SAFe Case Research: Transformation Notes From the Area

This text is an element three of Toptal’s Agile scaling sequence, designed to information undertaking managers of their crew enlargement efforts. Make sure you learn half one, “5 Agile Scaling Frameworks In contrast: Which One Ought to You Use?” and half two, “Agile Scaling: SAFe Greatest Practices for Scrum Masters.”

Agility is practiced in some trend by 94% of firms, based on the fifteenth Annual State of Agile Report. However analysis additionally means that 90% of organizations wrestle with enterprisewide Agile implementation. Usually, it’s the work of Agile coaches, Scrum masters, and different undertaking administration professionals to steer and manage these efforts. Usually, they’re working with groups or departments which might be resistant to alter, in an organization tradition that’s obscure.

On this roundtable, three Toptal undertaking managers focus on the challenges of main Agile transformations. As a result of their options comport with the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), we additionally spoke with Dean Leffingwell, creator of SAFe. Their collective insights illustrate the necessity for SAFe practitioners to organize a transparent imaginative and prescient of what agility is and a management plan that may convey recalcitrant groups on board.

Speaking SAFe With the Framework’s Creator

SAFe, a framework formalized by Scaled Agile, dates again to solely 2014. However for Leffingwell, the work started when he first encountered Agile groups within the early 2000s. As a software program growth methodologist, he was impressed with the outcomes of Agile practices on dev groups, and he instantly started exploring how the mindset may very well be utilized throughout a whole firm. If an Agile crew may produce outcomes, what may a crew of aligned Agile groups produce? How may Agile practices be used for full-scale transformation initiatives at nationwide or worldwide firms? As Leffingwell places it, “I like software program growth. I like Agile. I simply need it massive.”

Within the years since, firms have acknowledged the advantages of SAFe, together with shorter deliveries, larger product high quality, higher effectivity, and extra engaged workers. As of 2021, greater than a 3rd of organizations all over the world used SAFe, and amongst its most essential features are the shared processes and unified language that it gives. For instance, if one crew thinks a dash is 2 weeks lengthy and one other thinks it’s 30 days, it creates what Leffingwell describes as a “Tower of Babel downside.” It’s exhausting for groups to debate what options so as to add if they will’t even agree on what “function” means. “You [need] folks working in a typical manner if you wish to construct massive options,” he says. “There’s not a time period in our trade that isn’t overloaded, like ‘iteration’ or ‘dash’ or ‘backlog.’ That’s not useful in the event you’re attempting to work throughout crew and regional boundaries.”

Agile Success Tales

Getting everybody at an organization to undertake a unified manner of talking about and doing work is a frightening job even when there’s an amazing urgency for change. In established firms, it may be more durable. Leffingwell elaborates: “You’re wanting on the largest firms on this planet which might be making a lot of cash and doing extremely effectively and competing—they usually have to alter. Properly, the query for them is why ought to they?” The Toptal undertaking managers featured right here every encountered questions like this throughout their very own scaling actions, and every discovered their very own manner of working by their Agile transformations utilizing SAFe.

Demonstrating Worth

Alvaro Villena, a Toptal undertaking supervisor in Santiago, Chile, not too long ago accomplished a SAFe transition for a portfolio creating a cross-business platform. “The primary milestone in my transition was conducting a worth stream workshop,” he says. In easy phrases, a price stream workshop is a kickoff assembly to determine your entire enterprise course of from idea to supply and all of the steps, customers, programs, and ache factors in between.

Getting representatives from your entire enterprise into the workshop helped Villena perceive the corporate tradition and what his obstacles can be. “Earlier than we applied the workshop, there was a construction the place one enterprise had their crew, one other enterprise had their crew, and the following enterprise had their crew—the three didn’t discuss to one another.”

Villena discovered that though all of the groups shared related ache factors, there was no collaboration on options. For example, though each enterprise within the portfolio shipped merchandise, just one had developed a monitoring system. There was no purpose they couldn’t all use it, besides that no one had shared the information. As soon as the workshop received them speaking, information began to movement amongst groups, companies, and product homeowners. “That form of dialog was actually, actually highly effective for this system. It was a pleasant start line,” Villena says. When DevOps, design, and product all know what different groups are doing, they see that there are answers within the firm that they are often utilizing. “They begin asking, ‘How can I’ve that?’ And that’s the place you step in and say, ‘Observe this course of.’”

“No person needs change till they know why. So that you begin with a why and provides them a greater future.”Dean Leffingwell, creator of SAFe

Leffingwell is aware of that groups are generally resistant. “No person needs change till they know why,” he tells Toptal. “So that you begin with a why and provides them a greater future.” Giving groups a glimpse of how rather more environment friendly they are often is a strong software for change management.

Even when everyone seems to be enthusiastically on board, it’s best to nonetheless count on rocky begins. Groups which might be accustomed to conventional Waterfall growth and large releases, for instance, could have hassle shifting to a extra iterative and agile growth course of, even when they see the worth in it. “The primary program increment that we did was form of a catastrophe with the groups,” says Villena. “And we knew it could be; we advised the consumer to count on that the primary three months could also be tough.” To compensate for this, he in-built a one-time weeklong iteration on the finish of the primary program increment (PI) wherein the groups may consider their progress. He organized a dash devoted solely to course of enhancements and evaluations that may transcend the same old examine and adapt. He discovered it helpful to use an Agile mindset to not simply the product but in addition the enterprise transition, taking the time to step again, see what labored and what didn’t, and modify accordingly.

