Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Get SAFe Now: A Lightning Introduction to the Most Popular Scaling Framework on Agile
    Get SAFe Now: A Lightning Introduction to the Most Popular Scaling Framework on Agile
    Get SAFe Now: A Lightning Introduction to the Most Popular Scaling Framework on Agile
    Ebook126 pages1 hour

    Get SAFe Now: A Lightning Introduction to the Most Popular Scaling Framework on Agile

    By Mohammed Musthafa Soukath Ali

    4.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The Agile Teams have proven to be promising alternatives to traditional software development team structures. However, when the big enterprises tried to apply agile frameworks such as Scrum and Extreme Programming for large efforts where hundreds of cross functional teams were working on a group of dependent products and services, several questions arose. The questions involved many aspects of the traditional enterprise ecosystem such as the scaling agile practices for large development efforts, alignment to organization strategies, the role of organization management, the role of support teams, and the alignment of organization portfolio and program management. SAFe was born in response to such questions and needs of the companies that tried to take the small and effective Agile Teams from working in pockets to large development efforts. The usual way to know about SAFe is to start with the Scaled Agile website. All the elements of SAFe are captured in one single ‘Big Picture’ at http://www.scaledagileframework.com. It looks structured and neatly defined. However, due to its size, new terminologies, and multiple perspectives, first round of introduction or training is bit overwhelming to the receivers. The ‘Big Picture’ is too detailed with little narrative coherence. Before exploring the ‘Big Picture’ or going into every tiny detail of SAFe, it is beneficial to get a quick and lightweight narrative of SAFe. This book attempts to help those looking for a quick introduction of most valuable elements of SAFe.
    • It narrates the concepts in simple terms.
    • It uses plenty of visuals to drive the concepts.
    • It provides real world examples wherever needed.
    • It uses Active Learning which refers to not just passive reading of the content, but taking frequent pauses to answer questions about what was just read, and then thinking, analyzing, and inferring the meaning through answering those questions.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMohammed Musthafa Soukath Ali
    Release dateSep 18, 2016
    ISBN9781370607273
    Get SAFe Now: A Lightning Introduction to the Most Popular Scaling Framework on Agile
    Author

    Mohammed Musthafa Soukath Ali

    Mohammed Musthafa Soukath AliSCJP, LOMA 286, PMP, PSM, PSPO, SA, SPCMusthafa is the author of the #1 Best Selling book ‘Scrum Narrative and PSMTM Exam Guide’ on Amazon and smashwords.com. He is the architect behind the prestigious TCS Agile Ninja Coach program and has trained over 500 Agile Coaches. He is the co-inventor of the TCS Location Independent AgileTM method and the TCS AgilityDebtTM framework. He is also the external Management Capability Adviser for some of the Tata Group Companies. He is a designated Agile Software Delivery Expert, having consulted with 15+ global customers. He published 9 papers in conferences with two international speaker invitations in Berlin and Spain. He is currently leading one of the largest Agile transformations in corporate history. He works out of Chennai, India.You can connect with the author through his LinkedIn network: https://in.linkedin.com/in/mohammed-musthafa-soukath-ali-9a857762

    Read more from Mohammed Musthafa Soukath Ali

    Related to Get SAFe Now

    Related ebooks

    Software Development & Engineering For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      AGILE: It Is All About Trust

      Oct 22, 2019

      AGILE: It Is All About Trust
      6 min read

    • Article

      What Do Corporate Investors Want?

      May 25, 2016

      Tech giant Salesforce is one of the most active corporate investors of the past few years, with more than 150 companies passing through its portfolio. Matt Garratt, VP of Salesforce Ventures, works with a team of four others to scour the startup land

      1 min read

    • Article

      Growing Communities of Practice

      Sep 1, 2019

      According to the SAP Digital Transformation Executive Study, 80 per cent of companies that have embraced digital transformation have experienced increased profitability. So why have only 21 per cent of companies completed their digital transformation

      5 min read

    • Article

      Better Rewards, Fewer Risks

      Mar 19, 2018

      Better Rewards, Fewer Risks
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Road Best Travelled

