Scaled Agile Framework https://v5.scaledagileframework.com/ SAFe for Lean Enterprises Thu, 23 Feb 2023 18:03:26 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Framework promotions https://v5.scaledagileframework.com/blog/framework-promotions/ https://v5.scaledagileframework.com/blog/framework-promotions/#respond Thu, 23 Feb 2023 17:55:53 +0000 https://www.scaledagileframework.com/?p=52819 Hi Folks,  One of the coolest things about our mission at Scaled Agile is that the challenge of ‘helping people build the world’s most important systems’ lays ahead of us and not behind.  As we look into the future, we see our customer needs—and the complexity of the systems they build—growing, putting even greater demands on SAFe. To meet these demands, we are evolving the Framework team. My teammates are some of the smartest and.

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Hi Folks, 

One of the coolest things about our mission at Scaled Agile is that the challenge of ‘helping people build the world’s most important systems’ lays ahead of us and not behind. 

As we look into the future, we see our customer needs—and the complexity of the systems they build—growing, putting even greater demands on SAFe. To meet these demands, we are evolving the Framework team.

My teammates are some of the smartest and wisest people I know so I couldn’t be happier to announce these promotions: 

  • Andrew Sales will assume the title and responsibilities of Chief Methodologist alongside me. In addition, he will continue as Product Manager of the Framework.
  • Dr. Stephen Mayner will assume the title and responsibilities of Methodologist and Framework VP.
  • To provide additional thought leadership, emphasis, and critical connections to the community, partners, and enterprises, Harry Koehnemann, Marc Rix, Rebecca Davis, and Cheryl Crupi will assume the title and responsibilities of Methodologists.

Please join me in congratulating this extraordinary group of people. I can’t imagine a better team to guide the Framework into a fun and productive future. It is rewarding and fulfilling to continue to be a part of of it. 

Stay SAFe,

—Dean

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Exciting new book: SAFe for DevOps Practitioners https://v5.scaledagileframework.com/blog/exciting-new-book-safe-for-devops-practitioners/ https://v5.scaledagileframework.com/blog/exciting-new-book-safe-for-devops-practitioners/#comments Fri, 03 Feb 2023 21:07:26 +0000 https://www.scaledagileframework.com/?p=52792 If you attended a DevOps conference several years ago, you would have seen sessions filled with deep discussions on technical, architectural, and coding practices. Over time, the DevOps community has increased interest in other areas, including Lean-Agile methods, leadership, and organizational change. Indeed, for DevOps to succeed, the tooling and technical practices must integrate with the new ways of working. Organizations need to think of them holistically as we do in SAFe. In his new.

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If you attended a DevOps conference several years ago, you would have seen sessions filled with deep discussions on technical, architectural, and coding practices. Over time, the DevOps community has increased interest in other areas, including Lean-Agile methods, leadership, and organizational change. Indeed, for DevOps to succeed, the tooling and technical practices must integrate with the new ways of working. Organizations need to think of them holistically as we do in SAFe.

In his new book, SAFe for DevOps Practitioners, Bob Wen connects the SAFe principles and practices enabling business agility to the technical methods and tooling espoused by DevOps. What grabbed my attention is how Wen structured the book around SAFe’s CALMR and Continuous Delivery Pipeline (CDP) structures and provides a deep dive into the various DevOps practices and tools that enable them.

SAFe practitioners will connect with the book’s organizing structure around CALMR and the Continuous Delivery Pipeline (CDP) and see how relevant DevOps technical tooling and techniques apply. And we can use it to show DevOps practitioners how their technical and tooling practices align with SAFe’s principles and practices to enable business agility across the enterprise.

While the book can be read from cover to cover, I think it will also be useful as a reference. A reader familiar with SAFe’s CALMR and CDP organizing structures will find value in reading individual sections to connect SAFe topics to the appropriate DevOps tooling and practices.

Practitioners in the SAFe and DevOps communities help enterprises build some of the world’s most important systems. SAFe change agents enable business agility in most of the Global 2000, helping those enterprises survive and thrive in the digital age. DevOps practitioners in these same organizations provide the tooling and technical processes that deliver digital products faster and more reliably. SAFe for DevOps Practitioners shows how SAFe change agents and DevOps practitioners work together to accelerate business success.

I hope you find this new book as useful in your SAFe transformations as I think you will. Check it out in our Books section, including a link to purchase options on Amazon.

Stay SAFe!

