The Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) for Lean Enterprises is a freely available knowledge base for people building the world’s most important software and systems. This scalable and configurable framework helps organizations deliver new products, services, and solutions in the shortest sustainable lead time, with the best possible quality and value. It synchronizes alignment, collaboration, and delivery for multiple Agile teams.
SAFe combines the power of Agile with Lean product development and systems thinking. An extensive body of knowledge, SAFe is based on Lean-Agile principles and values. It provides guidance for the roles, responsibilities, artifacts, and activities necessary to achieve better business outcomes.
The SAFe website—scaledagileframework.com—features an interactive ‘Big Picture’ graphic, which provides an overview of the Framework. Each icon on this graphic is clickable and links to a supporting article and related resources. The site also includes a variety of guidance articles, case studies, downloads, presentations, and videos, as well as a glossary that can be automatically translated into multiple languages.
SAFe allows organizations to adapt the Framework to their business context. It supports smaller-scale solutions employing 50–125 practitioners, as well as complex systems that require thousands of people.
SAFe supports the full range of development environments with four ‘out-of-the-box’ configurations, as illustrated in Figure 1.
Essential SAFe
Large Solution SAFe
Portfolio SAFe
Full SAFe
Each configuration is described in the following sections.
The Essential SAFe configuration (Figure 2) is the heart of SAFe and is the simplest starting point for implementation. The basic building block for all other SAFe configurations, it describes the most critical elements needed to realize the majority of the Framework’s benefits.
Together, the Team and Program levels form an organizational structure called the Agile Release Train (ART), where Agile teams, key stakeholders, and other resources are dedicated to an important, ongoing solution mission.
The Essential SAFe configuration provides the fundamental elements of the Framework:
The ART aligns management, teams, and stakeholders to a common mission through a single vision, roadmap, and program backlog.
ARTs deliver the features (user functionality), and the enablers (technical infrastructure), needed to provide value on a sustainable basis.
Team iterations are synchronized and use the same duration and start and end dates.
Each ART delivers valuable and tested system-level increments every two weeks.
Program Increments (PIs) provide longer, fixed timebox increments for planning, execution, and inspecting and adapting.
Solutions can be released on demand, during, or at the end of a PI, based solely on the needs of the business. Frequent or continuous integration of the work from all teams is the ultimate measure of progress.
ARTs use face-to-face PI planning to assure collaboration, alignment, and rapid adaptation.
ARTs build and maintain a Continuous Delivery Pipeline used to regularly develop and release small increments of value.
ARTs provide common and consistent approaches to user experience through Lean UX principles and practices.
DevOps, which is a mindset, culture, and set of technical practices, provides for communication, integration, automation, and close cooperation among all the people needed to plan, develop, test, deploy, release, and maintain a solution.
The following roles help align multiple teams to a shared mission and vision, with the necessary coordination and governance:
System Architect/Engineer – This individual or small cross-disciplinary team truly applies systems thinking. This role defines the overall architecture of the system, helps distinguish Nonfunctional Requirements (NFRs), determines the primary elements and subsystems, and identifies the interfaces and collaborations among them.
Product Management – The Product Managers provide the internal voice of the customer and work with Product Owners and customers to understand and communicate their needs, define system features, and participate in validation. They are responsible for the program backlog and prioritize features and enablers using an economic approach.
Release Train Engineer (RTE) – The RTE is a servant leader and the chief Scrum Master for the ART. This role helps improve the flow of value in the program using various mechanisms such as the Program Kanban, Inspect and Adapt (I&A) workshop, PI Planning, and more.
Business Owners – This small group of stakeholders has the primary business and technical responsibility for fitness for use, governance, and return on investment for a solution developed by an ART. They are critical ART stakeholders and actively participate in certain ART events.
Customer – The customer is the ultimate decider of value. Customers are an integral part of the Lean-Agile development process and value stream who have specific responsibilities for solution development.
Three primary activities help coordinate the ART:
PI Planning – A cadence-based, face-to-face planning event, PI planning serves as the heartbeat of the ART, aligning all of its teams to a common mission.
System Demo – The System Demo provides an integrated view of new features for the most recent iteration delivered by all the teams in the ART. Each demo provides ART stakeholders with an objective measure of progress during a PI.
Inspect and Adapt – This is a significant event for an ART, in which the current state of the solution is demonstrated and evaluated. Teams then reflect and identify improvement backlog items via a structured problem-solving workshop.
The Portfolio SAFe configuration (Figure 3) helps align portfolio execution to the enterprise strategy by organizing Agile development around the flow of value through one or more value streams. It provides business agility through the principles and practices of portfolio strategy and investment funding, Agile portfolio operations, and Lean governance.
