A couple of weeks ago, at the SAFe Summit in Washington, D.C., I announced a new 6.0 Big Picture as part of the work to Reimagine SAFe. The SAFe Big Picture visualizes the Framework—the activities, the roles, and the events. Whereas the Full SAFe 6.0 Configuration is optimized for completeness, providing guidance on everything from Big Data to Shared Services, this new Big Picture is optimized for understanding and storytelling.
Reimagining the SAFe Big Picture through the lens of storytelling provides many advantages. It simplifies key processes, amplifies the focus on what truly matters for organizations, and highlights the business results they strive to achieve.
On stage at the SAFe Summit, I highlighted four key storylines, each focused on a specific business result, with the new SAFe Big Picture as a backdrop. I am delighted to announce a new presentation available today that reproduces these storylines and the associated SAFe Big Picture visualizations for you to use in your conversations, training, and practices.
- Enabling Strategy Agility with Lean Portfolio Management
This storyline focuses on an organization’s ability to apply SAFe to respond quickly to changes in strategy. This is essential in unlocking the ability to compete and thrive in the digital age. Organizations that struggle to make these changes and build alignment with the work to be done find it challenging to keep pace.
- Developing Innovative Customer-Centric Products
This storyline recognizes that most organizations have plenty of good ideas. But moving from good ideas to great products is not trivial. Indeed, many organizations are failing to bring the right products to market. SAFe addresses this by creating a product innovation culture that solves customer problems with new or significantly improved products
- Accelerating the Flow of Value to the Customer
Building the right product is not enough, however. We must ensure we deliver them at the speed required to beat the competition, exceed customer expectations, and generate learning to validate that we are on the right path. This storyline highlights the concepts of flow and feedback and illustrates how they are foundational to the success of an ART in accelerating customer value.
- Maximizing Outcomes and Realizing Business Value
Integrating business value into everyday decision-making is critical for long-term success. As such, this storyline describes how business value, when truly understood, enables the organization to make effective trade-offs. Which initiatives deliver the highest return? What technologies best support this? What designs ensure the final product maximizes business value? All these decisions are interconnected, with business value as the thread connecting them and informing the right action.
On behalf of myself and the entire Framework team, we hope these updates improve both the understanding of how SAFe works and, perhaps even more importantly, the purpose of the Framework and the business results that it supports. Stay tuned for much more to come as we continue to reimagine SAFe.
Stay SAFe
— Andrew Sales, Chief Methodologist