Harry

 

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Updates to WSJF https://v5.scaledagileframework.com/blog/updates-to-wsjf/ https://v5.scaledagileframework.com/blog/updates-to-wsjf/#comments Thu, 15 Dec 2022 17:38:19 +0000 https://www.scaledagileframework.com/blog/updates-to-wsjf/ In the spirit of relentless improvement, the Framework team at Scaled Agile releases periodic improvements to the articles in SAFe. If you have been following this blog, you will have seen many such updates over the course of 2022. Today we are excited to announce our next improvement to SAFe guidance: a much-improved discussion of Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF). WSJF is a powerful and practical tool in SAFe that supports Principle #1 – Take an.

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In the spirit of relentless improvement, the Framework team at Scaled Agile releases periodic improvements to the articles in SAFe. If you have been following this blog, you will have seen many such updates over the course of 2022. Today we are excited to announce our next improvement to SAFe guidance: a much-improved discussion of Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF).

WSJF is a powerful and practical tool in SAFe that supports Principle #1 – Take an Economic View, built on the concepts from Don Reinertsen’s book Principles of Product Development Flow. WSJF in SAFe helps ARTs, Solution Trains, and Portfolios quickly make difficult and complex prioritization decisions using relative estimation to calculate the Cost of Delay for Features, Capabilities, and Epics.

Figure 4. A formula for relative WSJF
Figure 4. A formula for relative WSJF

In this update to WSJF in SAFe 5.1, we have made changes based on customer feedback to improve clarity. We have also added new guidance, such as where and when WSJF is applicable (and when it is less effective).We hope you enjoy this refreshed discussion of WSJF and find that it helps your understanding of this powerful technique!

—Be SAFe!

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Delighted about Product Management https://v5.scaledagileframework.com/blog/delighted-about-product-management/ https://v5.scaledagileframework.com/blog/delighted-about-product-management/#comments Thu, 01 Dec 2022 17:57:13 +0000 https://www.scaledagileframework.com/blog/delighted-about-product-management/ Customers deserve the best experiences. Business stakeholders deserve winning outcomes. Teams deserve to build and evolve innovative solutions. Today’s enterprises need people who can apply market insights, business strategy, technology strategy, and Lean-Agile thinking to define products and services that delight all those who build, support, fund, and consume them. These superheroes, collectively, are Product Management—a critical function in SAFe that is responsible for defining desirable, viable, feasible, and sustainable solutions that meet customer needs.

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Customers deserve the best experiences. Business stakeholders deserve winning outcomes. Teams deserve to build and evolve innovative solutions. Today’s enterprises need people who can apply market insights, business strategy, technology strategy, and Lean-Agile thinking to define products and services that delight all those who build, support, fund, and consume them.

These superheroes, collectively, are Product Management—a critical function in SAFe that is responsible for defining desirable, viable, feasible, and sustainable solutions that meet customer needs and for supporting development across the entire product life cycle.

We are delighted to announce a special update to the Product Management article to better convey the essential characteristics of this role.

We have expanded Product Management’s responsibilities into the five areas below, recognizing that delivering sustainable value involves much more than simply getting products built, shipped, and supported.

Figure 1. Product Management areas of responsibility
Product Management areas of responsibility

We have clarified the primary job to be done by Product Management. In addition to defining valuable solutions, the glossary definition, which appears at the top of the article, now includes active involvement in the ongoing evolution of those solutions.

We have updated Product Management’s key collaborations, emphasizing that Product Managers not only apply specialized skills within their domain but work closely with others in the organization to align on outcomes, steer the ART, and continually evolve solutions.

Finally, we have streamlined the other, more peripheral aspects of the role to emphasize the characteristics above. However, the article still explains the differences between internal and external customers and appreciates that Product Managers are often customers of each other when developing composite solutions.

We hope you’ll be delighted with these updates and encourage you to treat this and the recently updated Product Owner article as a complementary set.

Enjoy!

—Marc and the Framework Team

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Updated Metrics Article: Measuring Outcomes and Flow https://v5.scaledagileframework.com/blog/updated-metrics-article-measuring-outcomes-and-flow/ https://v5.scaledagileframework.com/blog/updated-metrics-article-measuring-outcomes-and-flow/#comments Tue, 22 Nov 2022 17:23:46 +0000 https://www.scaledagileframework.com/blog/updated-metrics-article-measuring-outcomes-and-flow/ The Metrics article describes a simple yet comprehensive measurement model for business agility defined along three domains: Outcomes, Flow and Competency. Within each measurement domain, the article offers example metrics that can be applied at each level of the Framework. However, these examples were never meant to be exhaustive, and the model is designed to be extensible with other outcome, flow, and competency metrics supplemented by SAFe Enterprises, who know their business best. Some of.

