This document provides an overview of scaled agile frameworks including SAFe, Nexus, and LeSS. It discusses why scaling is needed, challenges with lack of structure in scaling, and benefits of scaling such as tracking initiatives, aligning teams, and leveraging multiple skillsets. It then summarizes each of the frameworks - Nexus uses integration teams and Scrum teams, LeSS is for multiple teams working on one product with shared backlogs and sprints, and SAFe is the most popular with different configurations and is built on lean principles. The document emphasizes that SAFe 5.0 focuses on achieving business agility through technical agility and lean-agile leadership at all levels of the organization.

1. SAFE 101
Islam Kotb Ismail
SAFe Program Consultant (SPC)

2. AGENDA
 Why do we need to scale?
 Scaling Frameworks.
 What is SAFe?

3. WHY DO WE NEED TO SCALE?

4. AGILE WORKS
 The current Agile practices as in Scrum and Kanban work perfectly for
single teams.

5. SCRUM WORKS

6. WHY SCALING
“Those who master large-scale software
delivery will define the economic landscape of
the 21st century.”
Mik Kersten
Author of “Project to Product”

7. WHAT ABOUT BIGGER COMPANIES?
 For bigger organizations and solutions:
 Complexity : Hardware, Software, Embedded, …
 Dependency: Business and technical.
 Size.
 Suppliers

8. LACK OF STRUCTURED SCALING
PITFALLS
 Teams Sprinting in different directions.
 We are on time others are late.
 Works with the mock.
 Lack of integration.
 Lack of End-to-End delivery.
 Missed Funding

9. SCALING, WHY?
 Track large initiatives that combine multiple features across different
teams from concept to delivery.
 Plan and align business values to the team’s delivery work for objective
decision-making
 Take advantage of multiple skillsets across teams and specialists in the
organization to deliver a high-quality release
 Align sprint goals across multiple teams

10. SCALING FRAMEWORKS

11. NEXUS

12. NEXUS ROLES
 A Nexus consists of a Nexus Integration Team and approximately
three to nine Scrum Teams.
 The Nexus Integration Team consists of:
 The Product Owner
 A Scrum Master
 One or more Nexus Integration Team Members

13. NEXUS PROCESS FLOW
 Refine the Product Backlog
 Nexus Sprint Planning
 Development work
 Nexus Daily Scrum
 Nexus Sprint Review

14. LESS

15. LESS
 LeSS is a framework for scaling scrum to multiple teams who work
together on a single product.
 The LeSS framework seeks to apply the principles and ideals of scrum in
a large-scale enterprise context as simply as possible through defined
rules and guides.
 Its simplicity has earned LeSS the label of being a “barely sufficient”
framework, but that’s not meant to cast it in a negative light.
 LeSS offers two configurations:
 Basic LeSS for two to eight teams (10-50 people).
 LeSS Huge for more than eight teams (50-6000+ people).

16. LESS
 In LeSS there is a single product backlog, product owner,
and definition of done.
 All sprints start and end at the same time.
 sprint planning is broken out into two parts:
1. All teams come together to decide how to best divide
the product backlog items
2. Teams plan their sprint, while collaborating and
communicating with other teams to deliver the
product backlog items.

17. LESS
 In LeSS Huge customer requirements that are strongly
related from a customer perspective are grouped in
Requirement Areas.
 Each Requirement Area has a Area Product Owner and
between “4-8” teams.

18. SAFE

19. SAFE
 SAFe is one of the most popular scaled agile delivery frameworks.
 Started in 2011 and now in version 5.0.
 Has 4 levels:
 Essential Configuration
 Portfolio Configuration
 Large Solution Configuration
 Full Configuration
 Builds on House of Lean principles; Lean Agile leadership, Flow, Innovation, Respect for
people and culture, Relentless improvement.
 Uses SAFe Lean Agile Principles to transform organizations.

