On behalf of the entire Scaled Agile, Inc., team and the SAFe contributors, it’s our personal pleasure to introduce SAFe® 4.5 Reference Guide: Scaled Agile Framework® for Lean Enterprises.
SAFe is an online, freely revealed knowledge base of proven success patterns for implementing Lean-Agile development at enterprise scale. It provides comprehensive guidance for work at the Portfolio, Large Solution, Program, and Team levels.
The world’s economy, and the health and welfare of society as a whole, is increasingly dependent on software and systems. Moreover, these solutions require increasingly complex software and cyber-physical systems of unprecedented scale. The methods used to create these systems must keep pace with this new mandate. However, the assumptive, one-pass, phase-gated, waterfall methods of the past are not scaling to the new challenge. New development methods are needed. Agile shows the greatest promise, but it was developed for small teams and, by itself, does not scale to the needs of larger enterprises and the systems they create. What is truly needed is a new way of working—one that applies the power of Agile, along with the contemporary knowledge found in systems thinking and Lean product development. The Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) is one such approach.
The Framework is developed and provided by Scaled Agile, Inc., where our core belief is simple: Better systems and software make the world a better place. Our mission is to assist those who build these systems through development and publication of the SAFe knowledge base, as well as accompanying certification, training, courseware, and a global network of more than 150 tooling and service partners.
As case studies on the SAFe website (www.scaledagileframework.com) show, many enterprises—large and small—are getting outstanding business results from adopting SAFe.
These results typically include:
30–75 percent faster time-to-market
25–75 percent increase in productivity
20–50 percent improvements in quality
10–50 percent increased employee engagement
As you can imagine, with results like those, SAFe is spreading rapidly around the world. The majority of Fortune 100 companies have certified SAFe professionals and consultants on site, as do an increasing percentage of the Global 2000.
This guide captures the knowledge base from the scaledagileframework.com website, but in book form for easy reference. It’s available in paperback and eBook formats (including Kindle) at major book retailers. Like the website, it provides comprehensive guidance for work at the enterprise Portfolio, Large Solution, Program, and Team levels. It also includes the various roles, activities, and artifacts that constitute the Framework, along with the foundational elements of values, mindset, principles, and practices.
We think of SAFe® 4.5 Reference Guide as the ideal companion to the website. You can mark it up, scribble in the margins, read it on the plane, add sticky notes, and highlight relevant sections to make it your own. For example, the first night the version 4 book was available, a student from our Denmark SPC class downloaded the eBook to help him study for the certification exam. He came back the next morning raving about it (he passed his exam). Raves aside, we’re in the training business, and we know from experience that everyone learns and connects to information in different ways. From that perspective, having SAFe captured in as many forms as possible just makes good sense.
For more information, please visit scaledagileframework.com, and subscribe to the blog feed, where you can stay up-to-date with the latest developments to SAFe. Also, check out the Resources section, where you can find free posters for the SAFe Big Picture, the House of Lean, and SAFe Lean-Agile Principles. You’ll also find links to SAFe videos, recorded webinars, free presentations, and more. Finally, be sure to check out our corporate site, www.scaledagile.com, where you can explore training, certification, and service options, or browse our Partner directory to find an implementation partner. Even better, attend a SAFe course (www.scaledagile.com/which-course-is-right-for-me); perhaps we will meet in person.
Our commitment is to continuously evolve SAFe to provide value to the industry—better systems, better business outcomes, better daily lives for the people who build the world’s most important new systems—but only you, the adopters and practitioners, can tell us whether we have accomplished that. As we are fond of saying, “Without you, SAFe is just a website.” Stay SAFe!