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According to Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), the Product Management in an organization is responsible for outlining and backing the development of sustainable, viable, feasible and desirable products that satisfies the requirements of customers. To achieve this, the Product Management in the organization should associate with many people. These associations are required for spotting and outlining the needs of customers, gaining knowledge of the context of the solution and developing the program vision, features and roadmap required for meeting these requirements. Further, SAFe states that the Product Management should support the Agile Release Trains in bringing value through the ongoing delivery pipeline and Kanban. 

When talking about the SAFe Agile Product Manager roles and responsibilities, their roles differ based on how complex the solution an organization or a team develops. For instance, some solutions need a single Product Manager, while some might need a group of Product Managers. According to Scaled Agile Framework, effective Product Management is motivated by a mindset that is focused more on customers. Here, the customer is placed as the focal point for any decisions made. Even, this mindset is supported by the techniques and tools of design thinking. Its focus is on the organization as a whole so that it will be possible to create sustainable, feasible, viable and desirable solutions.

How Can A Product Manager Support the Core Values of SAFe?

Let us consider that you work as a Product Manager in a SAFe organization. When you take up this role, you will be responsible for making sure that every piece of task you and your team carries out ties back to business and product strategies. As a Product Manager in a SAFe environment, you are equally responsible for reinforcing the core values of SAFe across your organization. These values are actually the foundations of the Scaled Agile Framework. Here, it is better to understand the core values of SAFe. You can also get to know how you can support these values as a Product Manager:

1. Alignment:

One of the core values of SAFe is to stay aligned on goals, progress and work. Only then, will it be possible to ensure the success of the team. This holds particularly for large organizations. When talking about alignment, it does not always mean that you should follow the instructions from the top-level management. In most organizations, Agile teams are self-organizing. It means that they have complete autonomy to plan and decide for themselves. If your organization already follows this approach, you can achieve alignment from shared vision, transparency and communication within the team.

Role of a Product Manager:

As a Product Manager, one of the SAFe Product Manager responsibilities regarding alignment is the effective management of backlogs. Even, you can align things by keeping an eye on the roadmap by keeping stakeholders in the loop. For proper alignment, you will have to communicate your goals to all teams and also the direction on how to achieve those goals.

2. Built-in Quality:

Another core value of SAFe is to make sure that the teams achieve high-quality deliverables at every stage of software development.  The purpose of this approach is to create dependable and efficient processes, particularly at scale. You can reduce the chances of troublesome rework when you validate and verify each line of code and system architecture early on.

Role of a Product Manager:

As one of the key Product Management responsibilities in SAFe, the Product Management team always bridges the gap between teams. In turn, cross-functional coordination between teams becomes a reality. For instance, it will be possible to achieve the best built-in quality, which is the core of SAFe by coordinating with your DevOps team. When coordinating, you can adopt an “ongoing everything” approach for deployment and delivery. In turn, it will be possible to increase the quality of deployment, monitoring and testing processes.

3. Transparency:

To maintain the best production standards, SAFe teams often function at high speeds. For high speeds and the best production standards, there should be transparency all through the levels at your company.

As a Product Manager, your role here will be to provide your part in developing an atmosphere of dependability. Here, every participant will have access to the workflow documentation and they will feel at ease owning up to mistakes. In turn, you can spot bugs early and alignment will become a reality as well. Even, this move will make your team happy.

Program Execution:

The key aspect of SAFe is that it applies Agile principles within the business to bring out quality products and even to achieve the business goals. The overall objective of successful program execution is achieved because of the contributions from the three core values above being transparency, built-in quality and alignment.

Concerning, program execution, the SAFe Agile Product Manager roles and responsibilities include working as the focal point to keep the team organized and working towards the achievement of the shared vision. In turn, the team can together achieve the desired outcome.

Key Responsibilities:

As a Product Manager, you can contribute your share towards achieving the core values of SAFe in your organization. However, you should be aware of the three SAFe Product Manager responsibilities. But, remember that in a SAFe environment, a product need not essentially be tangible and stand-alone. In this environment, products are rarely self-contained:

1. Solution Context:

This approach needs a holistic overview of the issues to attend to and the atmosphere in which the solutions are to be delivered. To be more specific, here Product Managers, use, define and investigate the Solution Context. The purpose of this context is to clarify how the solution goes in line with a bigger picture.

The key element of SAFe here is to gain knowledge of the complete landscape. This knowledge will have an effect on the consequences that the solution has on other processes and systems. Due to the presence of many interdependent teams in big enterprises, this turns out to be a complex endeavor.

2. Increased Collaboration:

In the SAFe atmosphere, Product Managers should be highly collaborative. As compared to small and medium-scale enterprises, it is hard for a Product Manager to take care of stakeholder alignment and consensus-building. Not only in large organizations but this happens in product-centric companies as well. So, the responsibility of Product Managers here is to predict and spot differences. They should also judge what type of outcomes will their decisions bring. The thing to remember if you are a Product Manager in a larger organization is that everything you decide can have a bigger effect. So, careful consideration is highly important. 

3. Extra Kinds of Customers:

One of the key SAFe Product Manager responsibilities is to hold responsible customers. In the case of a bigger organization, customers should be seen as an integral part of the organization as against people, who are paying for the organization’s product or service. The complex and large systems in bigger organizations will generally have communications with different people and varied elements of the solution. One instance is external brands requesting a shelf space in a department store. At the same time, the internal team at the store will be looking to optimize their product arrangements.

Indeed, in a bigger organization, the complexities are more. Nevertheless, the SAFe core Product Management responsibilities remain the same. The Product Managers will continue to work on the Key Performance Indicators. Their ultimate aim will be to make their products work and ship to customers. Further, they continue to rely on user feedback to continuously optimize and improve their product performance in all ways possible.

The goal of an organization may not always pay attention to growth and revenue. When the organization turns out to be a government entity or a non-profit, the goal will be different. Even though the goals are unique and different, all of them have some similarities in the process they follow. This encompasses collaboration, definition and prioritizing with the implementation teams  and taking the product or service to the market.

In case, the product is part of a bigger solution, there will be additional SAFe Agile Product Manager roles and responsibilities. Here, a Product Manager will pay attention to making sure that there is cohesion and interoperability across the whole solution. The other duties might even encompass taking part in activities pertaining to  a larger solution train that a specific solution or product plays.

Conclusion:

In any organization, be it small or big product development is a team sport. Here, the SAFe Product Manager will act as a coach, who fore-runs the team onto the playing field. To bring the best products and solutions to the market, a Product Manager will have to be a strong leader. A Product Manager will act as a bridge between the customers and the product development team. Yes, they will gather feedback from the former and communicate with the latter so that the organization can develop the best products that will meet the requirements of customers without any deviation whatsoever. 

An organization can succeed only when it delivers quality service or products to happy customers. Here, the role of a Product Manager in a SAFe environment cannot be underestimated.

References

1. https://www.scaledagileframework.com/product-management/
2. https://www.aha.io/roadmapping/guide/product-development-methodologies/what-is-the-role-of-pm-in-safe
3. https://www.productplan.com/learn/safe/