Leading SAFe
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Reasons for adopting Agile - Top 3
Accelerate Product Delivery
Enhance ability to manage changing priorities
Increase Productivity
What does SAFe do?
Synchronizes alignment, collaboration
and delivery for large numbers of teams
Deal in smaller chuncks
Contracts
Do not build design deliverables into a
contract
Agile team
Cross functional and self-organizing.
Can define, build and test valuable things
Applied Agile SW Engineering practices
with XP, Scrum and Kanban
Delivers value every 2 weeks
Enterprise, Lean and Large
In the large Enterprise, there may be
multiple SAFe portfolios.
House of Lean
Respect for people and culture
Flow
Innovation
Relentless Improvement
House of Lean Purpose
Best quality
High morale
House of Lean Flow
Avoid start and sop
Build quality in
Integrate frequently
Fast feedback
House of Lead Innovation
Give members time and capacity to think
Producers innovate, customers validate
House of Lean Relentless improvement
Optimize the whole
A constant sense of danger
House of Lean Leadership
Lead the change
Develop people
Intrinsic motivation
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Agile Manifesto
Value
Individuals and interactions over
processes and tools
Working SW over comprehensive documentation
Customer Collaboration over contract
negoiation
Responding to change over following a
plan
Aspects of systems thinking
Optimizing a component does not optimize the system
A system can evolve no faster than its
slowest integration point
Value Stream
Optimize
Focus on delays
Deliver customer value
Uncerainty
Requirements must be flexible
Designs must be flexible
Preservation of options improves economic results
Set based approach
Multiple design options
Learning points
Learning cycles
Fast feedback accelerates knowledge
Small batch sizes
Shorter cycles = faster learning
The iterative learning cycle
PDCA
Plan, Do, Check, Adjust
Phase Gates
Fix requirements and designs too early
Objective Milestones
Facilitate learning and allow for continuous cost-effective adjustments towards
and optimal solution
System Demos
Orchestrated to deliver objective
progress, product and process metrics
BVIR
Big Visible Information Radar
Queue
Work committed to
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Backlog
WIP
Work not committed too
Limit of three user stories IP. If a developer is done, help other developers or test
in order to move the stories forward
Limit WIP, reduce batch sizes and manage queue lengths
Small batches
Go through the system faster
Most important batch is the handoff
batch
Large batches
Increase variability
High utilization increases variability
Severe project slippage is the most likely
result
Optimum batch size
Lowest total cost
Example of U curve optimization
Total costs are the sum of holding costs
and transaction costs
Higher transaction costs shift optimum
batch size higher
Higher holding costs shift batch size lower
Reducing optimum batch size
Reducing transaction costs reduces total
costs and shifts optimum batch size lower
Reducing batch size
- Increases predicstibility
- Accelerates feedback
- Reduces rework
- Lowers cost
Holding cost
holding cost (the cost for delayed feedback, inventory decay, and delayed value
delivery)
Transaction cost
transaction cost (the cost of preparing
and implementing the batch)
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U Curve
To improve the economics of handling
smaller batches—and thus increase
throughput—teams must focus on reducing the transaction costs of any batch.
This typically involves increasing the attention to and investment in infrastructure and automation, including things
such as Continuous Integration and the
build environment, DevOps automation,
and system test setup times. This is integral to systems thinking (Principle #2)
and a critical element in long-view optimization.