Organizing the Lean-Agile enterprise around the flow of value through one or more development value streams, the portfolio aligns strategy to execution. Lean budgeting and governance practices help assure that investments will provide the benefits that the enterprise needs to meet its strategic objectives. In the large enterprise, there may be multiple SAFe portfolios.
This configuration builds on Essential SAFe by adding the following Portfolio-level concerns:
Lean Budgets – Lean budgeting allows fast and empowered decision-making, with appropriate financial control and accountability.
Value Streams – Every value stream has funding for the people and resources necessary to build solutions that deliver the value to the business or customer. Each is a long-lived series of steps (system definition, development, and deployment) that build and deploy systems that provide a continuous flow of value.
Portfolio Kanban – This element makes the work of the portfolio visible and creates Work-in-Process (WIP) limits to assure that demand matches the actual value stream capacities.
The following roles provide the highest level of accountability and governance, including the coordination of multiple value streams:
Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) – This function represents the individuals with the highest level of decision-making and financial accountability for a SAFe portfolio. This group is responsible for three primary areas: strategy and investment funding, Agile portfolio operations, and Lean governance.
Epic Owners – Epic Owners take responsibility for coordinating portfolio epics through the Portfolio Kanban system.
Enterprise Architect – This person or group of people work across value streams and programs to help provide the strategic technical direction that can optimize portfolio outcomes. The Enterprise Architect often acts as an epic owner for enabler epics.
The Large Solution SAFe configuration (Figure 4) is appropriate for developing the largest and most complex solutions that typically require multiple Agile Release Trains (ARTs) and suppliers but do not require Portfolio-level considerations. These demands are commonly encountered in industries like aerospace, defense, automotive, and government, where the large solution—not portfolio governance—is the primary concern.
This configuration builds on Essential SAFe by adding the following Large Solution–level concerns:
Solution Train – The key organizational element of the Large Solution level, the Solution Train aligns the people and the work around a common solution vision, mission, and backlog.
System Team – This internal or external organization develops and delivers components, subsystems, or services that help solution trains offer solutions to their customers.
Economic Framework – This element provides financial boundaries for the Solution Train’s decision-making.
Solution Intent – A repository for current and future solution behaviors, the Solution Intent can be used to support verification, validation, and compliance. It is also used to extend built-in quality practices with system engineering disciplines, including Set-Based Design (SBD), Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE), Compliance, and Agile architecture.
Solution Context – This element describes how the system will interface and be packaged and deployed in its operating environment.
Solution Kanban – This element facilitates the flow of capabilities and enablers for the solution.
The following roles help align multiple ARTs and suppliers to a common mission and vision, with the necessary coordination and governance:
Solution Architect/Engineer – This individual or small team defines a common technical and architectural vision for the solution under development.
Solution Management – The people filling this role have the content authority for the Large Solution level. They work with customers to understand their needs, create the solution vision and roadmap, define requirements (capabilities and enablers), and guide work through the Solution Kanban.
Solution Train Engineer (STE) – The STE is a servant leader and coach who facilitates and guides the work of all ARTs and suppliers.
Three major activities help coordinate multiple ARTs and suppliers:
Pre- and Post-PI Planning – These events are used to prepare for, and follow up after, PI Planning for individual ARTs and suppliers in a Solution Train.
Solution Demo – This demo is where the results of all the development efforts from multiple ARTs—along with the contributions from suppliers—are integrated, evaluated, and made visible to customers and other stakeholders.
Inspect and Adapt (I&A) – In this significant event, the current state of the value stream’s solution is demonstrated and evaluated. Representatives of multiple ARTs and suppliers then reflect and identify improvement backlog items in a structured problem-solving workshop.
The Full SAFe configuration (Figure 5) is the most comprehensive version of the Framework. It supports enterprises that build and maintain large, integrated solutions that require the efforts of hundreds of people or more and includes all levels of SAFe: Team, Program, Large Solution, and Portfolio. In the largest enterprises, multiple instances of various SAFe configurations may be required.
The Full SAFe configuration (Figure 5) builds on Essential SAFe by adding the Portfolio and Large Solution levels. It offers the following benefits:
Enables organizations to combine multiple instances of various SAFe configurations
Provides the most comprehensive and robust configuration to meet the needs of the largest enterprises
SAFe’s configurable framework provides just enough guidance to meet the needs of a product, service, or organization. An enterprise can start simply with Essential SAFe and yet have the ability to grow as its needs evolve over time. Each of these configurations is supported by ‘spanning palette’ and ‘foundation’ elements, as shown in Figures 6 and 7, respectively.
The spanning palette contains various roles and artifacts that may be applicable to a specific team, program, large solution, or portfolio context. A key element of SAFe’s flexibility and configurability, the spanning palette permits organizations to apply only those elements needed for their configuration.