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The Metrics article describes a simple yet comprehensive measurement model for business agility defined along three domains: Outcomes, Flow and Competency. Within each measurement domain, the article offers example metrics that can be applied at each level of the Framework. However, these examples were never meant to be exhaustive, and the model is designed to be extensible with other outcome, flow, and competency metrics supplemented by SAFe Enterprises, who know their business best. Some of these additional metrics are beneficial to all organizations; therefore, we have added four of these in an update to the Metrics article.

    1. Enhancing alignment and delivering better outcomes with OKRs

Outcome metrics help determine whether a development organization’s efforts produce the desired business benefit. Whereas Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) represent ongoing ‘health’ metrics that can be used to measure overall business performance and the success of existing solutions, there is a critical need to understand whether the portfolio is tracking toward outcomes needed to achieve future success and execute its strategy. Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), defined across value streams and ARTs, provide a means to maintain alignment with these outcomes and are an important addition to the article.

Figure 4. Enhancing alignment across a SAFe portfolio with Value Stream and ART OKRs
Enhancing alignment across a SAFe portfolio with Value Stream and ART OKRs
    1. Increasing productivity and innovation with engaged employees

Employee engagement measures the amount to which individuals feel motivated and actively engaged in supporting the organization’s goals and values. Higher levels of employee engagement result in higher productivity, efficiency, and innovation levels. Consequently, lower levels of employee engagement can lead to poor motivation, lower-quality work, and higher staff turnover. We heard from many SAFe Enterprises that this metric measures a critical internal outcome, and as such, we have added it to the measurement model.

    1. Ensuring a balanced portfolio with Portfolio Flow

Flow distribution measures the different types of work items in the system at any one time. Typically this is used for balancing customer-facing and technical work, knowing that too much of one type is detrimental. An application of flow distribution across the Portfolio has now been recognized in the article. Tracking funding distribution across investment horizons provides a means to visualize a balanced portfolio that ensures both near- and long-term health.

    1. Measuring DevOps capabilities with DORA metrics

Within and across the three measurement domains, it can often be helpful to bring together complementary metrics to provide a specific view of performance. An example is the DORA metrics used to measure the performance of an organization’s DevOps capabilities. The four DORA metrics are 1) deployment frequency, 2) lead time for changes, 3) time to restore service, and 4) change failure rate. The article now describes how each of these is an application of a flow metric designed for a particular use case.

We hope you find these additions useful as you measure your progress toward business agility.

Stay SAFe

—Andrew

 

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Pains and Gains of Leadership in the Digital Age—Dean’s DevOps Enterprise Summit Presentation https://v5.scaledagileframework.com/blog/pains-and-gains-of-leadership-in-the-digital-age-deans-devops-enterprise-summit-presentation/ https://v5.scaledagileframework.com/blog/pains-and-gains-of-leadership-in-the-digital-age-deans-devops-enterprise-summit-presentation/#comments Thu, 10 Nov 2022 16:37:55 +0000 https://www.scaledagileframework.com/?p=52718&preview=true&preview_id=52718 In a world full of conferences, there are many worthwhile, but only a handful I consider ‘must-attend.’ On that list is the DevOps Enterprise Summit (DOES), sponsored by IT Revolution and held in Las Vegas last week. This year, I was honored to be invited to present a plenary session. As I considered my topic, I thought about what this event stands for and how I might provide something useful to this particular audience at.

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In a world full of conferences, there are many worthwhile, but only a handful I consider ‘must-attend.’ On that list is the DevOps Enterprise Summit (DOES), sponsored by IT Revolution and held in Las Vegas last week. This year, I was honored to be invited to present a plenary session. As I considered my topic, I thought about what this event stands for and how I might provide something useful to this particular audience at this particular time.

DOES was founded by best-selling author Gene Kim after the release of The Phoenix Project, a seminal work that helped found the entire DevOps movement. The event’s mission is to “elevate the state of technology work, quantify the economic and human costs associated with suboptimal IT performance, and improve the lives of millions of IT professionals.” Sound familiar? It should. In many ways, this is a parallel universe of independent thought leaders addressing many of the same challenges that SAFe is designed to address.

