The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is the most widely used framework for scaling agile today. Companies are using it to increase stakeholder value, decrease time-to-market, and maximize the delivery of value more efficiently. SAFe is a robust framework that businesses can implement to handle issues that negatively impact a project’s success. Further, SAFe provides large companies with a framework to become more agile and deliver the right product at the right time. Organizations worldwide are using SAFe to their advantage and are reaping its benefits in increased productivity, efficiency, and revenue. It allows companies to deliver their products and services faster. Before moving further, let us understand what the Scaled Agile Framework is.

What is SAFe?

SAFe, is a set of patterns and processes organizations use to apply agile at any scale. SAFe has been created for complex projects comprising multiple teams that work at three levels: program, team, and portfolio. The structured approach allows companies to manage their projects at top-level agility, allowing stakeholders to get feedback from different teams working on the project. It has become a popular methodology because of its proven practices.

The Scaled Agile Framework runs on nine principles. This article will provide a detailed description of each of the nine principles.

Why principles of the Scaled Agile Framework are essential?

Today’s growing body of knowledge includes Lean and Agile principles, system thinking, processes, and product development flow practices. The Scaled Agile Framework aims to integrate this body of knowledge with the lessons learned from a large number of deployments. Thus, a system of integrated and proven practices has helped companies improve employee engagement, solution quality, and time-to-market. But with the present-day complexities of the business, each enterprise has unique problems and challenges, so there can only be a standard solution for some. Every practice recommended by SAFe can only be applied in some situations. Hence the need to have stable principles to hold these practices so they can be applied to most situations. Even if these practices do not work in a particular situation, teams would be guided by these principles to ensure that they are moving toward the Lean goal of providing the best quality and value at the shortest possible lead time.

Let us now look at the SAFe principles.

9 Scaled Agile Framework Principles

1. Take an economic view:

Every business wants to deliver its customers the best quality and value. But this will be made possible only with the fundamental understanding of building systems that will facilitate the delivery of value of quality in the shortest lean time. While delivering the best quality and maximum value, it is essential to understand the economics of creating the product or service that you aim to offer to your customer. Understanding these economics will help you in making better decisions. The economic context must be taken into careful consideration in making everyday decisions. This should include a wider economic framework and strategy for delivering incremental value for every value stream. Applying SAFe helps you understand the cost of delays, operational, development, and manufacturing costs, and economic trade-offs. People at all levels of the organization must understand the economic impact of their choices or decisions. Although there are many reasons for the failures of products or services, economics is the most common among them. That is why this SAFe principle of economics is so pertinent.

2. Apply systems thinking

This is the second most crucial principle among the SAFe lean agile principles. Many risks and challenges are involved in both the marketplace and the workplace. To meet these challenges, you need to understand the systems within which the people in the organization and the users work. The idea behind this is to get a complete factual view of the system being developed so that the principle of economics discussed above is fulfilled. There are three areas in SAFe where systems thinking is applied. They are solution, enterprise building the system, and value streams. The solution can be anything, a product or service. Once there is a complete and clear understanding of these three areas, the teams and the leadership can know the complexity involved in creating the solution and the time it may take to release the product in the market so things can be organized accordingly. Systems consist of many interrelated components. Improving a single component will only improve some of the system. So, the broader aim of the system must be understood by everyone concerned. That is why this principle of applying systems thinking.

3. Assume variability, and preserve options

In traditional design and lifecycle practices, a single design and requirement option is encouraged in the early development stage. Suppose you are working on a project and have only a single design concept. Midway through the project, you encounter an issue requiring you to go to the starting point. Imagine how much more time and effort it would take to start afresh, make adjustments, and fix the issue. SAFe promotes keeping multiple design options for a longer period till the completion of the development cycle. When this is done, you can use the empirical data to limit the focus that will give you a design that will provide maximum value and financial results. In other words, as per the actual agile practices, if the enterprise design keeps evolving over different stages of the development cycle, this will help you in faster course correction and easier adaptability.

4. Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles

Getting the necessary feedback during the development process becomes challenging because the system is still being developed. Also, sometimes the development process needs to allow customer feedback. Due to this, any problem or risk in the system remains in it until its deployment. And when a user uses a flawed product or service, it will impact your credibility. So, it is better to develop the system incrementally in short iterations to have faster customer feedback and reduce the risk. Keeping the iterations short gives you time to get customer feedback and improve. Some increments may become prototypes for testing the market and getting validation. Some others may become Minumum Viable Products (MVPs). This principle helps in understanding such uncertainties by using integrated points. With these feedback points, understanding the customer’s needs becomes easier.