Figure 6 illustrates two versions of the spanning palette: The one on the left is used for the Essential SAFe configuration, while the one on the right is used for all other configurations. However, since SAFe is a framework, enterprises can apply any of the elements from the larger spanning palette to Essential SAFe.
Following is a brief description of each spanning palette element:
Metrics – The primary measure of progress in SAFe is objective evidence of working solutions. In addition, SAFe defines numerous intermediate and long-term measures that teams, trains, and portfolios can use to evaluate progress.
Shared services – Some specialty roles may be necessary for the success of an ART but may not be dedicated full time to any specific train.
Community of Practice (CoP) – A CoP is an informal group of team members and other experts acting within the context of a program or enterprise who share practical knowledge in one or more relevant domains.
Milestones – Milestones represent planned and specific goals or events. They can include fixed-date milestones, Program Increment milestones, and learning milestones.
Roadmap – The Roadmap communicates the planned deliverables and milestones over a timeline.
Vision – The Vision describes a future view of the solution to be developed, reflecting customer and stakeholder needs, as well as the features and capabilities proposed to address those needs.
System Team – This special Agile team provides assistance in building and using the Agile development environment, including continuous integration and test automation, and other practices of the continuous delivery pipeline.
Lean UX – Lean UX is the application of Lean principles to user experience design. Through constant measurement and learning loops (build–measure–learn), it uses an iterative, hypothesis-driven approach to product development. In SAFe, Lean UX is applied at scale, with the right combination of centralized and decentralized UX design and implementation.
As illustrated in Figure 7, SAFe’s foundation contains the supporting principles, values, mindset, implementation guidance, and leadership roles that are needed to successfully deliver value at scale. Each foundation element is briefly described next.
Lean-Agile leaders – Management has the ultimate responsibility for business outcomes. As a result, leaders must be trained in, and become trainers of, these leaner ways of thinking and operating. Lean-Agile leaders are lifelong learners and teachers. They understand and embrace Lean and Agile principles and practices.
Core values – Four core values define the belief system of SAFe: alignment, built-in quality, transparency, and program execution. These are described in more detail in the following section.
Lean-Agile Mindset – The Lean-Agile Mindset is the combination of beliefs, assumptions, and actions of SAFe leaders and practitioners who embrace the concepts of the Agile Manifesto and Lean thinking.
SAFe Principles – These nine fundamental truths, beliefs, and economic concepts inspire and inform the roles and practices that make SAFe effective.
SAFe Implementation Roadmap – Implementing the changes necessary to become a Lean enterprise requires a substantial shift in thinking and practices for most companies. SAFe provides an implementation roadmap to guide organizations on this journey.
SAFe Program Consultants (SPCs) – SPCs are change agents who combine their technical knowledge of SAFe with an intrinsic motivation to improve their company’s software and systems development processes.
SAFe’s core values define the ideals and beliefs that are essential to applying the Framework. They act as guides to help people know where to put their focus and how to help companies determine whether they are on the right path to fulfill their business goals. Each core value is briefly described next.
Alignment – When management and teams are aligned to a common mission, all the energy is directed toward helping the customer. Everyone is on the same team, working toward the same goals. Alignment communicates the intent of the mission and enables teams to focus on how to accomplish it. Alignment occurs when everyone in the portfolio, and every team member on every ART, understand the strategy and the part they play in delivering it.
Built-in quality – The economic impact of poor quality is much higher at scale. Built-in quality practices increase customer satisfaction and provide faster, more predictable value delivery. They also improve the ability to innovate and take risks. Without built-in quality, the Lean goal of obtaining the maximum value in the shortest sustainable lead time cannot be achieved. Built-in quality practices also ensure that each solution element, at every increment, achieves appropriate quality standards throughout.
Transparency – “You can’t manage a secret.” Transparency builds trust. Trust, in turn, is essential for performance, innovation, risk-taking, and relentless improvement. Large-scale solution development is hard: Things don’t always work out as planned. Creating an environment where ‘the facts are always friendly’ (for example, sharing progress and information openly across all organizational levels) is key to building trust and improving performance. It enables fast, decentralized decision-making and higher levels of employee empowerment and engagement.
Program execution – To achieve broader change, the entire development value stream—from concept to release—must become leaner and more responsive to change. Traditional organizational structures and practices were built for control and stability; they were not specifically designed to support innovation, speed, and agility. Implementing workarounds, such as tiger teams, project-based organizations, and taskforces, cannot overcome these constraints. Simply put, the majority of organizations cannot break through the thick walls of functional silos. Instead, SAFe delivers value by creating stable (long-lived) teams-of-Agile-teams, in the form of an Agile Release Train.
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[1] http://scaledagileframework.com/about
[2] Kotter, John P. Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility for a Faster-Moving World. 2014.