      Feb 25, 2018

      The Road Best Travelled
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Way of The Unicorn: From Start-Up to Scale-Up

      May 1, 2022

      THERE CAN BE NO DOUBT WE LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES. For those who aren’t familiar with the term, ‘unicorns’ are privately held start-up companies with a value of over $1 billion. And despite the global pandemic, last year we saw more companies reach

      6 min read

    • Article

      4 Steps to Effectively Transition or Sell Your Business

      Jun 17, 2019

      Did you know 70% to 80% of middle-market, closely held businesses put on the market do not sell? And 83% of businesses lack a formal, written transition plan? I've had many discussions with middle-market business owners about planning for the future

      3 min read

    • Article

      Mind How You Grow:

      May 31, 2020

      Mind How You Grow:
      9 min read

    • Article

      More Than The Numbers

      Jun 24, 2018

      More Than The Numbers
      5 min read

    • Article

      Owning Your Niche Market

      Jun 24, 2021

      Owning Your Niche Market
      4 min read

    • Article

      Change Sustainability Your ROI Health Check

      Mar 28, 2019

      Change sustainability programs are as unique as each of the workplace projects themselves. They can be developed either to dovetail into the end of a change program where businessas-usual kicks in, or they can be integrated into a prototype rotation

      5 min read

    • Article

      Innovation: The Right Questions at the Right Time

      Sep 1, 2022

      IMAGINE THIS SCENE: A team is pitching an innovation project to leaders of your company using a slide deck with five-year revenue projections, an execution road map and assumptions that are being presented as facts. After the presentation, the leader

      6 min read

    • Article

      When Teams Create Themselves

      Apr 12, 2022

      When Teams Create Themselves
      4 min read

    • Article

      Q&A

      Sep 1, 2023

      You have noted a radical shift in the way value is being created today. Please describe it. It used to be enough for an organization to focus on getting better at what it does. Today, that isn’t enough; you need to get better at what you do and explo

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Big Tech Boost

      Jan 5, 2024

      The Big Tech Boost
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Get SAFe Now

    4.5/5

    8 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      The author has done a good job explaining the basics of SAFe implementation. However, due the vast expanse of the topic, I still feel there's much more to capture. With the frequent updates to SAFe, the book needs a refresh and it still covers only SAFe 4 principles which might be obsolete. I would recommend it someone who requires only an overview of to SAFe.
    • 4/5
      Though the book is not detailing every aspect of SAFE, the author has done a good job to cover basic topics detailed enough to give anybody to understand the SAFe framework.

    Book preview

    Get SAFe Now - Mohammed Musthafa Soukath Ali

    SAFe®

    Now

    A Lightning Introduction to the Most Popular Scaling Framework on Agile

    ##

    © Copyright 2016 Mohammed Musthafa Soukath Ali

    All rights reserved.

    SAFe® and Scaled Agile Framework® are registered trademarks of Scaled Agile Inc. Any content that appears between double quotes (") is reproduced with permission from © 2011-2016 Scaled Agile, Inc. All rights reserved. The information contained in this book is provided without any express, statutory, or implied warranties.

    Revision 1.4, December 2016

    ##

    Also by Mohammed Musthafa Soukath Ali, available at leading online retailers:

    1. Scrum Narrative and PSM Exam Guide (#1 Best Seller in smashwords.com).

    2. The Professional Scrum Product Owner: Guide to Pass PSPO 1 Certification.

    3. A Pocket Guide to Passing Professional Scrum Master (PSM 1).

    4. A Lightning Introduction to Scrum.

    Editor-in-Chief: Samantha Mason

    ##

    Preface

    The Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) is owned and overseen by Scaled Agile, Inc. SAFe® was created in response to the needs of companies that wanted to use their small and effective Agile Teams for larger development efforts. Traditional software development processes, such as waterfall, increase the prediction-related risks by promoting detailed upfront planning that require long-term assumptions. The Agile Teams do not rely on long-term predictions. Instead, they plan shorter iterations, collaborate with focus to complete the iterations, learn and adjust along the way, and incrementally reach the goal. The Agile Teams themselves have proven to be promising alternatives to the traditional software development team hierarchy. These Agile Teams are appropriately sized to plan, communicate, and respond faster than traditional development teams. They are cross-functional with a mix of required skills to independently complete their work. They are self-organized to decide how to complete their work to meet a common goal which allows quick decisions along the way.