20. SAFE 5.0

21. COMPETING IN THE AGE OF SOFTWARE
“The problem is not with our organizations
realizing that they need to transform; the
problem is that organizations are using
managerial frameworks and infrastructure
models from past revolutions to manage their
businesses in this one.”
Mik Kersten
Author of “Project to Product”

22. RETHINKING THE ORGANIZATION
“The world is now changing at a rate at which
the basic systems, structures, and cultures
built over the past century cannot keep up
with the demands being placed on them.”
John P. Kotter
Author of “XLR8”

23. WE STARTED WITH A NETWORK

24. Customer
Centricity
WE ADD HIERARCHY FOR STABILITY
AND EXECUTION Speed of Innovation

25. GUESS WHAT HAPPENS?

26. “The solution is not to trash what we
know and start over but instead to
reintroduce a second system—one
which would be familiar to most
successful entrepreneurs.
You need a dual operating system.”
John P. Kotter
Author of “XLR8”

27. Speed of Innovation
WE NEED A DUAL OPERATING SYSTEM
FOR BUSINESS AGILITY
Customer
Centricity
Efficiency and stability

28. AND WE HAVE JUST SUCH AN OPERATING
SYSTEM AT OUR FINGERTIPS
Functional hierarchy
Value Stream
Network

29. SAFE 5.0
Achieving a state of business agility means that
the entire organization—not just development—is
engaged in continually and proactively delivering
innovative business solutions faster than the
competition.

30. SAFE 5.0
“SAFe 5.0 is a monumental release that I am convinced
will be key in helping countless enterprise organizations
succeed in their shift from project to product”
Mik Kersten

31. SAFE 5.0
Business Agility requires technical agility
and a business-level commitment to
product and value stream thinking.
And it requires that everyone involved in
delivering business solutions use Lean
and Agile practices.

32. WHAT IS SAFE®
?

33. SAFe®
for Lean Enterprises is a knowledge base of
proven, integrated principles, practices, and
competencies for Lean, Agile, and DevOps.
The world’s leading framework
for business agility
scaledagileframework.com

34. Happier,
more motivated
employees
DELIVERS BUSINESS RESULTS
Increase in
Productivity
Faster
Time-to-Market
Defect
Reduction
50%
50%
35%
30%
Typical results from scaledagile.com/case-studies

35. WITHIN ENTERPRISE AND GOVERNMENT
(Dutch Tax Administration)
scaledagile.com/case-studies

36. THE SEVEN CORE COMPETENCIES
OF BUSINESS AGILITY

37. SEVEN CORE COMPETENCIES OF
BUSINESS AGILITY

38. Why Lean-Agile
Leadership?
An organization’s managers,
executives, and other leaders
are responsible for the
adoption, success, and
improvement of Lean-Agile
development and the
competencies that lead to
business agility. Only they have
the authority to change and
continuously improve the
systems that govern how work
is performed.

39. Lean-Agile Leadership
The Lean-Agile Leadership
competency describes how
Lean-Agile Leaders drive
and sustain organizational
change and operational
excellence by empowering
individuals and teams to
reach their highest
potential.

40. MINDSETS CAN CHANGE
“The basic tenets of Lean challenge many of the aspects of
traditional management theory and calls for a mindset that is
foreign to most executives.”
—Jacob Stoller, author of The Lean CEO
• Have Mindset awareness and openness to change
• Embody and exhibit the core values
• Exhibit Lean-Agile thinking and behaviors
• Understand, apply and teach Lean-agile principles

41. WORK IN THE HOUSE OF LEAN
LEADERSHIP
Respectfor
peopleandculture
Flow
Innovation
Relentless
improvement
VALUE

42. EMBRACE THE AGILE MANIFESTO
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:
While there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
agilemanifesto.org

43. APPLY SAFE LEAN-AGILE PRINCIPLES

44. Why Team and
Technical Agility?
Agile teams and teams of Agile
teams create and support the
business solutions that deliver
value to the enterprise’s
customers. Consequently, an
organization’s ability to thrive in
the digital age is entirely
dependent on the ability of its
teams to deliver solutions that
reliably meet a customer’s needs.

45. Team and Technical Agility
The Team and Technical Agility
competency describes the critical
skills and Lean-Agile principles
and practices that high-
performing Agile teams and
Teams of Agile teams use to
create high-quality solutions for
their customers.

