Rough Scale Framework (abbreviated SAFe ), is the organizational knowledge base and workflow pattern, freely available when it becomes a registered trademark of Scaled Agile, Inc. It is intended to guide companies in developing lean and agile practices. Along with large-scale Scrum (LeSS), disciplined agile delivery (DAD), and Nexus, SAFe is one of a growing number of frameworks that attempt to address the issues faced when climbing outside a team.
SAFe promotes alignment, collaboration, and delivery across a large number of agile teams. It is developed by and for practitioners, utilizing three main bodies of knowledge: agile software development, lean product development, and system thinking.
The main reference to the first-scale agile framework is the development of a big picture of how jobs flow from product management (or other stakeholders), through governance, programs, and development teams, to customers. With the collaboration of others in the agile community, this is increasingly perfected and then formally first described in the 2007 book. This framework continues to be developed and shared publicly; with academies and accreditation schemes that support those who seek to apply, support, or train others in the implementation of SAFe. The latest edition, version 4.5, was released in June 2017.
Although SAFe has been recognized as the most common approach to measuring agile practices, (up to 45% of large firms), SAFe also receives criticism for being too top-down and inflexible.
Video Scaled agile framework
Challenges on the scale of nimble principles and practices
Overcoming a longer planning horizon
The development team usually fixes their backlog up to two or three iterations ahead, but in larger organizations the product marketing team needs to plan further ahead for their commitment to the market and discussions with customers. They will often work at a very high rate, 12 to 18 months, then plan to work with the team for three months. The development team will continue to include details of the 2-3 iteration refinement going forward, just going into the detailed task plan for the next iteration.
Keeping nimble at the level of abstract responsibility
While the development team has a number of frameworks that determine how they should be agile, there are very few that describe this to management. SAFe provides many of the same principles, such as cross-functional teams, to groups that handle levels of responsibility and more abstract planning (products and portfolios). SAFe has also been criticized for summing up too many different practices.
At Scrum, product owners are expected to assume responsibility for the full product life cycle, including return on investment in development decisions, as well as performance in the market. On large-scale development, organizations need a view across multiple team backlogs, such as those provided by product managers. Although SAFe assumes the role of product owner sitting with product management, it remains criticized for separating product owners into development organizations.
Syncing submissions
The agile framework is designed to allow the development team to be autonomous and free to design how it works. SAFe acknowledges that, on a scale of tens or hundreds of development teams, it becomes increasingly chaotic for teams to fully self-regulate. Therefore putting some constraints on this, so that where teams work on the same product, their submissions can be more synchronized for a joint release, although this has been one of the areas that SAFe has criticized.
Allowing time for innovation and planning
The SAFe planning cycle recommends including additional iterations after release, so the team can improve their practices and be ready for the next planning upgrade. The previous edition of SAFe also designed this to be hardening iterations, that is stabilizing or hardening the product before releasing it. It's based on complications working with large integration environments where dependency means that you can not test everything to the end. SAFe is criticized because it represents an anti-agile or waterfall element. This is not included in the latest issue of SAFe.
Maps Scaled agile framework
The basic principles of SAFe
According to the authors, SAFe is based on nine underlying concepts, derived from lean, agile, and systemic thinking principles and empirical observations across hundreds of implementations:
- Take an economic view
- Apply system thinking
- Assume variability; keep the option
- Build gradually with a fast and integrated learning cycle
- A basic milestone on the objective evaluation of work systems
- Visualize and limit work-in-progress, decrease batch size, and manage queue length
- Apply cadence (timing), synchronize with cross domain planning
- Open the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers
- Decentralized decision-making
SAFe Framework
In SAFe version 4.5, there are four configurations: important, portfolio, large and complete solutions:
- Essential SAFe is the most basic configuration. It describes the most important elements needed and realizes most of the benefits of the framework. This includes team and program level (so-called fast release trains or ART).
- The SAFe portfolio adds portfolio levels to the essential SAF, and allows for such concerns as strategic direction, investment funding, and lean governance.
- The SAFe Great Solution adds a great solution level to the essential SAF, and allows coordination and synchronization across programs, but without portfolio considerations. In earlier versions of SAFe, these levels are referred to as value streams.
- Full SAFe covers all four levels, building team and program levels in essential SAF with great solutions and portfolio levels.
Certification
The Agile scale provides certification covering various areas of experience and level of knowledge; from the foundation in SAFe, through the SAFe adaptation of Scrum's core roles, to those specially designed for consultants and trainers at SAFe.
See also
- Scrum of Scrums
References
Further reading
- Heusser, Matthew (June 17, 2015), Introducing agile skeleton , CIO, pp.Ã, 1-2 Ã, - contains a review of the pros and cons of the methodology and concludes it is halfway to an entirely nimble system.
- Leffingwell, Dean (2011), Practice of Lean Terms for Teams, Programs, and Enterprise , Addison-Wesley Professional, ISBN 978-0321635846 < span title = "ctx_ver = Z39.88-2004 & amp; rft_val_fmt = info% 3Aofi% 2Ffmt% 3Akev% 3Amtx% 3Abook & amp; rft.genre = books & amp; rft.btitle = Lean Practice Requirements for Team% 2C Program % 2C and Enterprise & amp; rft.pub = Addison-Wesley Professional & amp; rft.date = 2011 & amp; rft.isbn = 978-0321635846 & amp; rft.aulast = Leffingwell & amp; rft.aufirst = Dean & amp; rfr_id = info% 3Asid% 2Fen.wikipedia.org% 3Dis an agile frame ">
- Linders, Ben (January 15, 2015), Lean and Agile Leadership with a Rough Scale Framework (SAFe) , InfoQ
External links
- Agile Scale Framework - SAFe for Lean Enterprises , Agile Scale , captured 2017-09-22 Ã, - home page of Scaled Incorporated, owner of registered trademark" SAFe Ã,® ".
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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