This diverse pool of thinkers, including CIO/CTO/VP/Director types, industry thought leaders, academics, and authors, might well have independent approaches to scaling DevOps in the largest enterprises, but at the same time, they all face similar obstacles. After considering their shared challenges, I landed on a presentation I titled, “Pains and Gains of Leadership in the Digital Age.” It’s available to watch here, (the site requires a login account which is free).

It was not a talk about SAFe per se, but instead the mindset, core values, and principles behind any effective scaled-Lean-Agile-DevOps transformation and the critical role that leadership has in leading by example. While the ‘pains’ are certainly real, the presentation also shows the ‘gains’ that occur when leaders from the likes of SAFe companies Southwest Airlines, Oracle, and Porsche really understand their role. Each company understands that alignment is not a natural state. If executives aren’t aligned, it’s because they haven’t made the investment of time necessary to be aligned—you have to fight every day to get there and stay there.

I received feedback that the audience appreciated a non-partisan, principled talk that elevated the discussion to why we need to lead and some tips for what that leadership needs to look like in these complex, disruptive times. As Gene Kim kindly noted, “Thank you again for that amazing presentation—what I loved about it was that you really got the crux of what we need from leaders.”

I also joined our own Harry Koehnemann and Project & Team’s Jeff Shupack for another talk, “A Management Approach for the Digital Age.” It was well attended and set the stage for what we think leadership might look like in the future (hint: continuous learning culture).

This was a serious IT-chops-Gemba-education experience and I was glad that several from our Framework team were able to attend. It was especially refreshing to be there in person, and I’m inspired to encourage you to find your own extra-curricular learning in the marketplace of ideas. Perhaps pencil in the SAFe Summit 2023 and DevOps Enterprise Summit 2023 on your calendars?

Stay SAFe,
—Dean

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Celebrating Product Owners https://v5.scaledagileframework.com/blog/celebrating-product-owners/ https://v5.scaledagileframework.com/blog/celebrating-product-owners/#comments Mon, 17 Oct 2022 15:03:58 +0000 https://www.scaledagileframework.com/blog/celebrating-product-owners/ Nothing beats an Agile Team, and Agile Teams power the ART. The work they do transforms fuzzy ideas into concrete solutions that run and grow the business. But the team must constantly ensure that they are building the right things and building them right. In complex enterprise environments amid a fast-paced digital economy, this is no trivial task. That is why, in SAFe, every Agile team includes a Scrum Master and Product Owner (PO) to.

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Nothing beats an Agile Team, and Agile Teams power the ART. The work they do transforms fuzzy ideas into concrete solutions that run and grow the business. But the team must constantly ensure that they are building the right things and building them right. In complex enterprise environments amid a fast-paced digital economy, this is no trivial task.

That is why, in SAFe, every Agile team includes a Scrum Master and Product Owner (PO) to support its talented group of cross-functional solution makers and builders. We recently updated the Scrum Master article, elaborating on the critical responsibilities this role brings in leading and coaching teams toward meeting delivery goals.

As we all know, the PO is a member of the Agile Team who is responsible for maximizing the value delivered by the team and ensuring that the Team Backlog is aligned with customer and stakeholder needs—a responsibility that requires incredible focus and poise, to be sure.

Now, we have followed up with a significant upgrade to the Product Owner article in celebration of this role’s contributions to maintaining perpetual alignment between the team’s output and the business value it is meant to deliver.

PO responsibilities are now grouped into the five primary categories shown above. These groupings accentuate the POs position as an extended member of the Product Management function, a ‘voice of the customer’ for the team, an ambassador for built-in-quality, an influential communicator, a prolific collaborator, and in an integral member of both the team and ART. And, as always, their active leadership and participation in many SAFe events contributes directly to the continuous delivery of customer-centric solutions.

Thank you to the thousands of POs in the SAFe community who dedicate their professional lives to ensuring their teams, ARTs, and enterprises build the right things and build them right.

You can read the updated article here.

Enjoy!

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What You Can Gain from the 2022 SAFe Summit, Even if You Didn’t Attend https://v5.scaledagileframework.com/blog/what-you-can-gain-from-the-2022-safe-summit-even-if-you-didnt-attend/ https://v5.scaledagileframework.com/blog/what-you-can-gain-from-the-2022-safe-summit-even-if-you-didnt-attend/#respond Tue, 04 Oct 2022 22:39:42 +0000 https://www.scaledagileframework.com/?p=52603 Hi Folks, After three long years of virtual events, I came back from our in-person SAFe Summit feeling deeply inspired and energized. Seeing the faces of our community not distorted by Zoom backgrounds, and getting real hugs, was a pleasure that I will never again take for granted. A huge thanks to everyone who attended, our Partner community, and the Scaled Agile team for making this such a memorable, and impactful, event. For those of.

