What is a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)?

At its core, it is a model for aligning cross-functional teams behind shared goals to help organizations (especially large enterprises with complex product portfolios) go to market faster with better products.

SAFe incorporates Lean, Agile, DevOps and systems thinking methodologies into a singular, scalable model. It is built around seven core competencies of business agility:

• Lean-agile leadership
• Team and technical agility
• Agile product delivery
• Enterprise solution delivery
• Lean portfolio management
• Organizational agility
• Continuous learning culture

SAFe was created by Dean Leffingwell in 2011 to address the shortcomings of delivering software through traditional project management processes. Leffingwell’s goal was to improve the speed, quality and customer focus of large-scale software development. Organizations required a method that enabled them to respond to changing market conditions more quickly, and SAFe was designed to fill that void.

SAFe is now in its sixth iteration and provides four configurations to fit organizations with varying sizes, structures and business needs: essential SAFe, large solution SAFe, portfolio SAFe and full SAFe.

Leffingwell is also the cofounder of Scaled Agile Inc., which manages the SAFe system and offers training and other resources that are useful for learning about and implementing SAFe. According to Scaled Agile Inc., SAFe is now practiced at over 20,000 enterprises across the world.

The Agile methodology is designed to make product development and delivery more effective through flexibility, collaboration and continuous improvement over iterative development cycles. It provides autonomy to small teams that work on sprints, which are phases of a larger project. These teams contribute to a greater whole.

The Lean methodology emphasizes the elimination of waste and optimizing business processes. Lean-Agile combines the two methodologies. The flexibility that a Lean-Agile approach provides can increase collaboration and innovation, but implementing an agile model at scale can be challenging.

SAFe takes the advantages of Agile practices and makes the system more compatible with an organization that requires more coordination and oversight than a traditional Agile development model might provide. While unfettered freedom might work well for small businesses, accountability to a greater whole is necessary at the enterprise level.

SAFe provides a layer of management between distinct Agile teams and organizational hierarchy by extending the Agile framework from the single team level to teams of teams. It facilitates the flow of information upward from the teams themselves, downward from management and outward across developers and engineers working on different parts of the same project.

SAFe emphasizes alignment, collaboration and delivery and provides a composable model to align separate teams in terms of communication, planning and goals. One of the main benefits of the Agile methodology at the developer and engineer level is that these agents are free to solve problems creatively without being bogged down by bureaucratic processes. So, it’s crucial that SAFe does not interfere with that freedom.

Rather, SAFe creates opportunities for the entire organization to coordinate on business goals and development progress, and a system to hold all aspects of the organization accountable. With this framework, developers can retain their autonomy and ability to iterate without slowing down development or sacrificing product quality.

Scaled Agile Inc. provides a SAFe implementation roadmap.

SAFe is built around what Scaled Agile Inc. calls the seven core competencies of business agility. Business agility is the ability to compete and thrive in the digital age, where market changes happen at breakneck speeds. These core competencies are:

• Lean-Agile leadership
• Team and technical agility
• Agile product delivery
• Enterprise solution delivery
• Lean portfolio management
• Organizational agility
• Continuous learning culture

Assessing these competencies and finding improvement opportunities helps enterprises successfully implement and iterate on the SAFe framework:

Lean-Agile leadership: Championing Lean-Agile leadership skills to drive organizational change and empower individuals and teams.

Team and technical agility: Creating high-performing teams and implementing sound technical practices.

Agile product delivery: Assembling teams-of-teams that use design thinking, DevOps and continuous development to focus on the customer and consistently deliver valuable products.

Enterprise solution delivery: Delivering solutions that power the world’s largest applications and networks.

Lean portfolio management: Assessing lean portfolio management practices such as portfolio prioritization and strategy, and the creation of lean budgets and guardrails.

Organizational agility: Applying lean and systems thinking to strategy, Agile portfolio management and governance.

Continuous learning culture: Encouraging individuals to commit to continuously increasing knowledge, competence, performance and the pursuit of innovative solutions.

The roles and practices of SAFe are based on 10 core Lean-Agile principles:

• Take an economic view
• Apply systems thinking
• Assume variability, preserve options
• Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles
• Base milestones on objective evaluation of working systems
• Make value flow without interruptions
• Apply cadence, synchronize with cross-domain planning
• Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers
• Decentralize decision-making
• Organize around value

These principles underpin the SAFe framework, creating an integrated system to improve employee engagement, time-to-market, solution quality and team productivity. With this foundation, organizations can adjust their focus and practice as appropriate for their business or objective.

Take an economic view: To deliver the best products in the shortest amount of time, teams must understand the economics of building systems and make decisions with an economic context in mind. SAFe emphasizes the trade-offs between risk, cost of delay (CoD), manufacturing and operational and development costs. It promotes value-stream development that keeps approved budgets and guardrail constraints in view.