Queues
Long queues are back
Committed work
Little's Law
Reduce queue lengths
Faster processing time decreases wait
Shorter queue lengths decreases wait
Control wait times by controlling queue
lengths
Cadence
5 Sprints per increment
Develop on cadence; release on demand
Decentralize decision making
Define economic logic behind a decision
Empower others to actually make them
Value doesn't follow silos
Value delivery is inhibited by hand-offs
and delays
Political boundaries can prevent cooperation
Silos encourage geographical distribution of functions
Communication across silos is difficult
Build cross functional Agile teams
Agile teams are cross-functional, self organizing
Optimized for communication
Deliver value every 2 weeks
Teams execute iterations with Scrum
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Scrum is built on transparency, inspection and adaption
ARTs
Continuously deliver value
5 - 12 teams (50 - 125+ individuals)
Common cadence, PI
Common mission, Program Backlog
RTE
Acts as the Chief Scrum Master
Product Management
Owns, defines and prioritizes the Program Backlog
System Architect/Engineering
Provides architectural guidance and
technical enablement to the teams on the
train
System Team
Provides processes and tools to integrate and evaluate assets early and often
Business Owners
Key Stakeholders on the ART
PI Planning
Cadence-based PI planning meetings
are the pacemaker of the Agile Enterprise
- Two days every 8-12 weeks. 10 weeks
typical
- Everyone attends if possible
- Product Management owns the features if possible
- Development owns Story Planning and
HLE
- Arch/Eng and US work as intermediaries for governance, interfaces and dependencies
PI Planning Process
Input - Vision and Top 10 features
Output - Team and Program PI objectives
and program board
PI Objectives
Business summaries of what each team
intends to deliver in the upcoming PI
Typically map to features, but now always
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They do count in velocity/capacity
They are planned
Maintain predictability with Stretch obHowever, not included in the commitment
jectives
Low confidence or many unknowns move to a stretch
Features are implemented by Stories
Small increments of value that can be
delivered in days and provide value
Teams collaborate to deliver Features incrementally via User Stories
Features fit in one PI for one ART
Stories fit in one Iteration (Sprint) for one
team
Enabler Stories
Exploration
Architecture
Infrastructure
Compliance
Story Points
Singular number that represents Volume,
Complexity, Knowledge, Uncertainty
Relative - Not connected to a unit of measure
8 point story should take 4x longer than
a 2 point story
Story Points 2
Find a small Story that would take about
a half-day to develop and a half-day to
test and validate. Call it a 1
Estimate every other Story relative to
that one
Never look back (don't worry about recalibrating)
PI Management Review
After PI Planning Day 1, Management
meets to adjust as needed.
What did we just learn?
Adjust Vision, Scope, Resources?
Bottlenecks?
Decisions that need to be made before
tomorrow?
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PI Final Plan
Collected at the front of the room
Reviewed by all teams
Business owners asked if they accept the
plans
If so, okay. If not, continue to plan.
Program Risks
ROAM
Resolved - Has been addresses. No
Longer a concern.
Owned - Someone has taken responsibility
Accepted - Nothing more can be done.
If risk occurs, release may be compromised
Mitigated - Team has plan to adjust as
necessary
PI - Confidence Vote
Completed after dependencies are resolved and risks are addressed
Range of 1-5
1 = No confidence
5 = Very high confidence
PI - Retrospective
Help continuously evolve
ARTs
Continuously deliver value
Continuous Exploration
Continuous Integration
Continuous Deployment
Closed Loop
Program Events create a closed loop
system to keep the train on the tracks
- PI Planning
- Scrum of Scrums
- PO Sync
- System Demo
- Prepare for PI Planning
- Inspect & Adapt
ART Sync
Used to coordinate progress
Programs coordinate dependencies
through sync meetings
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Scrum of Scrums
Visibility into progress and impediments
Facilitated by RTE
PO Sync
Visibility into progress, scope and priority
adjustments
Facilitated by RTE
Roadmap
Guides the deliver of features over time
PX - Committed
PX+2 - Foretasted
Features
Is an industry-standard term familiar to
marketing and Product Management
Have Benefit Hypothesis and Acceptance Criteria
Reflect functional and non functional requirements
Fitsin one PI
Benefit Hypothesis
Justify Feature implementation cost, and
provides business perspective when
making scope decisions
Acceptance Criteria
Typically defined during the backlog refinement
Prioritize Features
For Optimal ROI
What is the Cost of Delay (CoD) in delivering value
What is the cost to implement the valuable thing?
