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What is Agile?
Agile is a methodology that is used to manage projects in large organizations to yield efficient results. It is a set of principles that helps the organization to become agile. It breaks the process into smaller phases to make it simple. It is a continuous process where customers are involved to provide feedbacks. This helps in making required changes to generate good quality products.
What is Agile Transformation?
The process of transforming an organization to a more flexible and agile work culture is called Agile Transformation. Using Agile principles and practices to bring business agility in the organization. Agile Transformation starts with adopting and understanding principles of Agile and then implementing them in the process.
Challenges faced while scaling Agile in large organizations
Agile was designed to manage small teams for giving efficient results but its success attracted large enterprises towards it. Although these are just principles but implementing these practices at a scale had many obstacles. The challenges faced while scaling Agile are:
Insufficient long term planning
Handling delegation of roles and responsibilities
Synchronization of teams
Less scope of innovation
Shift in work culture
Changes in traditional ways of work
Coping up with technological advancement
What is SAFe?
SAFe or Scaled Agile Framework is a set of rules, patterns and practices to scale Agile to an enterprise level. It is one of the most popular frameworks due to its flexibility, sustainability, and ease of work. SAFe Methodology has been leveraged by combining three concepts:
Lean Product Development
Agile Software Development
System Thinking
SAFe Practices
Scaled Agile Framework principles and practices are inspired by the key elements of Agile. There are nine practices of SAFe that makes it a successful framework for large organizations:
Understanding the business and economic value of a project.
Using a systematic approach to make decisions.
Planning for potential changes.
Building products in small increments.
Setting realistic objectives.
Reduce the batch size to smallest.
Maintain a constant pace of work.
Understanding the needs and vision of stakeholders/customers.
Decentralizing the decision-making process.
Benefits of using SAFe
SAFe is one of the most popular Agile scaling frameworks because of the benefits the organizations get by using it. It is popularly acclaimed by many professionals as a beneficial framework. The benefits of using SAFe are as follows:
Reduction in Time-to-Market- One of the basic features of SAFe is alignment of cross-functional teams which results in reducing the time to produce around value. Feedback from customers can be taken quickly which eventually helps to make necessary changes.
Increases Productivity- SAFe improves focus on necessary work which affects the productivity in a positive manner. It removes any unnecessary work or mitigates any delays to fasten the process and improve Business Agility.
Improvisation in Quality- It allows continuous and rapid interactions between the team and customers. This helps to receive quick feedbacks and the necessary changes can be made accordingly. This ensures the quality of the product is good as well as satisfactory to the customer.
Improves Team Dynamics- SAFe encourages communication and collaboration between employees of different departments. It also helps in self-management which yields more activity by the employees. Creating a happy and creative environment boosts efficiency in work.
SAFe vs. other Scaling frameworks
Agile was primarily launched for small businesses but eventually its success made it popular among large enterprises. Many frameworks were developed to scale Agile at enterprise level. Here, is a comparison between the scaling frameworks:
Points of Comparison | SAFe | DAD | LeSS | |
| Scaled Agile Framework | Scrum of Scrums | Disciplined Agile Delivery | Large Scale Scrum |
| Agile Principles | Scrum | A number of Agile techniques | Scrum |
| Large organizations and enterprises | Multiple Scrum team | Mid-sized organization | Mid-sized organization |
| Communicates to all the levels up to the executive level | Communicates between teams | Communicates between different teams and departments involved | Communicates between the management and the team |
| Scrum, Kanban, and custom routines | Scrum routines | Scrum, Kanban and custom routines | Scrum routine and meetings |
| High | Low | Medium | Low |
| High | Low | High | Medium |
Conclusion
SAFe is a beneficial framework for developing Business Agility in large organizations. There are many courses and certifications available to coach individuals and teams in Agile practices. Acekube is one such platform which provides training and coaching in SAFe across various fields.
FAQs
1. Which SAFe Certifications are popular?
The SAFe Certifications that are popular are:
2. What are the levels of Scaled Agile Framework?
The levels of Scaled Agile Framework are:
Team
Program
Large solution
Portfolio