Top 5 SAFe® practices for Scaling Scrum

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With an objective to enable continuous learning and progression for our learners, PremierAgile curated several learning articles in the areas of Agile, Scrum, Product Ownership, Scaling, Agile Leadership, Tools & Frameworks, latest market trends, new innovations etc...

Top 5 SAFe® practices for Scaling Scrum

First, what is Scaling Scrum? Scaling Scrum is a phenomenon where multiple Scrum Teams work together to create a large product. Adaptation of Scrum is necessary for Product Development given that one of the biggest obstacles to scaling Scrum is the inability to deliver usable software within Sprints. 

At the end of each Sprint, multiple Scrum Teams deliver a full integrated set of product increments that are potentially usable. Scaling does not soften timeboxing or Sprint Boundaries. Organizational Agility depends on them.

What is SAFe® 

(SAFe® ) The Scaled Agile Framework, is a bunch of authoritative and work process designs for carrying out Agile practices at a huge scale. The system is an assortment of information that remembers organized direction for jobs and obligations, how to design and deal with the work, and qualities to maintain. 

SAFe advances arrangement, coordinated effort, and conveyance across huge quantities of deft groups. It was conformed to three essential collections of information: Agile programming advancement, lean item improvement, and framework thinking. 

SAFe® Core Values 

SAFe’s fundamental beliefs depict the way of life that initiates necessities to encourage and how individuals ought to act inside that culture to utilize the structure viably.

  • Alignment 
  • Built-in quality
  • Transparency 
  • Program Execution
  • Leadership

These guiding principles help dictate behavior and action for everyone who participates in a SAFe®  portfolio.

Top 5 SAFe® practices for Scaling Scrum
  • Business Agility
  • Agile Release Train
  • Design Thinking
  • Release Train Engineer
  • Lean Portfolio Management 
Business Agility: Business Agility is the competence to quickly grab the business opportunity.

Business Agility is the capacity to contend and flourish in the advanced age by rapidly reacting to showcase changes and arising openings with imaginative, carefully empowered business arrangements. Business Agility necessitates that everybody in question in conveying arrangements—business and innovation pioneers, advancement, IT operation, legal, promoting, finance, support, consistency, security, and others—utilize Lean and Agile practices to constantly convey imaginative, great items and administrations quicker than the competitor.  

Why Organizations suffer to attain Business Agility

Building Strategic Agility for a Faster-Moving World don't begin as huge and bulky. Rather, they regularly started as a quick, versatile organization of inspired people zeroed in on reacting to the client and the new business opportunity. 

As the venture succeeds, it normally needs to develop its prosperity and develop. This implies that singular obligations should become more clear to guarantee that basic subtleties are done. To add skill, experts are employed. Divisions are made. Strategies and techniques are set up to guarantee legitimateness and consistency and to drive repeatable, cost-proficient tasks. 

In any case, as long as the market remains moderately steady, the economies of scale give a hindrance against contenders, and the undertaking can appreciate progress with progress and development.  

Agile Release Train: The Agile Release Train (ART) is an enduring Team of Agile Teams, which, alongside different partners, gradually creates, conveys, and where pertinent works, at least one arrangement in a worthy stream.
Critical roles in Agile Release Train: With an Addition to the Agile Team, below responsible roles makes it easier to execute Agile. 
  1. Release Train Engineer (RTE) is a worker chief who works with program execution, hindrance expulsion, hazard and reliance management, and persistent improvement. 
  2. Product Management is answerable for 'what gets worked,' as characterized by the Vision, Roadmap, and new elements in the Program Backlog. They work with clients and Product Owners to comprehend and convey their requirements, and furthermore, take part in arrangement approval. 
  3. System Architect/Engineering is an individual or group that characterizes the general architecture of the system. They work at a degree of reflection over the groups and parts and characterize Nonfunctional Requirements (NFRs), significant system components, subsystems, and interfaces. 
  4. Business Owners are key stakeholders of the ART and have extreme obligations regarding the business results of the train. 
  5. Customers are definitive purchasers of the product.
Agile team power the Train: ART incorporates the teams that characterize, assemble, and test highlights, just like those that convey, release and work the arrangement. Individual groups have a decision of Agile practices, in view of Scrum, XP, and Kanban. A team  has members between 5-11 & each solely contribute to deliver the quilty Sprint. Each Agile Team consists of 2 roles a) Scrum Master b) Product Owner. 
Design Thinking: Design Thinking is a client-driven improvement process that makes positive items that are productive and supportable over their lifecycle. It goes past the conventional spotlight on the elements and elements of a proposed item. All things being equal, it underlines understanding the issue to be tackled, the setting in which the arrangement will be utilized, and the development of that arrangement.  

