Welcome to the first blog in our storyline-based series about the new guidance in the SAFe Big Picture. We will explore how each component contributes to a larger lean-agile narrative. Our first storyline introduces brand-new Portfolio Leadership guidance and shares the Portfolio storyline. The Portfolio storyline explains how to connect strategy to the delivery of solutions with Lean Portfolio Management. These stories are essential for lean-agile leaders and practitioners to consider and apply within their organizations. The Framework Team encourages you to read and share these stories as part of our Reimagining SAFe initiative.
Author: rebecca.davis@scaledagile.com
SAFe Fellow Blog | Improving Decision Latency
•By Rebecca Davis
Ian Spence is a SAFe Fellow with significant experience helping others with Lean Portfolio Management (LPM). We are excited to share some of his thoughts, experiences and research. Highlighted by an insightful CHAOS Report, he shares the positive influence of swift decision-making on outcomes on SAFe Portfolios. Organizations demonstrating efficient decision latency enjoy a significantly higher success rate, proving the profound impact of agility and rapid responsiveness beyond just the choice of methodology. Ian is a brilliant thinker and is great at bringing simplicity to the complex.
SAFe Experts Interview: Dr. Mik Kersten, Rebecca Davis, Harry Koehnemann
•By Rebecca Davis
We are thrilled to share one of the conversations from the 2024 SAFe Summit in Berlin. Harry and I had the privilege to sit down with the best-selling author, CTO, and all-around good guy, Dr. Mik Kerstin. Together, we discussed insights on harnessing value stream organizational patterns to revolutionize the way we work. Mik shared an innovative use of Flow Framework data coupled with AI technologies. What was the goal? To frequently optimize the organizational structure of teams and Agile Release Trains (ARTs). Mik shares how he and his peers use data to maximize value delivery by consistently ensuring a more fluid, responsive organizational structure.
Fellow Blog | Crafting Clarity: Using Feature Templates to Shape and Communicate Intent
•By Rebecca Davis
In this SAFe Fellow blog, Mark shares how to create features that not only capture attention but spur action. He gifts us with a feature template he has refined over the years with customers. From feature naming and problem statements to hypotheses and prioritization, this canvas brings together impactful feature design. Embrace this chance to propel your product teams toward unprecedented success with a method that bridges creativity, clarity, and strategic alignment.
New Community Contribution Article on Enterprise Strategy Rooms
In SAFe, we describe Enterprise Portfolio Management as a group of people and a set of practices that ensures alignment between a related set of portfolios and the overall enterprise vision and strategy. An effective EPM team enables the highest priority work to have a clear path from strategy and investment planning to execution. This decentralized decision-making enables portfolios to respond to quickly changing customer needs and market environments.
SAFe Fellow Blog | On the Nature of Portfolios – Portfolio Kanban Normal Scenarios
•By Rebecca Davis
By Brian Tucker, SAFe Fellow, Ivar Jacobson, Original Post Our SAFe Fellow community is fantastic at bringing concepts together with examples. This blog by SAFe Fellow Brian Tucker is an exemplar of explaining a topic that can take a few rounds to understand and making it into something not only understandable but also fun to learn about. Brian was one of the first trainers outside of the Scaled Agile Academy to qualify as a SAFe Principal Consultant Trainer (SPCT), having worked
Brand New Article: Developing Sustainable Products with SAFe
In a time when being sustainable is essential, our new article, Developing Sustainable Products looks at the importance of making products and business plans with sustainability in mind. It talks about sustainability in three focus dimensions: economic, social, and environmental.
SAFe Fellow Blog | Five Use Cases for an Agile Release Tram (aka Small Scale SAFe)
•By Rebecca Davis
By Em Campbell-Pretty, SAFe Fellow, Pretty Agile, Original post: Aug 31, 2023 The Framework Team is excited to bring this blog on Agile Release Trams by SAFe Fellow Em Campbell-Pretty to the SAFe Framework site. Em is the founder of Pretty Agile and has been at the forefront of applying the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) since its earliest days. In fact, Em launched Australia’s first SAFe Agile Release Train at Telstra in early 2012. She has continued to be a friend of
New Extended Guidance Article: Value Management Office (VMO)
In a historically project-based organization, a Project/Program Management Office (PMO) is often chartered to track and coordinate the delivery of projects, initiatives, and programs an organization may have in flight at any time. A different set of values, mindset, and practices are required when implementing SAFe, which requires the move from temporal projects to long-lived products and from a start-stop approach to flow-based value delivery. The label of Value Management Office (VMO) has been applied to create focus on this
Enterprise Portfolio Management: Strategic Alignment and Collaboration
In today’s fast-paced business world, it is more important than ever for organizations to quickly adapt to changing economic conditions, emerging technologies, and fleeting opportunities. This response often requires a coordinated effort across multiple portfolios and business units as the entire Enterprise aligns with the work to be done. With this in mind, we are delighted to announce an important update to the Enterprise article. The new Enterprise article now describes Enterprise Portfolio Management (EPM), a strategic approach to managing multiple SAFe portfolios