46. AGILE TEAMS
• Cross functional teams have all the skills they need to define, build, deliver and sustain value
• Teams iterate with Scrum, Kanban, XP, and SAFe scaled practices
• Feature teams deliver end to end value
• Component (complicated subsystem) teams build specialized components
• Enablement teams support DevOps, site reliability and specialty services
• Agile Business teams define, enable and support business solutions

47. TEAMS OF AGILE TEAMS
• Agile Release Trains (ARTs) are
cross-functional, cross-
component, business and
technology teams of Agile teams
• Software, hardware, firmware,
security, compliance and more
• Organized around enterprise Value
Streams
• Virtual organizations (typically 50 –
125) people that define, build,
deliver and operate full business
solutions

48. Why Agile Product
Delivery?
In order to achieve Business
Agility, enterprises must rapidly
increase their ability to deliver
innovative products and
services. To be sure that the
enterprise is creating the right
solutions for the right
customers at the right time,
they must balance their
execution focus with a
customer focus.

49. Agile Product Delivery
Agile Product Delivery
is a customer-centric
approach to defining,
building, and releasing
a continuous flow of
valuable products and
services to customers
and users.

50. CUSTOMER CENTRICITY AND DESIGN
THINKING
Gemba Walks
Empathy maps
Epics &
Features
A clear and continuous understanding of the target market, customers,
the problems they are facing and the jobs to be done
Journey
Maps
Story
Mapping
Prototyping
Problem Space Solution Space
Personas

51. DEVOPS AND THE CONTINUOUS DELIVERY
PIPELINE
• Culture of shared responsibility
• Automate everything
• Lean flow
• Measure flow
• Recovery
Workflows, activities, and automation needed to shepherd
a new piece of functionality from ideation to an on-
demand release of value to the end use

52. AGILE RELEASE TRAINS (ARTS)
CONTINUOUSLY DELIVER VALUE
• A virtual organization of 5 – 12 teams (50 – 125+ individuals)
• Synchronized on a common cadence, a Program Increment (PI)
• Aligned to a common mission via a single Program Backlog

53. SYNCHRONIZE WITH PI PLANNING
• All stakeholders face-to-face (but typically multiple locations)
• Management sets the mission, with minimum possible constraints
• Requirements and design emerge
• Important stakeholder decisions are accelerated
• Teams create—and take responsibility for—plans
For a short PI Planning
example, see:
https://bit.ly/2Y9cQQ2
There is no magic in SAFe … except maybe for PI Planning

54. Enterprise Solution Delivery
Why Enterprise
Solution Delivery?
Humanity has always dreamed big;
and scientists, engineers, and
software developers then turn those
big dreams into reality. That requires
innovation, experimentation, and
knowledge from diverse disciplines.
Engineers and developers bring
these innovations to life by defining
and coordinating all the activities to
successfully specify, design, test,
deploy, operate, evolve, and
decommission large, complex
solutions.

55. Enterprise Solution Delivery
The Enterprise Solution Delivery
competency describes how to
apply Lean-Agile principles and
practices to the specification,
development, deployment,
operation, and evolution of the
world’s largest and most
sophisticated software
applications, networks, and
cyber-physical systems.

56. ALIGN BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY WITH THE
SOLUTION TRAIN
• Used to build large and complex customer Solutions that require the
coordination of multiple Agile Release Trains (ARTs) and Suppliers
• Aligns ARTs with a shared business and technology mission using the
Solution Vision, Intent, Backlog, and Roadmap
• Aligned Program Increments, integration, demos, and Inspect and Adapt

57. NINE BEST PRACTICES FOR ENTERPRISE
SOLUTION DELIVERY
Continually refine the fixed/variable Solution Intent
Apply multiple planning horizons
Architect for scale, modularity, releasability, and serviceability
Continually address compliance concerns
Apply ‘continuish integration’
Manage the supply chain with systems of systems thinking
Build a Continuous Delivery Pipeline
Enterprise
Solution
Delivery
Build and integrate solution components and capabilities
with Agile Release Trains (ARTs) and Solution Trains
Evolve deployed systems

58. Why Lean Portfolio
Management?
Traditional approaches to
portfolio management were not
designed for a global economy
or the impact of digital
disruption. These factors put
pressure on enterprises to work
under a higher degree of
uncertainty, and yet deliver
innovative solutions much faster.

59. Lean Portfolio Management
The Lean Portfolio
Management competency
aligns strategy and execution
by applying Lean and systems
thinking approaches to
strategy and investment
funding, Agile portfolio
operations, and governance.

