SAFe Implementation Roadmap | 12 Steps Guide to SAFe Implementation

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SAFe Implementation Roadmap

SAFe Implementation Roadmap

SAFe or Scaled Agile Framework is an Agile methodology followed by many organizations. The good thing about this framework is that it aids organizations with the implementation of Agile and Lean principles at scale. SAFe is being used by many popular organizations across the world these days.

According to a study conducted in 2020, it was found that nearly 54% of the participants stated that they use SAFe in their business. Particularly, most of them use SAFe for scaling. Seeing their growth, many other organizations are also thinking about SAFe implementation.

Competencies Used For Building SAFe:

When an organization thinks about SAFe implementation, it should remember one thing. SAFe is generally built on seven competencies. They are listed below:

  •  Team and technical agility
  •  Organizational agility
  •  Lean Portfolio management
  •  Lean-Agile leadership
  •  Enterprise solution delivery
  •  Continuous learning culture
  • Agile product delivery
An Overview of SAFe Implementation Roadmap:

Now, you know that SAFe is the method of taking any interactive Agile way of working. It also involves scaling the Agile ways across the organizations besides applying a mindset for lean production. If you plan to implement SAFe concepts, you will be interested in doing right. Thanks to the SAFe implementation roadmap! It will help you with making SAFe implementation hassle-free.

Implementing SAFe is a good and beneficial move for your organization in many ways. But, remember that you should do it slowly and should not be in a hurry. Here is a picture that shows the SAFe implementation roadmap. Take each step at a time and this roadmap is a useful tool in implementing SAFe practices in your organization. From the picture below, you can identify some critical moves that you should do with care to achieve the organizational change that you expect to happen:

Source: Scaled Agile

This roadmap encompasses nearly 12 steps in the implementation of SAFe in any organization. Understanding these steps one after the other is important for you to implement SAFe in your organization:

1. Get to the Tipping Point:

Are you running your business for long? If so, your teams would be following a certain set of practices. So, it is not easy to introduce a new practice to them. Unless and until the change that you are implementing is compelling, your employees will resist accepting the change. The only way to motivate them for a change is to make them understand. They should understand that this change that they are learning new will bring compelling results taking them forward to success.

So, the first and even the toughest step in implementing SAFe is to bring your team to the tipping point. You should bring a mindset in them to accept the change and not resist it. Only then, they will stay open-minded to learn new things.

2. Train Lean-Agile Change Agents:

Once you have moved your team to the tipping point, the time has come to create a group of strategic change agents. These agents can aid with evolution. For influencing individuals and teams to align them to the SAFe implementation roadmap steps, these agents can extend the right help to you. The thing to remember here is that a great SAFe Program Consultant or SPC can be of great help at this stage of the roadmap. This consultant can guide your organization to balance predictability with business agility. Both these things are typically crucial to a typical enterprise-scale technology organization.

3. Train Executives, Leaders and Managers:

In the Scaled Agile Framework implementation roadmap, all participants should be trained properly. This step will help you ensure that all team members have the required skills for getting rid of any hindrances and managing the deployment. Even, the right training will ensure that they can provide support to the organization when required. Also, the right training will help them with the development of the right Lean-Agile perspective. They will be in a position to showcase their respect for innovation, cultures and people. Also, they can show continuing upgrades with their pursuits. Training executives, leaders and managers is an important step in the roadmap. The reason is that it will help to improve their potential and to widen the reach of solutions.

4. Form a Lean-Agile Center of Excellence:

Shortly called LACE, a Lean-Agile Center of Excellence is a small group of people. The good thing about this group is that it is devoted to putting into practice the SAFe Lean-Agile way of working. SAFe suggests that this team should encompass people from different functional teams. The key role of this team is to put into practice the change. They have the power to do so in your organization. The members of this team carry different responsibilities in the roadmap. Among them, they should play the key role of communicating the vision and grave for the change. Also, the members are responsible for the creation and execution of the implementation plan. They should also coach the enterprise.

5. Recognizing ARTs and Value Streams:

Before you can implement SAFe practices in your organization, you should do one thing. It is to recognize the development and operational value streams. Development value streams help with building new products. Operational value stream is where your customers communicate with your business. The goal of this step in the roadmap is to identify the requirements of customers that hold value and can bring growth to the organization.

Once the value streams are identified, you should move with the creation of ARTs or Agile Release Trains. The ART creation can be done by recognizing teams that will work on each stream together. The ART is a term used for denoting a group of teams that work together. They do this for achieving the highest priority features within the value streams that you identified. Here, when you create a group of teams, you should ensure that the group is cross-functional. It means that the group should have people with different skills together so that the completion of tasks will happen without any hassle.

