Hi folks,

We’ve made some recent updates to Lean Portfolio Management (LPM), an area of the Framework that has been quickly evolving over the past few releases of SAFe. It has become a very popular competency for enterprises who wish to improve their Business Agility and accelerate their digital transformation.

It should be no surprise that we continuously improve our framework articles in between releases of the Big Picture. We are architected for continuous delivery behind the Big Picture, and we use that mechanism to publish new content as our thinking evolves.

We also evolve our courseware so that it aligns with the framework and integrates the learning’s from enterprises and instructors teaching SAFe. We’re pleased to announce that SAFe LPM 5.0.1 will be released in September 2020. This new version of the course aligns with the recent changes to the framework and introduces an exciting 2+1 day format (2-day course plus a one-day implementation planning workshop). We’ll talk more about that as we get closer to the release date.

In the meantime, here are highlights of some of the changes we’ve made to SAFe LPM:

Epic article updates:

• Clarification on our definition of an MVP for a SAFe Epic
• Estimating Epic costs initially in T-shirt sizes to more easily prepare for Participatory Budgeting, which uses real costs, not story point estimates, to establish the value stream budget
• More guidance on forecasting an Epic’s duration using ranged estimates, with the understanding that an epic’s duration depends on which ART will be implementing the epic when it is started, and how much capacity the ART can allocate to the work
• Slightly revised the Lean Business Case to capture the new cost nuances

LPM Competency article updates:

• Improved the treatment of KPIs
• Better definition of the specific events that coordinate portfolio flow and operations:
  • Strategic Portfolio Review
  • Portfolio Sync
  • Participatory Budgeting

Roadmap article updates:

• Minor refinements to the imagery of the roadmaps, and making the callout to solutions more specific
• Clarified the contents and purpose of the Portfolio roadmap
• Clarified the relationship between the Solution roadmap and the Portfolio Roadmap

Lean Budgets article updates:

• Simplified and focused the treatment of the investment horizons
• Expanded our description of Participatory Budgeting to align with Epic updates

The rest of the LPM articles enjoyed the benefit of a review pass to more fully align the articles and prepare for the new LPM course.

Stay tuned for the upcoming release of the new LPM course. We admit to being pretty excited about how we can finally close the loop from establishing strategy through funding value streams that realize the portfolio vision.

Stay SAFe,

—Richard Knaster