A strong guiding coalition is always needed. One with the right composition, level of trust, and shared objective.
—John Kotter
As we described in Reaching the Tipping Point, the need to adopt new practices for solution development is often driven by a burning platform—that is, a problem too severe to solve using the enterprise’s current way of working. It creates the level of urgency needed to inspire significant change.
Even if that is not the case, as the pace of technological and market changes and digital disruption reshapes the modern business model, this sense of urgency has become the new norm. Now, more than ever, the ability to substantially improve development practices is the key to success. Change is at hand. For those following the proven critical moves identified in the SAFe Implementation Roadmap, this chapter describes the second step: Train Lean-Agile change agents.
Once an organization reaches its tipping point and the rationale for a significant change becomes obvious, the difficult journey begins. In Leading Change, Kotter discusses eight stages of guiding organizational transformation and what it takes to make such a transformation stick [1]:
Establishing a sense of urgency
Creating the guiding coalition
Developing a vision and strategy
Communicating the change vision
Empowering employees for broad-based action
Generating short-term wins
Consolidating gains and producing more change
Anchoring new approaches in the culture
For step two, a “sufficiently powerful guiding coalition” of stakeholders is needed. As Kotter notes: “In a rapidly moving world, individuals and weak committees rarely have all the information needed to make good non-routine decisions. Nor do they seem to have the credibility or the time required to convince others to make the personal sacrifices called for in implementing changes. Only teams with the right composition and sufficient trust among members can be highly effective under these circumstances.” [1]
This guiding coalition requires the following things to be effective:
Leaders who can set the vision, show the way, and remove impediments to change
Practitioners, managers, and change agents who can implement specific process changes
Sufficient organizational credibility to be taken seriously
The expertise needed to make fast, intelligent decisions
To create a SAFe coalition that is sufficiently powerful to initiate change, our experience shows that the organization must take three critical steps:
Train Lean-Agile change agents as SAFe Program Consultants (SPCs). They provide the knowledge and horsepower needed to implement the change.
Train executives, managers, and other leaders. They sponsor the change and support the implementation. Leading SAFe is a two-day course designed for this purpose.
Charter a Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (LACE). This working group becomes the focal point and continuous source of inspiration and energy for change management activities.
This chapter addresses the first step, which is to introduce a process that develops people who have the knowledge, skills, and resources needed to successfully implement SAFe. (Elements 2 and 3 of the guiding coalition are addressed in the next two chapters, Training Executives, Managers, and Leaders and Creating a Lean-Agile Center of Excellence, respectively.)
In most enterprises, the primary SAFe change agents appear on the scene as certified SPCs. Sourced internally and externally, they come from many roles:
Trusted consulting partners
Internal business and technology leaders
Portfolio/program/project managers
Architects
Analysts
Process leads
Their common path to success? The Implementing SAFe with SPC Certification class. This four-day course prepares SPCs to become the change agents who lead the transformation. Attendees learn how to effectively apply the principles and practices of SAFe and organize, train, and coach Agile teams. They also learn how to identify Value Streams and Agile Release Trains (ARTs), launch ARTs, and build and manage an Agile portfolio.
Scaling Lean-Agile practices across the enterprise—or any material change for that matter—requires training all the people who do the work. To make it practical and cost-effective, Scaled Agile, Inc. supports a train-the-trainer fan-out model. It licenses SPCs (either partner personnel or enterprise employees) to teach a number of SAFe courses inside the enterprise. This provides an affordable training strategy and develops the trainers needed to initiate and implement the change.
This intensive four-day course prepares internal change agents and external consultants to take on three rather large challenges:
Lead an enterprise Lean-Agile transformation
Implement SAFe
Train managers and executives in Leading SAFe
The first two days of this class are an intensive version of Leading SAFe. The goal is to prepare certified SPCs to teach Leading SAFe (and other courses in the SAFe role-based curriculum, as described later in this section).
These change agents gain the knowledge needed to lead an enterprise-wide Agile transformation by leveraging SAFe and its underlying principles of Agile development, systems thinking, and Lean product development flow. They leave with an understanding of how the principles and practices of SAFe support Agile teams, Agile programs, Lean Portfolio Management (LPM), and Agile Architecture.
The second two days of the class demonstrate how to identify, plan, and implement SAFe. In addition, attendees learn about the briefings, artifacts, and templates needed to identify value streams, prepare the organization, launch ARTs, plan and execute major events, and implement effective processes and measures to sustain and improve the organizational transformation.
After passing an exam, attendees become certified SPCs, giving them access to a variety of helpful resources to be used in the transformation. They are also licensed to teach Leading SAFe as well as other courses in the role-based curriculum. Currently, there are three other courses:
SAFe for Teams
SAFe Scrum Master
SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager
This curriculum is constantly evolving. For more, check out Implementing SAFe with SPC Certification and review the other courses at ScaledAgile.com.
Once trained, SPCs have the knowledge, skills, and resources needed to educate and train managers, teams, and the other stakeholders necessary to effectively drive the change. They become a critical part of the sufficiently powerful coalition for change needed to drive the next critical moves:
Training executives, managers, and leaders
Forming or participating in the LACE
Identifying value streams and ARTs
Creating the implementation plan
LEARN MORE
[1] Kotter, John P. Leading Change. Harvard Business Review Press, Kindle Edition.
[2] Knaster, Richard, and Leffingwell, Dean. SAFe Distilled: Applying the Scaled Agile Framework for Lean Software and Systems Engineering. Addison-Wesley, 2017.