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Hi Folks,

After three long years of virtual events, I came back from our in-person SAFe Summit feeling deeply inspired and energized. Seeing the faces of our community not distorted by Zoom backgrounds, and getting real hugs, was a pleasure that I will never again take for granted. A huge thanks to everyone who attended, our Partner community, and the Scaled Agile team for making this such a memorable, and impactful, event.

For those of you who were unable to attend, there are substantial new resources and tools—presentation videos, new articles, downloads, assessments, and more—that were shared at the Summit. Some are now accessible to everyone; some to members via the SAFe Community Platform. Here’s the rundown:

New SAFe Articles (available to all)

A number of technical workshops and presentations addressed some of the most significant new developments of our time. For the Framework team, these sessions significantly impact where we focus our attention as we develop new guidance. Some of that thinking is already expressed in SAFe content via these new articles:

  • Applying OKRs in SAFe helps align strategy to execution and enables people at every level of the organization to see their work’s impact on achieving business outcomes
  • Accelerating Flow with SAFe and Make Value Flow without Interruptions introduce the eight flow accelerators as a set of practical tools for improving flow across value streams
  • An update to Value Stream Management better aligns to the principles of Lean Thinking and opines a bit on “Value Stream Managers”
  • Succeeding with AI in SAFe identifies factors that are critical in establishing a productive solution development process for AI-based applications
  • Applying SAFe Beyond IT article series provides real-world business agility experiences applying SAFe in Operational Value Streams, or the “business of the business”
  • Two new articles: Applying Kanban in SAFe describes how to establish a Kanban system, the various elements of the Kanban board, and how these systems are connected to help strategy changes flow quickly across value streams, and SAFe Team Kanban describes how to use Kanban as a primary team method
  • The SAFe Scrum and Scrum Master articles have also been updated. Of particular note is the more expansive nature of the Scrum Master responsibilities, now including establishing a Kanban system and coaching flow.

Stay tuned for more on these topics, and others, that will inform the evolution of SAFe.

Summit Launch Tools and Resources

Regardless of language, functional area, or experience, our goal is to empower everyone in the organization to succeed with SAFe. With new features focused on four areas—people in new roles, courseware translation, expanding practices beyond IT, and measuring and improving business agility—the Summit Launch offering includes new workshops, online learning series, expanded language options, articles, reports, assessments, and a new exam platform. Learn more about access here; you’ll also find videos that will guide you through what’s new.

Summit Presentation Videos 

Presentations from the main conference are available to all members via the SAFe Community Platform. This is a treasure trove covering two full days of content from SAFe experts and thought leaders: 34 technical talks, 10 customer stories, and 5 keynotes, including my own keynote, “Accelerate the Flow of Value with SAFe,” and a cool keynote from author Cassandra Worthy, “Master the Chemistry of Change.” Be sure to catch the two featured customer story interviews from Oracle and Southwest Airlines. Both companies overcame great challenges and have much to teach us about the SAFe journey.

I know you’ll find something here that will help you. Wherever your latest gem of insight comes from, know that we are laser-focused on continually providing you with the resources you need to inspire you in your work life, your career, and your practice of SAFe.

Stay SAFe,
—Dean

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Accelerating Value Flow with SAFe https://v5.scaledagileframework.com/blog/accelerating-value-flow-with-safe/ https://v5.scaledagileframework.com/blog/accelerating-value-flow-with-safe/#respond Wed, 17 Aug 2022 19:41:15 +0000 https://www.scaledagileframework.com/blog/accelerating-value-flow-with-safe/ With its roots in Agile, Lean, and DevOps, SAFe has always been a flow-based system. Empowered, cross-functional Agile teams pull work from an economically prioritized backlog to deliver the most value in the shortest time. The Continuous Delivery Pipeline helps teams deliver quickly and directly to the customer. But the goal of the enterprise isn’t to be Agile, Lean, or SAFe; the goal is to provide a continuous flow of value to the customer. That.

