SAFe

How Vendors Can Apply Customer Centricity When Organizing Around Value

A lot of our clients are technology vendors that struggle to use the SAFe Operational Value Streams “out of the box”. Here, I explore how such a B2B vendor should organize around value when building products that are used to support its customer’s business operations. This article was originally posted in the Scaled Agile blog. …

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Drunk Agile Podcast SAFe, Kanban and Scrum

Yuval Yeret joins Daniel and Prateek for an edgy conversation about where SAFe meets Kanban and Flow. Sparks fly as they discuss SAFe without story points, PI Planning in a flow world, and Cost of Delay.

Handling scope change during a SAFe Program Increment (PI)

How do we handle Scope Changes in a SAFe Program Increment? How do you handle a scope change in a program increment? Specifically when it comes to switching one feature for another? And what’s the impact on PI Objectives and Predictability Score? A lot of people somehow get the notion that SAFe advocates for “limiting/controlling …

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SAFe Program Dependency Board Retrospective

Learning from the SAFe Program Dependency Board The SAFe Program Board or Program Dependency Board is a key artifact used in PI Planning and Execution. The ART Teams and Stakeholders used it to align, anticipate risks, and adapt the plan accordingly. This “inspection and adaptation” of the plan based on insights from the Program Dependency …

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Please don’t come to my Implementing SAFe SPC workshops

Seriously, please don’t come. Don’t come if you’re looking at it as a formality since you already know everything about agile and just need the SPC (SAFe Program Consultant) Certificate. Don’t come if you’re looking for the cheapest way to get your SPC so that you can add it to your resume. Don’t come if you …

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Improving SAFe thru Professional 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 …

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Improving your SAFe™ Implementation with some additional Flow metrics

The Premise A 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 …

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

Actual is a relative term when it comes to business value delivered by a SAFe PI Objective. Planned Business Value — Making sure Business Owners and the Agile Team are on the same page Let’s start from the basics though. PI (Planning 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

We find it crucial to emphasize when training new SAFe Program Consultants (SPCs) 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 …

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

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 (Yeret Agility) and Mattias Skarin (Crisp) took the time to discuss the traits of a good RTE. What …

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