Description of the Scaled Agile Framework

The Scaled Agile Framework is a proven knowledge base for implementing agile practices at enterprise scale. Its primary user interface is a “Big Picture” graphic which highlights the individual roles, teams, activities and artifacts necessary to scale agile from the team, to teams of teams, to the enterprise level.

The Big Picture describes three levels of scale:
Team, Program and Portfolio. Each of these scales the essential agile elements of Value (requirements and backlogs) Teams (from development team through portfolio) and Timebox (iteration, PSI, budget cycle). This model of agile adoption has been elaborated primarily in Dean Leffingwell’s books Agile Software Requirements: Lean Requirements for Teams Programs and the Enterprise (2011) and Scaling Software Agility: Best Practices for Large Enterprises, (2007) and his scalingsoftwareagility blog.  

It has been successfully applied in programs of only 50-100 people, and in enterprises employing thousands of software developers.

In the web version, each icon on the big picture is navigable to an abstract, and (eventually) a set of detail pages which describe that icon and its relationships to others.

We, the collaborators, offer this web version to the market in the hope that it will help all software development practitioners and teams—as well as their employers—enjoy the satisfaction that comes from delivering ever-higher quality software at ever-faster speed.

See Our Purpose and Product Position Statement below.


Our Purpose

Through collaboration, our goal with the Scaled Agile Framework (SAF) is to:

  • Enhance the competitiveness, productivity, and delivered software quality of the software industry worldwide
  • Help provide the business benefits of agile development to all software teams
  • Increase motivation, empowerment, enjoyment and humanity to software development practitioners everywhere

We also hope to build some good business value along the way. We see these as compatible objectives, because better software makes the world a better place.

Scaled Agile Framework Position Statement

FOR software developers, practitioners, managers, executives, coaches, consultants, trainers and agile working group team members

WHO are involved in planning and implementing Agile software development philosophies, principles, and practices at enterprise scale

The Scaled Agile Framework (SAF) is a proven, publicly available, framework for applying Lean|Agile practices at enterprise scale, presented in a structured and interactive web format.

UNLIKE proprietary methods promoted by product and consulting firms or methods described in dozens of books

SAF is a synthesized, holistic, integrated and summarized framework available to everyone in a readily accessible public-facing web site, along with supporting resources

Collaborators: Dean Leffingwell, Drew Jemilo, Mauricio Zamora, Colin O’Neill, Alex Yakyma