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With its roots in Agile, Lean, and DevOps, SAFe has always been a flow-based system. Empowered, cross-functional Agile teams pull work from an economically prioritized backlog to deliver the most value in the shortest time. The Continuous Delivery Pipeline helps teams deliver quickly and directly to the customer.

But the goal of the enterprise isn’t to be Agile, Lean, or SAFe; the goal is to provide a continuous flow of value to the customer. That is the only way to thrive in this age of constant disruption and increasingly complex technologies.

This begs the question of what really constitutes flow and how best to achieve it. To that end, we’ve been focused on improving our guidance to better describe how flow systems work and what impediments teams are likely to encounter. Of course, the usual suspects of excess WIP and large batch sizes are ever-present and must be continuously addressed, but that doesn’t begin to address all the potential issues that impede flow. The figure below illustrates eight properties that are common to every flow system and provides clues as to where interruptions to flow are likely to occur.

Figure 1. All flow systems have eight common properties
Figure 1. All flow systems have eight common properties

With this understanding we are excited to announce a three-article series to help teams better accelerate flow through their value streams:

  • The Value Stream Management article has been updated to more clearly articulate how Lean thinking incorporates flow to guide continuous value stream improvement.
  • Accelerating Flow with SAFe is a new article that provides the context for thinking about flow through the full Business Agility Value Stream (BAVS). The BAVS provides guidance for delivering value, from identifying a new business opportunity to delivering solutions that address that opportunity.
  • Make Value Flow without Interruptions is a new article that describes how flow systems work and, more importantly, how to improve flow by identifying and addressing interruptions to flow that teams are likely to encounter. This article describes a set of ‘eight flow accelerators’ that can be used to debug and improve flow at the Team, ART, Large Solution, and Portfolio level.

In addition, we recently introduced two new articles on Kanban to provide better guidance on achieving flow using Team Kanban in SAFe. And of course, Scrum also contributes to flow, so we are releasing updates to the ScrumXP and Scrum Master articles that emphasize how to better enable flow with Scrum.

With these new articles and updates, our goal is to help teams and the enterprise make significant improvements in the velocity of their value delivery and in their ability to adapt quickly in these turbulent times.

These articles—like all of SAFe—are part of a continuous learning journey that is focused on delivering innovative solutions to the market faster and better. Advancing our thinking about flow is an important part of the journey.

—Dean and the Framework team

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Updated Extended Guidance Article: Value Stream Management in SAFe https://v5.scaledagileframework.com/blog/updated-extended-guidance-article-value-stream-management-in-safe/ https://v5.scaledagileframework.com/blog/updated-extended-guidance-article-value-stream-management-in-safe/#respond Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:10:54 +0000 https://www.scaledagileframework.com/blog/updated-extended-guidance-article-value-stream-management-in-safe/ We first published our thoughts on Value Stream Management (VSM) in September of 2021. That article was a reminder of the importance of value streams in SAFe and an introduction to the five principles of Lean thinking that guide their effective management: Precisely specify value by specific product Identify the value stream for each product Make value flow without interruptions Let the customer pull value from the producer Pursue perfection Since then, in our own.

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We first published our thoughts on Value Stream Management (VSM) in September of 2021. That article was a reminder of the importance of value streams in SAFe and an introduction to the five principles of Lean thinking that guide their effective management:

  1. Precisely specify value by specific product
  2. Identify the value stream for each product
  3. Make value flow without interruptions
  4. Let the customer pull value from the producer
  5. Pursue perfection

Since then, in our own pursuit of perfection, we realized that we had left out a key piece of value stream management—the managers! Not the ‘bosses’ per se, but the people responsible for actively managing the value stream.

Traditionally, this job has often fallen to a single person, the ‘value stream manager.’ In SAFe, however, it involves a group of people (including a value stream manager, or equivalent, if present) who collectively ensure the value stream’s ongoing health and efficiency.

Business Owners define value stream KPIs and guide value stream outcomes in alignment with strategic business goals. ART and Solution Train triads lead the ongoing execution of VSM activities that produce the outputs required to satisfy those KPIs. Together, they instill Lean thinking across the organization and ensure that the entire value stream is effectively and continuously optimized.

The VSM article has been revised to reflect this crucial partnership. It also contains new guidance on applying SAFe principle #1 – Take an economic view in conjunction with customer-centricity and design thinking to specify value more precisely.

See the updated article for all of the great new details and a refresher on the many practices in SAFe that intrinsically enable VSM.

Enjoy!

 

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