- Business impact, missed revenue, delay other project, opportunity enablement
WSJF
Weighted Shortest Job First
Give preference to jobs with shorter duration and higher CoD using WSJF
WSJF = CoD / Duration
Components of CoD
User and business value - Relative value
to the customer or business
Time criticality - How user/business value decays over time
Risk Reduction & Opportunity enable8 / 17
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ment (RR & OE) - What else does this do
for our business
WSJF Stakeholders
Business Owners, Product Managers,
Product Owners, System Architects
Continuously Integrate
Stories and Features
System Increment
Continuous functionality building
Continious Story Integration
Features
Enablers - Functionality needed for a feature to work
Spike - research enabler
Demo
Demo the full system increment every
two weeks
- Features are functionally complete or
toggled so not to disrupt the demonstrable functionality
- New Features work together, and with
existing functionality
- Happens after the team' demo (may lag
by as much as one iteration)
- Demo from a staging environment, resemble production as much as possible
DOD (Definition of Done)
E.g. Do not close story unless all defects
closed
Build quality in
- Ensures every increment of the solution
reflects quality standards
Test First
Automate now
Automated tests are implemented in the
same iteration as the functionality
Architectural Runway
Existing code, hw components, etc. that
enables near-term business features
Enablers build up the runway
Features consume it
Must be continuously maintained
DevOps
is a cultural change
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Deployment pipeline
Used to deploy environments as well as
solutions
Measurements
Are an important part of DevOps
Chaos Monkey
Developed by NEtflix
What is DevOps
An agile approach to bridge the gap between development and operations to
deliver value faster and more reliably
DevOps is IN the Value Stream
Value occurs only when the end users
are operating the solution
Define, Implement, Deploy - REPEAT
DevOps is not optional
CALMR approach to DevOps
- Culture - establish a culture of shared
responsibility
- Automation - Automate the continuous
delivery pipeline
- Lean Flow - Keep batch sizes small,
limit WIP and provide extreme visibility
- Measurement - Measure the flow
through the pipeline. Implement application telemetry
- Recovery - Architect and enable
low-risk releases. Establish fast recovery,
fast reversion and fast fix forward
DevOps goal
- Deliver value more frequently
- Ends the Silo approach
- Deliver small batches of functionality
in a flow process called the Continuous
Delivery Pipeline
- Improve collaboration between IT and
Delivery
- Faster time to market
- Take an economic view and decentralize decision making applies to DevOps
ALM - CA Agile Central, Version One,
Agile Craft
Build - Ant, Maven, Bamboo, Jenkins
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Automate Everything - DevOps Tools
Continuous Integration (CI) - CruiseControl, Jenkins, Continuum
Continuous Development - Capistrano,
UrbanCode, Ansible, Puppet
Lean Flow
SAFe teams strive to achieve a state of
continuous flow, enabling new features to
move quickly from concept to cash.
Three primary keys:
1) Visualize and limit WIP
2) Reduce the batch sizes of work items
3) Manage queue lengths
Measure the Flow of the Value through
Telemetry
Automated collection of real-time data
regarding the performance of solutions
- helps to quickly assess the impact of
frequent application changes
Recover - Enable Low-Risk Releases
To support release on demand, the system must be designed for low-risk component or service-based deploy, fast recovery, etc. To support fast recovery:
- Stop-the-line mentality - Everyone
swarms to fix any problem
- Plan for and rehearse for failures Chaos Monkey
- Build the environment and capability to
fix forward or roll back
Non Functional Requirements
NFR
Put into Definition of Done
1) Maintain development and test environments to better match production
2) Maintain a staging environment that
emulates production
Six recommended practices for Continu3) Deploy to staging every iteration
ous Development
4) Automate testing of features and nonfunctional requirements
5) Automate deployment
6) Decouple deployment from release
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Release on demand
Develop on cadence
Decouple deployment from release
- End-user functionality (released every
2 weeks)
- Security updates (released on demand)
Decouple release elements from the to- Back-office functionality (released
tal solution
every month)
- Entire solution (major release every
quarter)
Triangle
You can have fixed dates and fixed cost,
just not fixed scope
System validation
User acceptance testing
Final NFR testing
Integration testing with other systems
Regulatory standards and requirements
Innovation and Planning iteration
Opportunity for innovation hackathons,
and infrastructure improvements
Provides for cadence-based planning
Estimating guard band for cadence-based delivery
Without the IP iteration
- Lack of delivery capacity buffer
- Little innovation
- Technical debt grows uncontrollably
- People burn out
- No time for teams to plan, demo or
improve together
Inspect and Adapt
Three parts:
1) PI System Demo
2) Quantitative measurement
3) Problem-solving workshop
PI system demo
At the end of a PI, teams demonstrate
the current state of the solution to the
appropriate stakeholders
Program performance reporting
As part of the solution demo, teams compare planned vs. actual PI objectives
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PI Predictability measure
Shows weather achievements fall into an
acceptable process control band
Problem solving workshop
Teams conduct a short retrospective,
then systematically address the larger
impediments that are limiting velocity
Benefits of features
Hypothesis
Acceptance criteria
Transformational leadership
A model in which leaders inspire and
motivate followers to achieve high performance