Design thinking likewise adopt better approaches to quantify the achievement of our endeavors:

1.Desirable Do clients and clients need the arrangement? 
2.FeasibleCan we convey the right arrangement through a blend of assembling, purchase, accomplice, or obtaining tries/exercises? 
3.Viable Is the manner in which we construct and proposition the arrangement making more worth than cost? For instance, in a revenue-driven undertaking, would we say we are productive? 
4.SustainableAre we proactively dealing with our answer to representing its normal item market lifecycle?
Exploring Problems & the Solution Space

Design thinking discusses a significantly unique way to deal with item and arrangement improvement, in which dissimilar and joined methods are applied to comprehend an issue, design an answer, and convey that answer to the market. The center cycles of Design Thinking show up outwardly as a 'Double Diamond'. This addresses the attention on completely investigating the issue space prior to making arrangements. The exercises related to investigating the issue are explained as follows:

  • Discover: This phase understands the problem by involving the market & acknowledge the unmet requirements & this helps to grow a better perspective. Unlike research that confirms or refutes a hypothesis, it focuses on how users work rather than focusing on how users should work. 
  • Define: This focuses on information that has been obtained from during “Discover Phase” by implementing convergent skills it focuses on how to meet the unmet needs. By doing so, opportunities for new products can be created. The outcomes consist of Personas and Empathy maps that help the product team determine the kinds of solutions the customer would consider desirable.  
  • Lean Portfolio Management: The Lean Portfolio Management capability adjusts procedure and execution by applying Lean and frameworks thinking ways to deal with methodology and speculation financing, Agile portfolio activities, and administration. It is one of the seven center capabilities of the Lean Enterprise, every one of which is fundamental to accomplishing Business Agility. Each center capability is upheld by a particular evaluation, which empowers the venture to survey its capability. These center ability appraisals, alongside suggested improvement openings, are accessible from the Measure and Grow article.  
Why LPM

Conventional ways to deal with the portfolio of the executives were not intended for a worldwide economy or the effect of computerized disturbance. These variables put the squeeze on endeavors to work under a more serious level of vulnerability and convey inventive arrangements a lot quicker 

Individuals who satisfy the LPM work have different titles and jobs and are regularly dispersed all through the association's progression. Since LPM is basic to the Lean Enterprise, these obligations are generally held by business supervisors and leaders who comprehend the undertaker's monetary, specialized, and business settings. Three dimensions of LPM are:

  1. Strategy & Investment Funding: This guarantees the whole portfolio is adjusted and supported to make and keep up with the arrangements expected to meet business targets. 
  2. Agile Portfolio Operations: This facilitates and upholds decentralized program execution and cultivates functional greatness.
  3. Lean Governance: It is the oversight and decision-production of expenditure, review, and consistence, estimating costs, and estimation. 
Release Train Engineer:

The Release Train Engineer (RTE) is a worker chief and mentor for the Agile Release Train (ART). The RTE's significant obligations are to work with the ART occasions and cycles and help the groups in conveying esteem. RTEs speak with partners, raise hindrances, assist with overseeing hazards, and drive constant improvement. The Solution Train Engineer (STE) is a worker chief and mentor for the Solution Train, working with and directing crafted by all ARTs and Suppliers in the Value Stream.

RTE Responsibilities:

The RTE's significant obligations are to work with the ART occasions and cycles and help the groups in conveying esteem. That obligation tumbles to the RTE or STE, who work most viable as worker pioneers. Some Major Responsibilities are listed below: 

  • Oversee and advance the progression of significant worth through the ART and Solution Train utilizing different instruments, like the Program and Solution Kanbans and other data radiators 
  • Build up and convey the yearly schedules for Iterations and Program Increments (PIs) 
  • Work with the PI Planning Event  
Conclusion

Scalability is fundamental in that it adds to seriousness, proficiency, notoriety, and quality. Independent ventures should be especially aware of scalability since they have the greatest development potential and need to augment the return with assets. 


References
  1. https://www.scaledagileframework.com/



Author

Paula

Is a passionate learner and blogger on Agile, Scrum and Scaling areas. She has been following and practicing these areas for several years and now converting those experiences into useful articles for your continuous learning.