60. MEET BUSINESS TARGETS WITH STRATEGY AND
INVESTMENT FUNDING
Lean
Governance
Agile
Portfolio
Operations
Strategy &
Investment
Funding
Connect the portfolio to the Enterprise strategy
Maintain a Portfolio Vision and Roadmap
Establish Lean Budgets and Guardrails
Enterprise
Executives
Business
Owners
Enterprise
Architect
Enterprise
Executives
Enterprise
Architect
Business
Owners Establish portfolio flow
Strategy and investment funding ensures that the entire portfolio is
aligned and funded to create and maintain the solutions needed to meet
business targets.

61. FUND VALUE STREAMS ALIGNED WITH THE
BUSINESS STRATEGY
Funding value streams instead of projects provides the following benefits:
• Full control of spend
• No costly and delay-inducing project cost variance analyses
• No resource reassignments
• No blame game for project overruns
Lean Budgets
Guardrails

62. Why
Organizational
Agility?
Without organizational agility,
enterprises simply cannot
respond sufficiently to the
challenges and opportunities
that today’s rapidly changing
markets present. Without it,
employees and the enterprise
associate an individual’s value
with their functional skills,
rather than business outcomes.

63. Organizational Agility
The Organizational Agility
competency describes how
Lean-thinking people and
Agile teams optimize their
business processes, evolve
strategy with clear and
decisive new commitments,
and quickly adapt the
organization as needed to
capitalize on new
opportunities.

64. RESPOND QUICKLY TO OPPORTUNITIES
AND THREATS
• Continuous market sensing
• Make strategy changes decisively
• Organize and reorganize around value
• Innovate like a startup
• Implement changes quickly
• And…

65. Ignore
Sunk
Costs

66. Why Continuous
Learning Culture?
In order to thrive in the current
climate, organizations must
evolve into adaptive engines of
change, powered by a culture
of fast and effective learning at
all levels. Learning
organizations leverage the
collective knowledge,
experience, and creativity of
their workforce, customers,
supply chain, and the broader
ecosystem.

67. Continuous Learning Culture
The Continuous Learning
Culture competency
describes a set of values
and practices that
encourage individuals—
and the enterprise as a
whole—to continually
increase knowledge,
competence, performance,
and innovation.

68. The management paradigm for the digital age

69. THE MANAGEMENT CHALLENGE
It is not enough that management commit
themselves to quality and productivity, they
must know what it is they must do.
Such a responsibility cannot be delegated.
—W. Edwards Deming
…and if you can’t come, send no one”
—Vignette from “Out of the Crisis,”, W. Edwards Deming

70. LEAD THE CHANGE: SAFE IMPLEMENTATION ROADMAP
scaledagileframework.com/implementation-roadmap

71. MEASURE AND GROW ASSESSMENT AND PRACTICES

72. Measure and grow
Measure and Grow is the
way portfolios evaluate
their progress towards
business agility and
determine their next
improvement steps.

73.  Articles
 Guidance
 Presentations
 White papers
 Videos
 Customer stories
 SAFe Glossaries in
multiple languages
Explore the SAFe knowledge base
and find free resources:
scaledagileframework.com

74. Essential Configuration
Portfolio Configuration
Large Solution Configuration
Full Configuration
CONFIGURE SAFE TO MEET YOUR NEEDS

75. Produce consistent
results across the
enterprise with Scaled
Agile’s role-based
curriculum
scaledagile.com/learning

76. Connect with the
global SAFe Community
SAFe Community Platform (accessible
to those who certify)
SAFe Meetups
Find a SAFe Meetup near you at
scaledagile.com/calendar and select SAFe Meetup
from the Event Type dropdown menu.
SAFe Summits
Attend the world’s largest gathering of SAFe
professionals at the Global and Regional SAFe
Summit events. Details at safesummit.com.
600,000+
trained in SAFe
in over 110 countries

77. What inspired us to begin the SAFe transformation was the need
to adapt to market conditions and to essentially deliver business
value faster.
We had all of the knowledge, all of the skills, but we just didn’t
have the experience. I think it was extremely important to work
with a Scaled Agile Partner, … to essentially shorten the timeframe
when we could take the wheel back and run the transformation
ourselves.
—Russ McCabe
Associate Director - Technology, AT&T

78. Work with a Partner
to ensure success
• Training and coaching for all
SAFe roles
• Implementation and consulting
across industries and disciplines
• Platforms for SAFe automation,
and flow
350
Global Partners
in 50 countries & 350 cities
scaledagile.com/find-a-partner

79. Questions?

80. THANK YOU