have shown that, as currently presented, they are far less accessible and intuitive than the Agile Manifesto and its supporting 12 Agile Principles. In line with the release of 5.0 of SAFe®, which simplifies and enhances the SAFe® big picture, we have produced a set of cards that we believe do the same for the underlying SAFe® Principles. The cards present the ten principles in a self-contained, readily accessible fashion — allowing executives, leaders, and team members to readily understand the principles and quickly assess their relevance. Download the cards today to help your teams be SAFe®. This blog post introduces the SAFe Principle Cards produced by Ian Spence (SAFe Fellow, SPCT) with help from Brian Kerr (SPC) and Brian Tucker (SAFe Fellow, SPCT).

In May 2017, agile leaders from the banking, insurance, telecom, technology and publishing sectors gathered with Ivar Jacobson International (IJI) at the Tower of London to discuss the important role executives, product managers and release trains engineers play in a successful agile transformation programme. With clients from Deutsche Bank, SimCorp and Mastercard participating in the panel discussions, guests heard first-hand what it really means to adopt, resource and carry out these roles in large, often quite traditional, internal software development organisations.

Many teams struggle to let go of their waterfall, silo mentality when they first transition to agile ways-of-working. In particular they shy away from collaboratively working on the definition, evolution and implementation of their backlog items insisting on up-front definition of Features and Stories, and clean handovers between the Product Owners and the Development Teams. This is an issue that we see with all the various agile methods but which always seems to get compounded whenever teams try to scale. In this short blog series we will look at how this tendency towards waterfall thinking can seriously hinder team’s adopting SAFe® and working with a Program Backlog full of Features. We will also provide some advice on how to get your Features Ready without succumbing to premature Story writing.

Many teams struggle to let go of their waterfall, silo mentality when they first transition to agile ways-of-working. In particular they shy away from collaboratively working on the definition, evolution and implementation of their backlog items insisting on up-front definition of Features and Stories, and clean handovers between the Product Owners and the Development Teams. This is an issue that we see with all the various agile methods but which always seems to get compounded whenever teams try to scale. So what are the worst things you can do to compromise the agility of your program when using Features? In Part 4 of this series, Ian Spence provides some practical tips to avoid waterfalling your features.

Many teams struggle to let go of their waterfall, silo mentality when they first transition to agile ways-of-working. In particular they shy away from collaboratively working on the definition, evolution and implementation of their backlog items insisting on up-front definition of Features and Stories, and clean handovers between the Product Owners and the Development Teams. This is an issue that we see with all the various agile methods but which always seems to get compounded whenever teams try to scale. So what are the worst things you can do to compromise the agility of your program when using Features? In Part 2 of this series, Ian Spence defines the seven deadly sins of feature preparation, and the most wasteful practices we have seen teams adopt in an attempt to be better prepared for the PI Planning event.

Better quality and better predictability of delivery The entire product division talking the same language using the same concepts More responsive delivery with the ability to demo features to clients as the teams are developing them

A simpler view of SAFe—Essential SAFe—was created to help even more teams to scale effectively. In this presentation Ian reviews: The basics of scaling — what do we mean by scaling and when is SAFe applicable Essential SAFe — what is it and how can it help How to be safe with SAFe — how and when to go beyond the essentials

In this short blog Ian Spence looks at how many Features a SAFe® Agile Release Train needs to prepare to be ready for their PI (Program Increment) / big room planning event.