Transcript
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The speaker introduces SAFe as a framework for scaling agile across large organizations and briefly explains the purpose of the video.
The scaled agile framework or safe is a template for scaling agile principles and tools to large organizations.My name is Inbar and I'm a safe fellow and principal consultant in scaled agile a primary contributor to safe and an avid martial arts practitioner.I worked with many enterprises such as Wworth, MDO, Cisco, Deutsche Borsa, Intel, Elbert to deliver agility over the years.And in this video I will explain what SAFE is and how it works.
This section explains how the team level works in SAFe, including scrum roles, iterations, planning, daily meetings, demos, and retrospectives.
SAFE is a framework meant to cover the entire organization.It operates on four levels.Portfolio, value stream, program and team.The team level works very much like standard scrum.Although the teams can also work in conbon.At this level, we have an agile team which is cross functional and works together to deliver working systems every two weeks which are called an iteration.The content for the iteration is determined by a product owner who is in charge of the team backlog.The iteration starts with a planning meeting where the team decides what user stories they can deliver by the end of the iteration.Each day the team meets to discuss their progress and at the end of the iteration they demo the results to the product owner to make sure they had delivered what she had wanted.They then get together to retrospect what they can improve for the next iteration before starting the cycle again with the new planning meeting.
All of this is guided by a scrum master who makes sure the team works smoothly within the process and that it keeps improving.
The transcript moves to the program level, describing agile release trains, PI planning, coordination across teams, and the architectural runway.
The program level is very similar.We have a team comprised of multiple teams working to deliver a larger system together.This can range from 50 to 125 people.This team of teams is called an agile release train or art and it will also time box its effort into program increments or PIs which are five iterations by default.The content for each PI is determined by a product manager in the program backlog in the form of features and will provide most of the content for the team backlogs.The train is governed by an RTE or release train engineer who acts as a trained scrum master ensuring it runs smoothly and remains on track.He's the program manager of the program level.Each PI starts with a planning meeting in which all members of the teams get together to hear the vision and road map of the train and the features for the upcoming PI.
Each team then plans what objectives they can achieve this PI while identifying dependencies with other teams on the train as well as risks.The teams commit to these PI objectives as a group providing visibility to business owners and customers of what they can expect in this PI.To make sure the train will meet its objectives, we have both a bi-weekly meeting of the scrum masters and the release train engineer and a system demo at the end of every iteration.This is a demo of the integrated system which ensures that we don't have one team running ahead but that the whole train is iterating together.Since we want trains to run as fast as they can, we need to provide adequate architecture and infrastructure.Each PI serves as the time to lay down the tracks for what we think we will need in order to achieve our goals in the following PI.
This is called the architectural runway and is facilitated by the trained system architect.
This chapter covers the IP iteration, including innovation time, planning activities, and how value streams coordinate multiple agile release trains.
We said each PI is five iterations long, but we've only planned four iterations.The final iteration is called an IP iteration or innovation and planning iteration.The innovation part is the time for the teams to engage in creative ideas.It's time for shippy days or hackathons.The planning part is when we have time to do three things as a train.Dem our accomplishments for the PI, maintenance for the train by retrospecting on how we can improve our collaboration in the next PI and finally plan our next PI together.The epiteration also serves as an estimation guard band to make sure the teams deliver on their commitment.The value stream level provides the means to coordinate arts who are building even larger solutions which a single art can deliver by itself.At this level, we have solution management as the content authority, the value stream engineer as the coach and guide, and the solution architect to help ensure good architecture is used.
The value streams run on the same PI cadence as the arts and has planning, solution demo, and inspect and adapt for cross art capabilities.
The final section explains portfolio-level governance, strategic themes, and epics, then closes with advice on training and resources for learning more about SAFe.
The portfolio level is different yet similar.Program portfolio management helps dictate direction for all underlying value streams by deriving strategic themes from the enterprise strategy and allocating budget to value stream to support these themes.They also manage cross value stream initiatives which impact several solutions in the form of epics.This was a quick tour of what safe is and how it works.In order to succeed, it is important to train leaders and teams in the new lean agile mindsets and safe principles and practices of the new way of working and launch release trains.If you want to learn more about safe, check out the big picture at scaled agile framework.com or come to one of our courses on leading and implementing safe.Our list of courses can be found at scaledagel.com or you can ask any questions you might have directly of me in bowenalagel.com.
Thank you for your time.