Four dimensions of a transformational
leader
- Vision
- Authenticity
- Growth
- Innovation
Transformational leadership - Vision
Inspire and align with the mission, minimize constraints
Lead change
- Establish a sense of urgency
- Create a powerful guiding coalition
Lead the change, know the way
Be a role model
Transformational leadership - Authentic- Be a lifelong learner
ity
Create an environment of trust and respect
Act with integrity
Transformational leadership - Growth
Offer personalized support, coaching
and encouragement
Keep communication open
Offer direct recognition
Exhibit genuine care and concern
Build an environment of mutual influence
Leadership styles
Expert
Conductor
Developer of people
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Leader as an expert
Effective when manager has greater
knowledge than direct people
- Technician or master craftsman
- Problem-solver
- Understands the domain and the technology
Challenges
- Limits learning and growth
Effective when coordination is a prerequisite for maximum performance
- Central decision maker
- Subtle and indirect manipulation
Leader as a conductor
Challenges
- Narrows focus of direct reports to their
own areas
- Use systems and procedures to control
work
Escape the trap with a post-heroic, Lean
leadership style
- Creates a team jointly responsible for
success
- How can each problem be solved in a
way to develop people
Leader as 'developer of people'
Benefits
- Increased direct report ownership and
responsibility
- Increased employee engagement and
motivation
- Allows leader to spend more time managing laterally and upward
- There is no limit to the power of getting
things done
- Challenge the Status Quo
- Encourage learning, creativity, exploring new ways of doing things
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Transformational Leadership - Innovation
- Decentralize decision making
- Expect relentless improvement
- Encourage innovative thinking
- Create a safe environment of mutual
influence
Lean portfolio management empowers
the portfolio
- Strategy & Investment funding
- Lean Governance
- Agile Portfolio Operations
Strategic themes
Differentiating, specific and itemized
business objectives that connect a portfolio to the strategy of the enterprise
Problem: Cost-center budgeting
Traditional project-based, cost center
budgeting creates overhead and friction,
lowers velocity
When overruns happen, project accountProblem: Projects increase Cost of Delay ing and re-budgeting increases Cost of
Delay and impacts culture
Solution: Lean-Agile budgeting
- Organize and fund value streams
- Fund value streams, not projects
- Provides for full control of spend, with:
- No costly and delay inducing project
cost variance analysis
- No resource reassignments
- No blame game for project overruns
Control costs with increased flexibility
ART budgets and resources are unaffected by Features cost overruns or
changing priorities
- Delay feature as necessary
Epics
Enterprise initiatives sufficiently substantial in scope so to warrant analysis, understanding ROI, a lightweight business
case, and approval.
- Portfolio Epics cut across Value
Streams
- Program Epics can be implemented in
a single train
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- Business Epics are customer-facing
- Enabler Epics enable solutions to address business needs
- Developed and analyzed in the Kanban
systems
Each Epic
-Has a hypothesis
- Defines MVP
Portfolio Kanban
Manages the flow of Epics
Estimating Epics
- Broken down into potential Features
during the Portfolio Kanban analysis
stage
- Potential Features are estimated in Story Points
- Feature estimates are aggregated back
into the Epic estimate as part of the Lean
Business Case
Dynamic budgeting
Adjust budgets dynamically to meet
changing business needs
ARTs power the Solution Train
- Each ART within A Solution Train contributes to the development of a large
solution
Suppliers play a key role in large solution The overall value stream is dependent on
development
the suppliers' agility
Indirect - General solutions. Example.
End-user purchaser of a CRM System.
Customers are inseparable from the de- MS Office
velopment process
Direct - Custom- built solutions. Example.
Government purchaser of a defense system
- Prepare with Pre- and Post-PI Planning
Coordinate and integrate multiple ARTs meetings
and suppliers
- Typically attended by customers, STE,
Solution Mgmt, Solution Architects, etc.
Goal - Align Product Managers, System
Architects and other ART stakeholders to
a common vision
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Pre-Planning structure
Post-Planning structure
Solution demo
Input - Results of the previous PI execution
Output - A set of features for every ART
Goal - Understand the PI plan for the
entire Solution team
Input - Program PI objectives from all
ARTs; Train board and risks
Output - Consolidated solution train PI
objectives
Major event for the life of the solution. E.g. Boeing getting a plane off the
ground.
Solution Train Inspect & Adapt
Consists of three parts:
1) Solution Demo
2) Retrospective
3) Problem-solving workshop
Solution
Uniquely associated with one Value
Stream. It is defined by Solution Intent.
Capability
Describes the higher level behavior of a
solution
Backlog Matching - Solution Epic
One Solution Train across multiple PIs
Backlog Matching - Story
One team, one interation
Backlog Matching - Program Epic
One ART across multiple PIs
Backlog Matching - Capability
One Solution Train within one PI
Backlog Matching - Portfolio Epic
Multiple Value Streams and multiple PIs
Backlog Matching - Feature
One ART within one PI
Single source of truth as to the intended
and actual behavior of the solution
- Record and communicate requirements
Solution Intent
- Facilitate continuous exploration
- Align the customer
- Support compliance
Move from variable to fixed solution in- Preserve flexibility to enable evolution totent
wards optimum solution alternative
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