    When companies, or enterprises as they are called in SAFe®, tried to scale these Agile Teams to larger efforts, which had many interdependent teams, several questions arose. The questions include

    • What are the roles and responsibilities of the organization’s management?

    • How to align the Agile Teams to the corporate strategies?

    • How to cascade these strategies to the hundreds of Agile Teams?

    • How can different business owners, who have different needs that impact the same set of Agile Teams, collaborate?

    • How to integrate the work performed by different Agile Teams?

    • How to integrate support teams like Technology Architecture, User Experience, Project Management Office, etc.?

    • How to align the upstream business functions, such as portfolio management and program management, with the Agile Teams?

    SAFe® tries to answer these questions by providing a framework of levels, work backlogs, roles, and activities along with a set of values and a set of principles.

    How do I know if we should implement SAFe®?

    SAFe® is intended for large teams that cannot avoid inherent dependencies. Wherever feasible, find opportunities to form smaller independent teams which are better because they have clear product ownership, less coordination overhead, and rapid decision-making enablers. These small teams can Inspect and Adapt using one of the simple Agile frameworks such as Scrum. However, in the event that the business needs require large solutions or products involving many highly dependent teams working together in order to produce the value, consider implementing SAFe®.

    What if we decide that we don’t need to implement SAFe®, can we skip learning about it?

    SAFe® principles and values can be considered for any team. Even after the analysis and decision-making that SAFe® is not needed for a given context, there are valuable elements of SAFe® that can be applied by any team including those using Scrum, Extreme Programming (XP), etc. In particular the principles such as using an economic framework for decision-making, visualization of work, continuous flow of value, common cadence between different teams, reducing the batch size, etc. can be implemented within other frameworks.

    Attention: This book is not a comprehensive guide to SAFe® nor does it explain every nuance of SAFe®. Instead, it purposefully spends most of the sections explaining the ‘most common start-up approach of SAFe®’ taken by many organizations. This involves understanding the building blocks of SAFe®, scaling the current Agile Teams into a team called Agile Release Train (ART), launching the ART to deliver quick results, and then inspecting the need for subsequent scaling. Although one can finish this book in one sitting, the author recommends spending enough time to understand each concept, rereading sections if necessary. The intent is to get the best basic understanding of SAFe® in the least amount of time. The basic but holistic knowledge acquired through this book should be augmented later by exploring SAFe®’s "Big Picture."

    ##

    Table of Contents

    An Overview

    1. Portfolio and Flow

    2. Levels

    3. Agile Teams

    4. Agile Release Trains

    5. The Schedule

    6. The Scope

    7. The Support

    8. Get the train moving

    9. Preparation for PI Planning

    10. The Plan

    11. The Execution

    12. Cross the boundary

    13. Value Streams

    14. The Portfolio

    15. SAFe® Elements in a Nutshell

    16. Transformation to SAFe® - FAQ

    17. Circling Back

    About the Author

    ##

    An Overview

    The SAFe® is built on the principles from Lean, Agile, and Systems Thinking. This framework helps enterprises to deliver value in the sustainably shortest lead time by optimizing the end-to-end product development workflow, reducing the behavior to accumulate the work into large batches, and eliminating the delays inherent in large developments.

    You may have noticed in the previous paragraph that SAFe® introduces a lot of new terminology. In addition, SAFe® has multiple perspectives to understand. The following is a list of different perspectives of SAFe®.

    The seemingly obvious way to learn SAFe® is to start with the Scaled Agile website. All the elements of SAFe® are captured in one single "Big Picture" at http://www.scaledagileframework.com. At first glance, it looks structured and neatly defined, but due to its size, new terminology, and multiple perspectives, the first introduction to the "Big Picture or a SAFe® training can be overwhelming. While SAFe®'s Big Picture is thorough and complete, it is heavy for first-time readers. Before exploring the Big Picture" or going into every tiny

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1