We often don’t think through carefully enough what new behavior, skills, and attitudes will be needed when major changes are initiated. As a result, we don’t recognize the kind and amount of training that will be required to help people learn those new behaviors, skills, and attitudes.
—Kotter
Train teams and launch trains.
—The SAFe approach
By now, key Agile Release Train (ART) stakeholders are trained and on board, and launch plans are in place. The Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (LACE) and various SAFe Program Consultants (SPCs) are ready and prepared to help. In this chapter, we’ll discuss how to train the teams and launch the ART, so that the real business benefits of the change can start to occur.
Kotter’s quote reminds us that changing people’s behaviors, attitudes, and skills—and in the end, the culture of an enterprise—is no small feat. Simply put, if we want people to do things differently, leaders must “shape the path” [1]. That requires training to show people the way and follow-up coaching to help them master these new skills, techniques, and attitudes.
We are now ready to turn our attention to the new and tentatively identified Agile Teams who will account for most of the train members. These are the people who actually build the systems needed by the business, so it’s important that they fully grasp what’s about to take place. They must have an understanding of their role in the ART and gain the Lean and Agile skills needed to be effective in their changing role. It’s likely that some or all will have never participated in an Agile or SAFe environment, so the next significant task is to train all the teams in the SAFe way of working.
Scaled Agile, Inc.’s two-day SAFe for Teams (S4T) course is designed for this purpose. This team-building and training course features an introduction to Agile development, including an overview of the Agile Manifesto and its values and principles. It also includes:
Core Scrum elements and an exploration of the roles of Scrum Master and Product Owner
The purpose and mechanics of the basic events, including Iteration Planning (IP), Iteration Execution, Daily Stand-up (DSU), Iteration Review, and Iteration Retrospective
Preparation for Program Increment (PI) Planning
Building a Kanban board for tracking Stories
In addition, teams prepare their Team Backlog, which identifies the work needed for the upcoming PI planning event.
When approaching this training, keep in mind that many of the team members will likely have some degree of experience with Agile development and might feel that they are already equipped to work in SAFe. There could potentially be some resistance to what they might consider more basic Agile training. In reality, this team training is critically important for SAFe success, as it provides coaching that goes far beyond core Scrum practices. In particular, a number of elements of Agile at scale are unique to SAFe:
The role of the team in PI planning, Inspect and Adapt (I&A), and the IP iteration
Focus on and participation in the System Demo
Applying Features, user stories, and acceptance criteria to define and validate system behavior
Using story points as the measure of velocity and for estimating purposes
Understanding the flow of work through the Kanban systems, including the team’s local Kanban
Collaboration with other teams and other roles, including Product Management and System Architecture
Introduction/application of Built-In Quality practices, including Continuous Integration, Test-First with test automation, and pair work
Building the larger team-of-teams that constitutes the ART
In some rollouts, training is performed team by team over time. That strategy can sometimes be effective. Nevertheless, we strongly recommend a more accelerated approach, which includes training all the team members at the same time. This practice has raised some eyebrows in the industry. Many picture 100-plus people in a room being trained simultaneously, compare it to the more intimate setting of a small team with a single instructor, and can’t imagine that it delivers equivalent benefits. In reality, it delivers far more:
Accelerated learning – This training happens in two days, rather than over a period of months. That speeds up the timing and assimilation by all the members of the train, which accelerates the launch.
A common scaled Agile paradigm – All team members receive the same training, at the same time, from the same instructor. This eliminates the variability of different training sessions over time, by different instructors, using different courseware.
Cost-efficiency – One challenge with Agile implementation at scale has been the availability and expense of training. Talented, proven instructors are hard to find and not consistently available, and their value and cost are commensurately high. The Big Room approach is typically three to five times more cost-effective than individual team training.
Collective learning – There is no substitute for the learning experience of big room training. Face-to-face interaction is one of the critical ingredients of Agile at scale. Training everyone together starts building the social network that the ART relies upon and creates a far better experience than what can be accomplished when participants work separately from each other. Such training can take on a transformative aspect, something you have to experience to believe.
To give you a feel for what’s possible, following are some observations from Mark Richards, SAFe Program Consultant Trainer (SPCT) and a SAFe pioneer in Australia.
Here are some of Mark’s insights:
The teams will be fully formed. The whole team can sit at the same table. Not only do they get to learn together and share insights, it’s actually a very powerful team formation event. Teams choose their names on day one, and we watch team identity grow before our eyes.
Teams engage in collective learning. The teams have a chance to resolve their different interpretations in discussions and exercises. They’re not reliant on one mind—the Scrum Master—to ensure they get value from the Agile approach. Instead, teams have many minds, and each has different nuances.
The features for the PI will be ready. The team training exercises involving the identification, splitting, and estimating of stories are done on the real features the teams will be dealing with in PI planning.
Teams form their own identities. Teams sit together, choose a name for their team, and begin to form the shared identity of the ART. As team discussions and debriefs of exercises unfold, they start to learn about each other’s worlds.
As different as it is, the all-in, big-room training approach remains one of our strongest recommendations and is one of SAFe’s most cost-effective and valuable implementation strategies.
There are many ways to successfully start an ART, and there’s no specific timeline for the readiness activities we described in the previous chapter. However, experience has shown that the easiest and fastest way to launch an ART is through the ART Quickstart approach, as illustrated in Figure 1.
In this approach, the Agile teams are trained, and the first PI planning session is scheduled in a single week. While this may seem daunting, experience has shown that it is the easiest and most pragmatic way to help 100-plus people transition to the new way of working. There are three elements to this approach:
Days 1–2 – The Agile team big room training takes place, as described previously.
Days 3–4 – Team training is followed immediately by PI planning. This way, the teams are still present and in context, and their first PI planning experience builds on the prior day’s training.
Day 5 – This day is reserved for mentoring people in their new roles, tool training, discussion of needed Agile technical practices, open space, and any other activities that the teams need to get ready for the first iteration.
During the Quickstart, PI planning serves to help build the teams’ backlogs based on current priorities. It also reinforces the training they’ve just received. The very next week, the teams will plan their iteration in the normal fashion and start executing the PI.
Obviously, getting off to a good start with PI planning is essential to the success of the first PI. It demonstrates a commitment to the new way of working for all the teams and stakeholders. An effective session will have the following outcomes:
Build confidence and enthusiasm in the new way of working
Start to build the ART as a team-of-Agile-teams and the social network that it relies on
Teach the teams how they can assume responsibility for planning and delivery
Create full visibility into the mission and current context of the program
Demonstrate the commitment of Lean-Agile Leaders to the SAFe transformation
This first planning session is, therefore, a critical event for SPCs, other leaders, and change agents. To ensure a good outcome, an experienced SPC will typically co-facilitate the session.
With the teams and stakeholders trained and the new way of working now in effect, there’s no going back. As you prepare to evolve and improve your practice of SAFe, keep this point in mind: Just because people have been initially trained in Agile, that doesn’t actually make them Agile. Just as Agile value delivery is incremental in nature, so is becoming Agile. A mindset of continuous learning and adoption of ‘inspect and adapt’ practices is now essential to the health and well-being of the ART and the business goals of the enterprise.
It’s important to actively support the individuals who make up the ART and provide them with an environment in which learning and growing are encouraged. To leave them to their own devices would be against our responsibility as Lean-Agile leaders and change agents.
We need to coach people on this new path, so they will be empowered to excel in this new working environment. That is the subject of the next chapter, Coaching ART Execution.
LEARN MORE
[1] Heath, Chip, and Dan Heath. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. Crown Publishing Group, Kindle Edition.
