Advanced Topic - What's New in SAFe 5.0 - Scaled Agile Framework
Advanced Topic - What's New in SAFe 5.0 - Scaled Agile Framework
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We’re now in the age of software—an interconnected, real-time world where every industry
is powered by technology and every company is, at least in part, a software company.
Organizations that master Business Agility are the ones that will thrive—not just survive.
Business Agility happens when the entire organization uses Lean and Agile practices to
continually and proactively deliver innovative business solutions faster than the
competition. This new release is designed to expand SAFe to encompass the entire
enterprise and enable business agility.
Below are the highlights of the What’s New in SAFe 5.0. Click here to read our SAFe 5.0 FAQ on training, certification , and more. Download
the What’s New in SAFe 5.0 presentation.
SAFe offers a way for enterprises to focus on customers, products, innovation, and growth by organizing a second operating system
(Figure 2) around value streams instead of departments. This model, which Kotter calls a ‘dual operating system,’ restores the speed
and innovation of the entrepreneurial network while leveraging the benefits and stability of the hierarchical system.
The execution-related competencies are shown the left, while the competencies that support strategy development are on the right.
The Lean-Agile Leadership competency which is the foundation is in the bottom middle. The customer is prominently featured at the
center as the focal point for all the competencies. Measure and Grow at the top right is a reminder of the importance of periodic self-
assessments to track the organization’s progress towards the principles and practices that enable business agility.
Moreover, this overview is a useful tool for providing an initial orientation to SAFe, as well as an introduction to the business agility
assessment, and for framing conversations with senior leaders.
The Continuous Learning Culture competency describes a set of values and practices that encourage individuals—and the
enterprise as a whole—to continually increase knowledge, competence, performance, and innovation. This culture is
achieved by becoming a learning organization, committing to relentless improvement, and promoting a culture of
innovation.
This new article describes the three dimensions of a continuous learning culture:
1. Learning Organization – Employees at every level are learning and growing so that the organization can transform and adapt
to an ever-changing world.
2. Innovation Culture – Employees are encouraged and empowered to explore and implement creative ideas that enable future
value delivery.
3. Relentless Improvement – Every part of the enterprise focuses on continuously improving its solutions, products, and
processes.
2. Organizational Agility
The Organizational Agility competency describes how Lean-thinking people and Agile teams optimize their business
processes, evolve strategy with clear and decisive new commitments, and quickly adapt the organization as needed to
capitalize on new opportunities.
1. Lean-Thinking People and Agile Teams – Everyone involved in solution delivery is trained in Lean and Agile methods and embraces
and embodies the values, principles, and practices.
2. Lean Business Operations – Teams apply Lean principles to understand, map, and continuously improve the business processes
that support the businesses products and services.
3. Strategy Agility – The enterprise is Agile enough to continuously sense the market, and quickly change strategy when necessary.
The Team and Technical Agility competency describes the critical skills and Lean-Agile principles and practices that high-
performing Agile teams and Teams of Agile teams use to create high-quality solutions for their customers. The result is
increased productivity, better quality, faster time-to-market, and predictable delivery of value.
This competency has been rewritten and is now organized into the following dimensions:
1. Agile Teams – High-performing, cross-functional teams anchor the competency by applying effective Agile principles and practices.
2. Team of Agile Teams – Agile teams operate within the context of a SAFe Agile Release Train (ART), a long-lived, team of Agile teams
that provides a shared vision and direction and is ultimately responsible for delivering solution outcomes.
3. Built-in Quality – All Agile teams apply defined Agile practices to create high-quality, well-designed solutions that support current and
future business needs.
The Agile Product Delivery competency is a customer-centric approach to defining, building, and releasing a continuous flow
of valuable products and services to customers and users. This competency enables the organization to provide solutions
that delight customers, lower development costs, reduce risk, and outmaneuver the competition. The DevOps and Release
on Demand competency has been incorporated into two dimensions of the Agile Product Delivery competency as illustrated
in Figure 8.
1. Customer Centricity and Design Thinking – Customer centricity puts the customer at the center of every decision and uses design
thinking to ensure the solution is desirable, feasible, viable, and sustainable.
2. Develop on Cadence; Release on Demand – Developing on cadence helps manage the variability inherent in product development.
Decoupling the release of value assures customers can get what they need when they need it.
3. DevOps and the Continuous Delivery Pipeline – DevOps and the Continuous Delivery Pipeline creates the foundation that enables
Enterprises to release value, in whole or in part, at any time to meet customer and market demand.
The Lean Portfolio Management competency aligns strategy and execution by applying Lean and systems thinking approaches
to strategy and investment funding, Agile portfolio operations, and governance. These collaborations give the enterprise the
ability to align strategy to execution, to meet existing commitments reliably, and to better enable innovation.
This competency has been rewritten and is now organized into the following dimensions:
1. Strategy & Investment Funding ensures the entire portfolio is aligned and funded to create and maintain the solutions needed to
meet business targets.
2. Agile Portfolio Operations coordinates and supports decentralized program execution and fosters operational excellence.
3. Lean Governance is the oversight and decision-making of spending, audit and compliance, forecasting expenses, and measurement.
The Enterprise Solution Delivery competency describes how to apply Lean-Agile principles and practices to the specification,
development, deployment, operation, and evolution of the world’s largest and most sophisticated software applications,
networks, and cyber-physical systems.
The Business Solutions and Lean Systems Engineering competency has been renamed to Enterprise Solution Delivery and expands its
guidance to include the following new dimensions:
1. Lean Solution and Systems Engineering applies Lean-Agile practices to align and coordinate all the activities necessary to specify,
architect, design, implement, test, deploy, evolve, and ultimately decommission these systems.
2. Coordinating Trains and Suppliers coordinates and aligns the extended, and often complex, set of value streams to a shared
business and technology mission. It uses the coordinated Vision, Backlogs, and Roadmaps with common Program Increments (PI) and
synchronization points.
3. Continually Evolve Live Systems ensures large systems, and their development pipeline supports continuous delivery.
5. Lean-Agile Leadership
The Lean-Agile Leadership competency describes how Lean-Agile Leaders drive and sustain organizational change by
empowering individuals and teams to reach their highest potential. They do this through leading by example, adopting a
Lean-Agile mindset, and lead the change to a new way of working. The result is more engaged employees, increased
productivity and innovation, and successful organizational change.
The Lean-Agile leadership article was rewritten and is now organized into the following dimensions:
1. Leading by Example – Leaders gain earned authority by modeling the desired behaviors for others to follow, inspiring them to
incorporate the leader’s example into their own personal development journey.
2. Mindset and Principles – By embedding the Lean-Agile way of working in their beliefs, decisions, responses, and actions, leaders
model the expected norm throughout the organization.
3. Leading Change – Leaders lead (rather than simply support) the transformation by creating the environment, preparing the people,
and providing the necessary resources to realize the desired outcomes.
Customer Centricity
The foundation of the customer-centric enterprise is market and user research (Figure 12) that creates actionable insights into the
problems customers face, the solution requirements, and the solution context.
Design Thinking
The new Design thinking (Figure 13) article represents a profoundly different approach to product and solution development, in which
divergent and convergent techniques are applied to understand a problem, design a solution, and deliver that solution to the market.
The Sustain and Improve step has been renamed to Accelerate. This new article focuses on how to accelerate the organization toward
business agility, including a list of ‘pro tips’ and advanced concepts for each of the seven core competencies.
There is a new Measure and Grow icon and article that offers a method to evaluate the portfolio’s progress towards business agility and
determine the next steps for growth.
Click here to read our SAFe 5.0 FAQ on training, certification , and more.
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