Principle 7: "Incremental approach with fast, integrated cycles" - SAFe PART 9
Dimitrios Mitrentsis
Department Manager System & Infrastructure, License & Contract Manager, Senior Programm Manager, Agile Transformation, Global Transition & Transformation, Outsourcing Services, M&A
This is a series from the SAFe maturity concept, which is based on living practice examples. This is Part 9 - "Incremental approach with fast, integrated cycles."
The minimal viable product (MVP) and pilot approaches are deployed along the IT Business Roadmap. IT implementation is implemented incrementally, integrated by through sustainable demo/feedback cycles together with all stakeholders, taking into account the senior management level that will act i its business role.
AP 7.1 - Agile methodology has been trained and initiated
After 15 years of use incremental procedures using agile methodology is no longer a hype. Companies try to work efficiently, in a market-oriented way and according to budget and value fit principles need to supplement and renew the established planning and development methodology by using agile principles.
However, this will not happen by law and order, abruptly or near 100%. The agile principles should be adapted to the organization in a sustainable and healthy manner. Blockers to the new methodology have to be displaced on the side and the new procedure have to be trained and piloted in the entire organization. After everyone has understood the new principles of the agile world, you can start initiating next steps towards SAFe.
You don't leave the result to random principles. Use experienced senior managers and specialists, supported by a newly structured agile PMO. Together they will support the transformation by organization and methodology points of view.
In the agile PMO you will find the Chief Scrum Master, the Chief PO, the Chief RTE, the Portfolio and Release Manager as well as the classic PMO team. All PMO employees together support the step-by-step introduction of the agile and SAFe principles acting as the new agile competence center. SAFe principles will be PI-Planning, requirement prioritization, criteria of working together (rules & guiding standards), establishing initial content (backlog) of the portfolio, program and your development teams.
The PMO team act as a mirror for the agile transformation and ensures the knowledge transfer between the newly established roles and teams. Pay attention by introducing "Train the Trainer" models and occupy your committees and expert roles with internal staff. External members can and should support and coach them on a point-by-point basis to ensure the transformation success.
Once equipped with professionals and got the SAFe-go of the senior management and you already established the new acting PMO team, the transformation can be successful.
Take care that your senior management has understood the necessity of using agile methods and you have the full commitment and support by them.
Indices that you have to start implementing principles of SAFe are things like "Poor quality of requirements", "Continuous shifting of project initiation", "Multiple failed project and new product approaches", "Incomplete concepts", "Non-applicable project portfolio" or "line managers acting as program or project lead".
These points are not unknown for you and already known in many discussions within the organization? Then you should openly discuss the advantages of SAFe with your senior management and implement the first steps to achieve a sustainable business success.
AP 7.2 - First cycle and ART development starts based value based prioritization, PI-Planning & feature development
You have a consistent understanding within the company to the agile approach and the need to scale the implementation process, then you should take care for introduce the next step, start transformation of a program/product or project agile train to the SAFe methodology.
This includes the development and also user acceptance of the features according to SAFe.
PI-Planning is already applied as standard task in your teams already introducing action point 6.3 (see article for principle 6). So you have to introduce planning cycles of each team, where the content of stories, test cases and acceptance tasks (so called Definition of Done) will be defined to implement integrated features. This will be done, of course, by using the already introduced SAFe principles (prioritizing, PI-planning, synchronous delivery, decreasing and delivering in cadences).
You will recognize that you have reached the action point by measuring the result in the form of the error rate. Are you able to deliver defect-free features or to provide an increment for final acceptance, then you have finished the introduction of this action point.
AP 7.3 - SAFe is applied to the entire requirements portfolio
Once you have planned and introduced SAFe for one cycle or cadence (10 to 12 weeks), surely you had several cases that could not be solved within the ART. Some of you have already the knowledge that dependencies outside of your stream can become big challenges.
You need help of another team outside the ARTs or program? The simplest case is, you can involve resources to get dependencies under control. More difficult it will be if your final solution prevents a different team of yours and you lose the control.
In many organization this is a huge challenge that needs to be addressed. The interaction within more than one ART (two or more are used to deliver a feature) is not easy and can only be tackled by successful piloting action point 7.2.
Such complex reconciliations of dependencies are not uncommon, and the result of system architectures where the system support was not optimal implemented to business need. In these cases, step-by-step, PI planning and dependency management must be applied across the entire requirements portfolio.
However, prerequisite for this is the establishment of prioritization and PI-Planning for each individual ART (see action points 6.3 and 7.2). The dependencies that are visible and known after PI-Planning approach can be resolved with all parties, including senior management.
AP 7.4 - Integration planning and delivery is established including stakeholder feedback
At this action point, each team delivery will be done integrated. The stakeholder feedback is requested for all deliveries and demonstrably used to improve the delivery process.
It’s not a big challenge to organize stakeholder feedback or sprint demos within your delivery cycles. The application and practice the approach to all your development and features teams or PI's is the real challenge.
AP 7.5 - Continuous development lifecycle based on mvp approach is established (for part of your arts or products)
Once you have reached action point 7.4, you have to prove it for the entire feature and development lifecycle - from the emergence of the new requirements (=> portfolio planning) to the production (=> acceptance and handover) and maintenance (=> continuous product development).
After you are able to manage parts of the portfolio and product development based to mvp approaches (gradually and strictly prioritized and developed by value), you can mark the point as successfully introduced.
This means that - like CMMI - you have reached nearest the highest possible SAFe maturity level. This wont be easy and there are not many companies that have archieved this.
Do not hesitate to contact me to provide you with the SAFe Maturity Concept and more detailed information to practice examples in implementation of "principle 7".
Next article will be SAFe Part 10 -" Principle 8: "Set milestones on the basis of objective evaluation of the systems."
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Dimitrios Mitrentsis publishes and comments on LinkedIn various topics as a private individual. All statements or opinions expressed in the articles reflect a purely personal opinion.
Take a look at my other articles:
Principle 6: "Introduce cadences and synchronize them with cross-domain planning."
Principle 5: "Apply systems thinking."
Principle 4: "Define and live decision-making at all levels"
Principle 3: "Taking an economic view"
Principle 2: "Design the SAFe framework for enterprise needs."
The SAFe Maturity Concept - a way become agile and to be
SAFe - PART 3: Principle 1 "enabling the organization"
"being agile" - the will for a controlled transformation - part 2
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