5. Base milestones on an objective evaluation of working systems

This is the fifth principle of the Scaled Agile Framework. The development of large systems requires investing a considerable amount of money. So, business owners, developers, and customers must share the responsibility to ensure that this massive investment in the new solution will provide economic benefit. So, in SAFe, integration points provide the objective milestones used during the development cycle to evaluate the solutions. This regular assessment of the solution provides the governance needed to ensure that the investment will provide a corresponding return also. Hence the success of a solution can be measured rightly and in quantitative terms by continuously adopting integration processes early that can be applied in every iteration. This continuous evaluation makes sure that all the resources used to develop solutions will provide economic benefit.

6. Visualize and limit Work in Progress (WIP), reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lengths

This is a simple practice in Kanban style taken straight from the Lean approach. When you limit the amount of work being done in the process, you can assess your productivity. And reducing the size of the batches allows the system to be faster and more reliable. Managing the queue lengths means the waiting time in the system is reduced. Lean enterprises aim to achieve continuous flow where new system capabilities move quickly from the concept stage to the delivery stage for quicker returns. There are three keys to maintaining a continuous flow in SAFe. They are:

• Visualize and rescue the amount of Work in Progress. This helps increase the output, and the system is not unnecessarily burned with demands beyond its capacity.
• Make the batch size smaller for a faster and more reliable flow
• And lastly, manage queue lengths, so that waiting time for new functionality is reduced.

7. Apply cadence, synchronize with cross-domain planning:

Cadence is used to reduce complexity. It provides predictability and pattern for development. Synchronization allows you to understand, resolve, and integrate multiple outlooks simultaneously. So, this principle emphasizes the means and methods used for cadence synchronization to make sure that multiple challenges are resolved appropriately. This means whatever is meant to be routine becomes routine. This way, developers can focus on the variables in the development. When development cadence and synchronization are applied in tandem with regular cross-domain planning, it creates a mechanism for effective operation because there is inherent uncertainty in development.

8. Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers:

This principle tells you to focus on finding ways to motivate your workers so that they discover and work at their best potential. This can be done in multiple ways. Lean-Agile leaders realize that providing incentives to individuals may not necessarily lead to motivation for creativity, innovation, and employee engagement. On the contrary, this may create internal competition among individuals and can affect the cooperation essential to achieve the common aim of the system. There are other ways of motivating the workforce. Creating a better environment for work by reducing constraints and providing more autonomy is one way of motivating workers. Higher levels of employee engagement can also be achieved by building an environment of mutual influence and a better understanding of the role compensation plays. Developing contextual knowledge and applying it to different domains will help build cross-skilled teams. It is in tune with the requirements of today’s highly competitive world, where employee engagement is an essential factor in the success of any project. With this approach, enterprises, customers, and individuals get better results.

9. Decentralize decision-making:

This is the last of the nine main principles of SAFe. One of the significant aims of Lean thinking is to deliver maximum value in the shortest time. This can be made possible only by decentralizing decision-making. A lot of time gets spent if the workers have to always look to their superiors for every decision. And if a response or decision is received after a period, more time is recovered as waiting time increases. This causes unnecessary delays. Therefore, a decentralized way of decision-making is required to achieve faster delivery of value. Such a system of decision-making improves the development workflow and enables faster feedback.

Moreover, this allows those nearest to the local knowledge to create innovative solutions. SAFe allows leaders to make strategically important decisions that could have economic ramifications and leaves the rest of the decisions to the workers. So, creating a robust and reliable decision-making system is imperative and critical to empowering employees and ensuring a faster flow of value.

Companies should realize that in today’s world of high competition, where customers look for faster delivery of solutions, their focus should be on something other than product development. They also have to manage projects effectively and efficiently. You may have a brilliant development team capable of building high-value solutions. But if there is a lack of coordination among the teams or a lack of motivation, valuable time may be lost, and project deadlines can be missed. So, the above SAFe principles must be kept in mind to enable smooth sailing when delivering high quality value.