Apply systems thinking: Systems thinking is an approach to problem-solving that emphasizes taking a broad view of the connections and relationship between elements in a complex web rather than focusing on individual issues. In SAFe, systems thinking is applied both to the software or other products under development, and the enterprise that is building that software.

Assume variability, preserve options: Often, the process of software development forces development teams to pick an option and stick with it. In the SAFe framework, multiple different options are pursued simultaneously to find the best option, not just the first one chosen.

Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles: By building solutions in short, iterative increments, organizations can gather and implement customer feedback more quickly, mitigate risk and apply early lessons to subsequent versions. This quick feedback loop enables developers to pivot to build the best possible product to meet customer needs.

Base milestones on objective evaluation of working systems: Stakeholders evaluate progress at objective milestones that are built into the process throughout the development lifecycle. These regular evaluations help ensure that investments are producing a financial and technical return.

Make value flow without interruptions: SAFe is a flow-based system and interruptions to value delivery must be swiftly identified and corrected.

Apply cadence, synchronize with cross-domain planning: Development cycles with a predictable cadence help teams find a rhythm and stay aligned amid uncertainty. Synchronizing those rhythms across all stakeholders helps keep teams aligned.

Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers: It is better to motivate employees through autonomy, minimizing constraints and a creative environment than through individual incentive compensation, which can create damaging internal competition and prevent the cooperation this framework requires. SAFe maintains that such an approach yields better outcomes for individuals, customers and the enterprise.

Decentralize decision-making: To develop software quickly, developers can’t pause for approval on every choice they make. Decentralizing decision-making increases flow, reduces delays and creates more innovative solutions from the developers and engineers closest to the local knowledge.

Because some situations require centralized decision-making (global strategy decisions, for instance), a framework should be developed that helps stakeholders determine how to proceed. A well-communicated protocol prevents disruptions to value flow.

Organize around value: Instead of organizing around expertise and a corporate hierarchy, enterprises should organize around value to maintain the competitive advantage of speed: how fast can the organization meet market and customer needs with new solutions. SAFe emphasizes that this approach to organizing around value is the key to winning in the digital age.

There are four SAFe configurations, each suited to different organizational needs:

• Essential SAFe
• Large Solution SAFe
• Portfolio SAFe
• Full SAFe

Essential SAFe is the simplest way to implement SAFe in an organization, and it’s the basic building block of all other SAFe configurations. In Essential SAFe, organizations coordinate at the team and program level to ensure alignment and efficient delivery of value.

To coordinate effectively, enterprises adopt Agile release trains (ARTs). ARTs are “virtual organizations formed to span geographical and organizational boundaries, eliminate unnecessary handoffs and accelerate value delivery,” as defined by Scaled Agile, Inc. In short, an ART is a group of small teams working together toward a common goal.

Essential SAFe provides the minimum elements organizations need to deliver solutions through Agile release trains, focusing on foundational concepts such as continuous delivery and Lean-Agile leadership. Essential SAFe does not incorporate enterprise solution delivery or portfolio concerns.

Large Solution SAFe is the next step up from Essential SAFe, building on the core SAFe principles and creation of ARTs.

In addition to the building blocks introduced in the essential configuration, Large Solution SAFe involves the implementation of enterprise solution delivery (ESD), which coordinates multiple ARTs for a single large solution. This configuration focuses on the technical and architectural requirements for delivering complex solutions.

It enables the coordination of multiple programs and works well for enterprises building large and complex solutions that do not require portfolio-level concerns.

Portfolio SAFe extends Essential SAFe and Large Solution SAFe with extra competencies such as Lean portfolio management and organizational agility. Portfolio SAFe operates at a higher organizational level to align solution development and business strategy. Instead of focusing on a single solution, this configuration can manage multiple value streams. It also takes a broader view by focusing on whether the organization is developing the right products while emphasizing strategic and investment decisions and resource management.

Essentially, it organizes development around multiple value streams and helps align product portfolios with broader enterprise strategy.

Full SAFe is the complete adoption of the SAFe framework. At this level, enterprises adopt all seven core competencies for business agility in their most comprehensive and detailed configuration. This configuration of SAFe is ideal for global enterprises that require solutions for multiple value streams and complex systems.

It’s best understood as stacking the previous four configurations of SAFe on top of each other to synchronize efforts across the enterprise—integrating ART flow, large solution flow and portfolio flow.

While larger organizations often choose SAFe, it’s not the only way to implement the Agile methodology at scale. Scrum@Scale, Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS), Disciplined Agile (DA) and the Spotify model are alternative models that are less popular than SAFe, but present different options for management style and organizational coordination.