Creating Small Victories

It’s essential to be ready for surprising obstacles in your SAFe adoption. Some years in the past, Toptal undertaking supervisor Miroslav Anicin in Belgrade, Serbia, was transitioning a telecommunications firm to SAFe. The corporate had outsourced all of its software program growth. Incorporating an off-site crew wasn’t a very onerous job—the problems concerned have been primarily logistical. However the effort created unexpected challenges in transitioning the corporate itself. “I used to be trying to find the competencies we want within the launch practice,” he says. “And the entire folks I had to select from have been from advertising, from authorized, from merchandise, from finance—utterly missing the Agile mindset and even any expertise in Agile.”

It grew to become evident that administration had no expertise dealing with Agile groups. Distributed decision-making requires managers to relinquish some management, a truth management can balk at in the event that they’re not skilled with Agile frameworks. To resolve for this, Anicin needed to practice from the underside up and from the highest down, teaching leaders together with their groups.

Such a transfer to extra decentralized decision-making requires “altering the best way of working from command and management, by servant-leadership, to this empowering tradition of studying and tradition of Agile—and the flexibility to tolerate errors,” says Leffingwell.

Anicin started the method of scaling incrementally—with small Agile initiatives carried out inside single groups, not inside a SAFe framework—so particular person groups may develop some hands-on expertise. These initiatives needed to be nonessential and sufficiently small that the corporate wouldn’t be harmed if one thing went incorrect on the primary attempt however helpful sufficient to point out the crew what may very well be completed with the strategy. For example, the advertising crew created an inner advertising marketing campaign, throughout which Anicin taught them the fundamentals of Scrum. Much like Villena’s workshop, these smaller initiatives reveal the worth of Agile in actual phrases, so crew members and management can see the advantages of brief releases and steady enchancment earlier than the full-scale transition.

Assembly the Wants of Your Groups

When Imane Marouane, a Toptal undertaking supervisor primarily based in Paris, led a metamorphosis for a big, multinational monetary establishment, she stepped right into a chaotic atmosphere the place particular person groups produced strong work however shared no companywide imaginative and prescient. “Every crew had their very own precedence. Every product supervisor wished their product to be delivered first.”

SAFe’s resolution to this downside may be discovered within the weighted shortest job first (WSJF) mannequin. WSJF gives a regular for prioritizing work so when it’s time to resolve what the following job ought to be, step one doesn’t contain disputes over how one can rank significance. In a flow-based Agile system, you don’t have to fret about delivering all the things directly as a result of, as Leffingwell says, “crucial factor is what job to do subsequent. And that’s a a lot simpler query to reply than what’s essentially the most helpful job.” SAFe gives a technique to resolve dependencies between groups—ordering duties is crucial to this consequence.

Marouane’s path to dependency decision grew to become unsure: “After two sprints, earlier than the primary examine and adapt, we seen that some groups weren’t following our PI plan.” Dependencies that have been outlined within the PI plan weren’t being adopted, so one crew’s work couldn’t start as a result of the contribution from one other crew wasn’t prepared.

“Because it was the primary iteration, and the groups weren’t used to this type of work, we determined to place an additional ceremony into place—a weekly assembly to debate progress on dependencies,” Marouane says. “One individual from every crew got here to replace progress on their contributions.” This manner, if Crew A mentioned they have been unable to ship, Crew B may know forward of time and plan accordingly, as a substitute of ready for contributions that weren’t going to materialize at the start of their dash.

Leffingwell preaches warning when making these sorts of changes to SAFe: “SAFe is a system of tasks. … You may adapt it, however you’ve received to be actually cautious.” Though the framework is meant to be adaptable, modifications are likely to get baked in if not reassessed. The Important SAFe configuration exists to be sure that any alterations meet primary standards.

Marouane’s further ceremony was included once more within the second PI, and by the third it had been phased out. Groups had nothing to report on that hadn’t already been communicated. Slightly further flexibility allowed Marouane to get the groups again onto a extra conventional course of monitor. She discovered that the transition itself required an Agile mindset to get essentially the most out of the monetary establishment’s groups. And importantly, the change she made, by its dedication to steady enchancment, in the end served the Lean-Agile rules which might be the groundwork of Important SAFe. Her resolution gave the corporate the unified imaginative and prescient it lacked and allowed the groups to work collectively towards the identical priorities.

Adapt for the Future

Any framework working at scale goes to come back with challenges. The variety of shifting elements and competing pursuits is immense. However the payoffs are equally giant, and a well-executed transition will give groups the instruments they should work towards frequent objectives. The obstacles you face in such a large-scale implementation can be unpredictable, and an Agile mindset helped Villena, Anicin, and Marouane adapt to surprising challenges. In spite of everything, that’s what steady supply is for: empowering your course of with the instruments to adapt to the unexpected.

Scaled Agile additionally adapts to new applied sciences and evolving trade requirements, introducing new instruments and capabilities as essential. Everybody wants to remain nimble and put together for the surprising. “We now have no crystal ball,” says Leffingwell. “We simply run quick, lead exhausting, and comply with exhausting—and write as quick as we are able to.”