Hi all!
The Framework Team is currently in Germany at the 2024 SAFe Summit Berlin and wanted to share some exciting new article announcements about AI research, measuring SAFe success, and managing value streams at a large scale.
Extensive Update to SAFe AI Guidance
We are incredibly excited to announce the release of an extensive update to the Artificial Intelligence in SAFe (AI) article. The initial guidance on AI was written as extended guidance before the implications of ChatGPT and generative AI were well known. It is breathtaking to see the explosion of innovation and new business opportunities this advancement in AI technology has produced!
To keep our guidance current with how this technology has rapidly evolved and to recognize the need for SAFe enterprises to embrace AI as a vital competency, we have updated the AI article to reflect three critical dimensions: promoting an AI Augmented Workforce, building AI-Enabled Solutions, and achieving Responsible AI. This article retains much of the original AI guidance, partly by moving the treatment of AI basics into an enhanced topic article, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence. Both articles are now live and available through the Scaled Agile Framework website.
Measuring SAFe Success
Leadership support is crucial for a successful SAFe transformation, yet it can be challenging to obtain and maintain. Responding to widespread requests for guidance, we’ve developed an approach to articulate SAFe’s value to business and technology leaders based on dozens of success stories we have collected globally.
This approach is described in a new extended guidance article, Achieving Measurable Business Results with SAFe. Written from an enterprise perspective, it helps business and technology leaders accelerate business agility by connecting SAFe transformation outcomes and business strategy through shared objectives and key results. The approach is a three-step process that we recommend is run as part of the ‘Create Implementation Plan’ stage of the SAFe implementation roadmap.
Operating Value Streams at a Very Large Scale
Some of the largest SAFe organizations have 100+ ARTs supporting many value streams. In an ideal world, these value streams operate independently, delivering value directly to enterprise customers with minimal dependencies. In practice, scaling value streams to this level requires additional coordination. For example, how would an automotive company use SAFe to align its 8,000 solution builders to deliver a line of vehicles? Or, how could SAFe support a large IT organization with separate platform, infrastructure, and services value streams?
The new Operating Value Streams for Large Solution Development article describes how enterprises can use SAFe to organize and operate value streams using two additional scenarios that address these scaling challenges.
Nested value streams describe the scenario where multiple development value streams must collaborate to deliver a single integrated solution. Networked value streams describe the scenario where multiple development value streams must maintain alignment to deliver their related solutions. These value streams are loosely coupled and operate more independently than nested ones. Read this new article to learn more about these two value stream scenarios and how they might apply to your organization.
Stay SAFe!
—The Framework Team