As the name implies, Scrum@Scale takes the basic framework of Scrum and provides a scaffolding to scale it across teams.

Scrum is an Agile project management framework that some development teams apply to their software development process. Its name comes from the sport of rugby. In rugby, a scrummage is a way to restart play after possession of the ball has been lost, which relies on clear communication between players working in unison.

In Scrum, development teams are broken down into smaller units, led by a scrum master. The scrum master answers to the product owner, who also acts as the point of contact between each scrum team. These small teams are encouraged to take ownership of their assigned tasks during each sprint, enabling adaptability and creative solutions without needing to stop and wait for feedback from other stakeholders.

For Scrum to work as intended, these teams must be open with each other and in constant communication, just like a sports team when the pressure is on. Scrum@Scale is intended to scale this framework upward with the minimum viable bureaucracy, while emphasizing a values-driven culture of openness, courage, focus, respect and commitment.

The leader of all these Scrums is the Scrum of Scrums master, who coordinates business goals across teams, providing guidance on the “how” of software development. The Scrum of Scrums master works with the chief product owner (CPO), who aligns backlog priorities to meet the needs of stakeholders and customers. The CPO guides the “what” of software development.

The Scrum of Scrums (SoS) is at the core of Scrum@Scale. SoS, led by the Scrum of Scrums master, asks the organization to act as if the entire enterprise is one large Scrum. A larger team of multiple teams replicates the Scrum framework at the organizational level, while individual teams retain autonomy over their work. Because Scrum is already a familiar framework, Scrum@Scale does not require expensive retrainings or workshops to implement.

Scrum@Scale is ideal for organizations where everyone is confident that each team can competently achieve business tasks without outside intervention. In comparison to SAFe, Scrum@Scale is lightweight and hands-off, requiring less overall intervention, training and reorganization than SAFe.

Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS) is also built on the Scrum framework and designed for multiple teams working on a single product. LeSS still uses sprints and daily scrum meetings and reviews. It uses a common sprint for all teams and shares one product backlog. LeSS emphasizes the descaling or flattening of an organization. It avoids using programs and portfolios and is often best for product-centric development, where many teams collaborate on one large product.

LeSS offers two frameworks:

Basic LeSS: Basic LeSS is LeSS in its default state. It works with one product owner, two to eight teams, and a scrum master for one to three of those teams. These teams work on a single shippable product, one product backlog and one sprint backlog. Each team also works on one sprint that encompasses the whole team.

LeSS Huge: LeSS Huge works best with enterprises with over eight teams (and potentially thousands of people). These teams are grouped into different requirement areas, which each have their own product owner. One overall product owner works with each area product owner to synthesize goals across all teams. This implementation still uses one sprint for all the teams and one product backlog.

Disciplined Agile (DA) is considered a set of principles, promises and guidelines rather than a full methodology. It is a lightweight, minimal and hybrid approach to program management with a great deal of freedom for individual team members.

Some Agile frameworks include prescriptive methodologies and steps. This specificity can be great for certain projects, but DA aims to provide more freedom and agility for team members. The basic concept enables individuals to pick and choose which concepts and frameworks (such as Kanban or Scrum) are ideal for their particular workflow. Scrum might work for some, but not others, especially within a larger program outlook.

DA empowers individuals significantly, which makes it the best fit for projects with team members who are highly knowledgeable, independent and already familiar with basic Agile concepts.

SAFe is ideal for large organizations with multiple teams and products. It provides numerous benefits, including:

Faster time to market: By aligning cross-functional teams of Agile teams around value delivery, the SAFe framework can improve communication, enable quicker decisions, streamline operations and help maintain customer-centricity, all promoting faster time to market.

Better products: SAFe uses short sprints and production cycles that consistently incorporate customer feedback into each new iteration and feature built-in quality control processes. By checking quality throughout the development process, rather than only after the product is complete (or nearly completed), teams are able to improve products more regularly and ship updates faster.

Increased productivity: Continuous improvement is a core tenet of SAFe. The framework encourages teams to consistently examine what they are working on and the processes in which they approach their work, and to ask if anything can be done better. The system promotes the elimination of inefficiencies and delays, and grants teams the autonomy to make the improvements that will enable them to be more productive.

Greater employee engagement: The SAFe framework provides autonomy and establishes a clear line of sight between individual work and enterprise goals and outcomes. This helps employees take greater ownership of, and pride in, their project contributions.

More alignment and collaboration: SAFe, particularly the broader configurations, is designed to bring greater alignment to previously siloed teams and encourage the entire organization to collaborate behind well-articulated enterprise goals. This collaboration sits at the very heart of SAFe.