SAFe - Yeret Agility

Improving SAFe thru Professional Scrum

By Yuval Yeret|2022-12-14T17:22:38-05:00November 12, 2018|SAFe, Scaled Agile, Scrum|

SAFe includes Scrum — so how come many Scrum practitioners and thought leaders consider it unsafe?The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe™) is one of the most popular approaches to applying agile at scale out there. SAFe’s perspective is that “Nothing beats an Agile Team” and it doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel or even innovate too much when it comes to the Team level. It takes advantage of established frameworks and techniques that work well — Scrum being the first and foremost of those.Where it starts [...]

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Improving your SAFe™ Implementation with some additional Flow metrics

By Yuval Yeret|2022-12-14T17:23:04-05:00October 25, 2018|kanban, SAFe|

The PremiseA year ago Scrum.org, in collaboration with Daniel Vacanti and myself, published the Kanban Guide For Scrum Teams, a guide that is aimed at helping Scrum Teams take advantage of Kanban/Flow principles and practices. (I wrote an earlier blog post about understanding the guide)SAFe™ has included Kanban at all levels since version 4.0. Some basic guidance about Kanban is included in most if not all SAFe curriculums. Can a SAFe practitioner learn anything from the Kanban Guide For Scrum [...]

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The difference between Planned vs Actual vs Actual Actual Business Value when it comes to SAFe PI…

By Yuval Yeret|2022-12-14T17:24:40-05:00October 22, 2018|Agility, SAFe, Scaled Agile|

Actual is a relative term when it comes to business value delivered by a SAFe PI Objective. We had a discussion about this a couple of weeks ago in an Implementing SAFe class and I promised a blog post about this. Here it goes.Planned Business Value — Making sure Business Owners and the Agile Team are on the same pageLet’s start from the basics though. PI (Program Increment) Objectives are used as a “back briefing” mechanism by Agile Teams on an Agile Release [...]

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SAFe is a Scaled Agile Framework, Not a Scaled Agile Methodology

By Yuval Yeret|2022-12-14T17:24:57-05:00October 15, 2018|SAFe, Scaled Agile|

Last week this was a theme in the Implementing SAFe class Ofer Cohen and I ran in Waltham, MA.We find it crucial when training new SAFe Program Consultants (SPCs) to emphasize that they should use SAFe as a framework not a methodology.First, what’s the difference between a framework and a methodology? I found this concise useful comparison written by Liz Keogh who I think highly of over at Quora -A methodology is a set of principles, tools, and practices which [...]

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Building Great Release Train Engineers — a talk with Mattias & Yuval

By Yuval Yeret|2022-12-14T17:25:37-05:00September 26, 2018|SAFe, Scaled Agile|

In the scaled Agile framework, one key role is the Release Train Engineer (RTE). But who should I look for to fill this role? What are the first few process improvements experienced RTE’s typically do? Yuval Yeret (AgileSparks) and Mattias Skarin (Crisp) took the time to discuss the traits of a good RTE.What are the traits of a good RTE?Yuval: The easy answer to this question is that you are looking for a Scrum master for a team of teams. Going [...]

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SAFe Configurations

By Yuval Yeret|2022-12-14T17:28:00-05:00April 20, 2017|SAFe, Scaled Agile|

I just shared my perspective that SAFe isn’t a hard-coded methodology and while it gives you a comprehensive and to some even overwhelming set of practices, there are still a lot of choices.My old friend Sutap suggested: Would be great if you can share examples around how SAFe is not a one size fits all framework. Examples/ case studies will really help. From experience, enterprises typically have very different projects: from large programs running for years with say once in [...]

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Musings about “Hard-coded” Frameworks

By Yuval Yeret|2022-12-14T17:28:20-05:00April 20, 2017|Agility, Change Management, SAFe, Scaled Agile|

A recent discussion on the Scrum Alliance Linkedin group was around Mike Beedle’s claim that “Hard-coded Frameworks are neither Agile or Frameworks” which is clearly aimed primarily at SAFe.I admit to thinking something similar before really getting to know SAFe in depth. Over time I realized SAFe isn’t one size fits all. Far from it.It has many configurations and options. Do we need the Value Stream level? a System Team? at which level? How many ARTs? Component teams or Feature [...]

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Comparing and choosing scaled agile approaches (or not scaling at all? )

By Yuval Yeret|2022-12-14T17:28:35-05:00February 27, 2017|Change Management, SAFe, Scaled Agile|

This week I’m in Fort Lauderdale, Florida speaking at the Lean/Agile US conference.The subject of my talk today was “Introduction to Lean/Agile scaling approaches” where talked about why scaling approaches are necessary and when to actually try to de-scale as well as gave a very brief introduction to a couple of the key frameworks we typically use — SAFe, Large Scale Scrum, Spotify’s approach, Connected kanbans. I then finished with some decision criteria questions to ask yourself as you’re starting this journey.Here [...]

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Invitation-Based SAFe Implementation — a SAFe Guidance Article

By Yuval Yeret|2022-12-14T17:29:19-05:00January 9, 2017|Change Management, SAFe, Scaled Agile|

Invitation and Pull-based approaches for implementing agile at scale has been a reoccurring theme in my work, writing and talks in recent years — including my talk at Agile 2016 and this series on my blog.In recent months I was working on a SAFe guidance article on this topic. Richard Knaster as well as Dean Leffingwell & Inbar Oren helped crystallize the guidance and I’m really happy about the end result.One of the key details in the approach I describe is our [...]

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