building your safe implementation strategy

© 2016 Scaled Agile, Inc. All Rights Reserved.V4.0.0© 2016 Scaled Agile, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Building Your SAFe Implementation Strategy

Alex Yakyma, Fellow and Principal Consultant at Scaled Agile, Inc.

@AlexYakyma

© 2016 Scaled Agile, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Agenda

Defining the SAFe Enterprise

Creating the rollout strategy

Building a powerful guiding coalition

Organizing around value

Incrementally executing the rollout

Addressing mindset and culture


Defining the SAFe Enterprise


But we can also take a simplistic view of “Essential SAFe”


Creating the rollout strategy


Implementing SAFe® 1-2-3


Typical questions

What people should become SPC?

What leaders to train and when?

How to reach the SAFe tipping point?

What are the actual boundaries of the Value Streams and trains?

What trains do we launch first?

How to sustain the implementation?

How to build a Lean-Agile governance model?

When do we address the portfolio? . . .




More questions?

What questions resonated most on the previous slide?

What other important questions regarding Lean-Agile implementation arise in your enterprise’s context

Pair with a neighbor for this exercise

5min


Patterns and Anti-patterns

Incremental rollout

- Learning from early wins

- Building a community

Having concrete vision and roadmap

- Adjusting as you go

Involving leadership from day one

Relentlessly pursuing systemic issues

Waterfall approach to the rollout

- No learning

- No incremental goals

No strategy, chaos

Avoidance of systemic impediments

- Organized around anything but value

- Multimodal approaches

- Unaddressed leadership mindset

Patterns Anti-patterns✔


Building a powerful guiding coalition


Why Agile implementations fail

Version One, Ninth Annual State of Agile Survey

Executive support is crucial for successful Lean-Agile transformations at scale; executives who are not part of the initiative often stall it

Leaders need to know what it is they must do SPCs educate the leaders and build the case for SAFe


Establish a sense of urgency

If there’s no problem, there’s no need for a solution!




Sense of urgency

What creates sense of urgency in your environment? What problems would Lean-Agile transformation solve.

5min


The role of SPCs

SPCs are knowledgeable change agents.

Communicate the transformation need and vision

Form the transformation team

Teach leaders and the other stakeholders

Train the Teams and launch ARTs

Coach ARTs

Scale wins to Value Stream and portfolio

Connect the dots in the enterprise


Many Change Agents are needed

Implementing SAFe at scale requires many SPCs

A critical mass of change agents is needed to reach the tipping point

Some train at the start, others later

SPCs coach all levels of the SAFe




Exercise: Advocating the change

As a group, brainstorm key messages you would deliver to describe why to adopt SAFe.

5min


Training the stakeholders

scaledagileframework.com/foundations

SAFe Foundations Leading SAFe

http://www.vimeo.com/101506552


Form a transformation team

Have an actual dedicated team, not a bunch of hobbyists

Interface with all key stakeholders– If you miss out someone important, it will fire

backCultivate ultimate respect for stakeholders but

also courage in achieving transformation goals

Understand your main subject



Team members are fully dedicated or close to that

Have tie-ins into most of the programs

Know where to compromise and where to hold their ground at all cost

Frequently interact with key stakeholders face-to-face

Spend more time in Gemba than doing paperwork

Underpowered

Loosely coupled bunch of individuals

Overly political

Lacks systems thinking and visibility into enterprise bottlenecks

Lacks understanding of Value Streams’ and Programs’ context

Puts process detail over people, mindset and culture





Exercise: Identifying the Transformation Team

Do you have a Transformation Team now?

If not, how would you go about creating one?

What key stakeholders would the transformation team have to interface with on the regular basis?

5min


Organizing Around Value


Organizing Around ValueV A L U E S T R E A M

AGILE RELEASE TRAIN

50-125 practitioners. May include different disciplines.

Define

Design

Code

Integrate

Test

Deploy


Billing

Value: Order delivered

Customer order

Shipping/TrackingCRM

Operational Value Stream (Example: Order processing)

Development

Value Stream

Example 1: Internal software development organization


If it only was 1-to-1…

Sometimes a single development value stream supports multiple operational value streams

Customer Enrollment

AGILE REL EASE TRA IN

AG ILE RELEASE TRAIN

AG ILE RELEASE TRAIN

AG ILE RELEASE TRA IN

Order Processing

Loyalty Program Enrollment


Generally we are dealing with a matrix

Customer Enrollment

ART 1

ART 2

ART 3

ART 4

Order Processing

Loyalty Program


It visualizes business demand and delivery capability

Customer Enrollment

ART 1

ART 2

ART 3

ART 4

Order Processing

Loyalty Program

Order Processing

Loyalty Program


Simplifies coordination of cross-cutting epics

Epic

Customer Enrollment

ART 1

ART 2

ART 3

ART 4

Order Processing

Loyalty Program


Demonstrates challenges in org design

vs.

A) B)



Organize trains around capability areas whenever possible

Consider other options: services, domain entities,

Factor in variable business demand

Run a VS workshop with key stakeholders

Trains organized around

- Functions

- Tightly coupled services, layers or subsystems

Heavy reorg

Lack of coordination across trains





Exercise: Value Streams and ARTs

Are you organized around value?

What relationship do you have between ARTs (programs) and Operational Value Streams?

5min


Incrementally executing the rollout


A rollout example

Tipping Point LS

VS Workshop Built-in Quality

ART Coordination

Portfolio Flow

D

CA

P D

CA

P D

CA

P D

CA

P D

CA

P D

CA

P D

CA

P



Build learning into the model

Invite reps from other programs to the first launch

Continuously Inspect & Adapt the transformation

Build and interact with CoPs

“Waterfalling” the rollout

Addressing portfolio flow prior to program transformation

Ignoring quality practices, architecture, devops, etc.

Big ”step functions” in built-in quality and other practices





Exercise: Incremental Rollout

Where are you currently in your transformation journey?

What your incremental strategy would look like?

5min


Addressing mindset and culture


There are ample opportunities


Mindset rests on a belief system

Causes of the traditional mindset problem:Learning cycles are too long (=don’t exist)

Lack of empirical evidence

Watermelon metrics

Lack of direct communication with engineers

Misconceptions about complexity

RATIONAL

EMOTIONAL

MINDSET



Continuously working with leaders to address mindset challenges; establishing partnership

Emphasizing systems thinking in all aspects of product development

Creating the environment for Leaders and Engineers to communicate face-to-face

New method, old metrics

Top people never trained in a new way of thinking

Managing by numbers, fearing Gemba

“Semiconductor” communication

Failure to embrace uncertainty and build a learning organization



Typical diseases of implementation

Not organized around value

No all-hands-on-deck planning

No regular system demo

Business Owners not involved

No Inspect & Adapt

No slack




Exercise: Addressing mindset issues

What mindset issues would you focus on first?

Think about one top one for leaders and teams.

5min

© 2016 Scaled Agile, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 411.

Gain the Knowledge

Explore the SAFe knowledge base and find free resources at:

ScaledAgileFramework.com

Leading SAFe® 4.0with SA Certification

Implementing SAFe® 4.0with SPC4 Certification

Find SAFe trainingworldwide at:

ScaledAgile.com

building your safe implementation strategy

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