The thing to remember when you recognize ARTs is that the most effective trains will have 50-125 people. It will be further divided into long-lived and stable teams. These teams are not dependent on other teams and they can release on demand.

6. Implementation Plan Creation:

In this step in the SAFe implementation roadmap, you will be creating the implementation plan. The recommendation here is to keep it simple. Do not make a detailed plan. You can follow the true Agile method of doing a little planning for iteration. Then, executing the plan. When executing, you should identify and learn from the mistakes you have made. Then, repeat the exercise without any mistakes. It is all about inspecting and adapting principle. Solution development will be the simple yet powerful incremental approach to SAFe implementation.

7. Get Ready for the Launch of ART:

When you are in this step, you might have already identified your value streams. Even, by this step, you should have established your implementation plan. Also, you might have defined your first ART loosely by now. Your plans are now moving towards implementation. So, this is a crucial moment in SAFe implementation. The first ART is very crucial as it carries the potential to create implications that can reach far. It is also crucial from the perspective of change management. As you are getting into SAFe practices, you will get to see that this is the first change to the way your team works. So, with its success, your team can undoubtedly gain the confidence to move forward. You can implement the first ARTs with the help of SPCs. Also, you should get the right support from the members of the Lean-Agile Center of Excellence and ART stakeholders, who have completed SAFe training.

8. Coach teams and Launch the Agile Release Trains:

In the previous step among the SAFe implementation roadmap steps, you prepared for the ART launch. But, before the launch, you should make sure that the teams are trained. Only a trained team can deliver ART rightly. The training will take around a week time so that teams get ready for the initial PI Strategy.

9. Train ART Execution:

When you reach this stage, one or more of your teams would have obtained role-based training sessions. Even, you might have launched the first ART following a PI Planning session. By this time, the teams might have started working on the first PI. Now, it is time to move the attention from planning and training to coaching and supporting the team for ART execution. In turn, the ART can become a solution that delivers value within the shortest lead time.

10. Introduce More Value Streams and ARTs:

The more Agile Release Trains your business launches, the better will be the return on investment. So, introducing more value streams and ARTs can be the best idea. You can follow the same steps above from steps 7 to 9 to introduce more of them. Make sure that you do not commit a critical error in this step. It is to assume that everyone knows about the Lean-Agile practices by now. Of course, they know. But, when you have this thought, there are greater chances that you will not do your activities with complete attention to detail. So, better give the same attention as you gave in steps 7 to 9 even when you launch more ARTs and value streams. This move will help you avoid pitfalls. Lean-Agile leaders in your organization should continue to guide teams to help them learn how can you do these steps effectively.

One of the effective methods you can follow in this step is to find which particular value stream has succeeded previously. It means that you should identify the value streams that have brought you positive returns. From this successful value stream, take the working concept. Then, apply the same working concept. As a result, you can achieve quicker time-to-market by improving productivity practices.

11. Extend to the Portfolio:

Once you ensure that multiple ARTs are successfully running, you should get ready to extend them to the portfolio level. The Portfolio Level SAFe process can help you in this regard. When adding to the portfolio, you should do it with added guidance from the Lean Portfolio Management Function. Here, you should do one thing for sure. You should begin aligning value streams with the enterprise strategy. In turn, you can establish enterprise value flows. Also, you can foster a leaner approach to customer-supplier relationships.

12. Accelerate:

The final step in the Scaled Agile Framework implementation roadmap is to ensure that the organizational culture has changed. Also, it is the stage to ensure that executives continue to show the same level of passion and vitality as in the first stage. This is not something hard to do. The reason is that SAFe encompasses many tasks that can considerably improve the movement towards business Agility. Some examples of these tasks include reiterating the principles, optimizing performance, encouraging ongoing improvement all through the organization, embedding the new style of working into the culture and establishing key performance indicators.

Conclusion

With SAFe, you can scale up with the help of Agile and lean principles. The implementation roadmap in SAFe begins with getting your organization ready for Scaled Agile Framework and organizing the resulting value. With Agile Release Trains and value streams being the key elements, you can make this execution with the steps above. But, remember that when you implement not only SAFe but also any other new practice, it will take some time. Not just time, it needs commitment for a change. You can bring this commitment to your workforce by keeping them motivated. They can be motivated by explaining the positive outcomes.

References
  1. https://thei4group.com/the-scaled-agile-framework-implementation-roadmap/
  2. https://www.scaledagileframework.com/implementation-roadmap/
  3. https://www.scaledagileframework.com/reaching-the-tipping-point/
  4. https://medium.com/@Elabor8/safe-implementation-roadmap-d0a6d0a392c6

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.