What Are the Benefits of the Scaled Agile Framework?

Introduction

If you work in software development, you’re well aware of the current pressure to create higher-quality products faster than ever before.

There are numerous reasons to make that happen. Knowing what you need to achieve is one thing. Knowing how to get there is a different story.

So, how might testing and development teams speed up the delivery of higher-quality software? In recent years, a variety of ways to answer this topic have evolved. SAFe, or the Scaled Agile Framework, is one of the most popular techniques today. But, exactly, what does SAFe entail? What are the advantages and disadvantages of adopting it versus agile?

The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) should be implemented for a variety of reasons. Let’s learn more about these benefits.

What Is SaFE?

SAFe was created in 2011 to assist software teams to deliver better products faster. SAFe, which combines agile and lean principles, encourages team cooperation and alignment while centralizing decision-making. SAFe product manager role has three levels: Team, Program, and Portfolio.

Ultimately, SAFe helps businesses interpret the big picture by:

• Mapping roles
• Setting responsibilities
• Setting activities

Thus, it aids enterprises in determining a software development project’s alignment. This alignment should have business goals and predictability. It also helps measure success and optimize workflows.

SAFe was created to make agile concepts scalable for large organizations. It achieves this by centralizing decision-making. It also brings a top-down approach to a traditionally bottom-up process.

Consistently Apply Agile

Many companies begin their Agile journey by experimenting with one or two teams. After a period of reasonable success, there is a growing desire to replicate this achievement across the organization.

SAFe tackles this by identifying relevant Systems Thinking, and Agile principles and practices. These should scale well and must be shared across teams and programs to be successful at scaling.

Bringing Organisational Cadence With Scaled Agile Framework

It’s not uncommon for large corporations to have a few teams successfully execute their own version of Agile for tasks where they have full autonomy. However, planning releases involving several Agile teams is often problematic.

SAFe defines a consistent approach to planning, execution, and value delivery. An Agile Release Train is a method for accomplishing this (ART). An ART is a lightweight “program container” that brings together multiple Agile teams on a consistent cadence known as a Program Increment every 8-12 weeks (PI).

The ART meets at the start of each PI to plan what they will deliver in that PI. Assembling a team of teams helps businesses identify, prepare for, and solve cross-team relationships, risks, and obstacles. They use well-known methods like Scrum-of-Scrums to keep on top of cross-team connections, as well as innovative practices like bi-weekly cross-team System Demos to inspect and adjust the product.

The ART inspects and modifies what (product) and how (process) they delivered in the preceding 8 to 12 weeks at the end of each PI.

Constantly Upgraded

SAFe is updated on an annual basis. It’s not to modify the basics, but to include community learnings.

The Biggest Benefit of SAFe

The most significant advantage of adopting SAFe is the ability to use a very lightweight scaled agile framework. This framework will speed up the development of software, but it’ll also keep the business level decision-making that is needed.

SAFe, in essence, takes agile beyond the front lines of software development and applies it to software leaders who must solve higher-level strategy challenges.

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