Seven Core Competencies for Business Agility from SAFe – A Synopsis

Today digital transformation is right on top of every CxOs must-do list due to digital disruption, yet many organizations struggle to make the transition.

?Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), the most popular framework that helps organizations scale agility, has identified seven core competencies that an organization needs to build to succeed in the fast-moving world.

Three of the seven core competencies identified by SAFe have a deliberate focus on execution and three competencies on strategy. The seventh competency, in my opinion, is the foundational piece, focuses solely on the leadership required to make the transformation a reality.

SAFe has designed these competencies to provide an organization the requisite knowledge, skills, and behaviors to embark on the business agility journey.

Let's take a look at the seven competencies starting with the execution side (1 to 3) that has been the single focus so far in the name of agile -

1.????The competency of Team and Technical Agility is all about leveraging Lean-Agile skills to create high-quality solutions for their customers with faster time-to-market and predictable delivery of value. This competency focuses on agile teams and teams of agile teams at the core of the value generation capability.

2.????Agile Product Delivery competency is about sustainable long-term value creation and continuously releasing valuable products and services to the customers and users.

The competency focuses on continuously producing products that delight the customers and outcompete your competitors in a viable and sustainable manner.

3.????Enterprise Solution Delivery competency focuses on applying Lean-Agile principles and practices across all the phases involved in creating rather complex and sophisticated systems spanning software applications and cyber-physical systems.

4.????The Lean Portfolio Management competency is about applying an agile, lean, and system thinking approach at the portfolio level, focusing on Strategy & Investment Funding, Portfolio operations, and governance. This competency allows the organization the much-needed alignment between strategy and execution, thus balancing business as usual and seminal innovations.

5.????Organizational Agility competency is about building adaptability across all levels of the organization.?This competency focuses on enabling and empowering people who then can co-create, evolve, and optimize strategies, processes, and practices that allow the organizations to take advantage of new opportunities.

6.????Continuous Learning Culture competency is about leveraging the collective knowledge and experience of the organization's ecosystem. To thrive in an era where technology is evolving, and markets are getting disrupted, transforming the organization to adapt rapidly and, more importantly, continuously is the only option. This competency focuses on practices that aid individuals and teams in enhancing their knowledge and competencies resulting in relentless improvement and innovations.

7.????Lean-Agile Leadership competency enables the leadership to drive and thrive organizational transformation. This competency helps leaders understand what they need to do in the new world to improve employee engagement, productivity, innovation, and successful organizational change. This competency focuses on leading by example, adopting a Lean-Agile mindset, and leading the change to new ways of working.?

While each competency is valuable independently, an organizational transformation becomes meaningful only when these interdependent and complementary competencies are mastered – just like the adage, "The whole is greater than the sum of the parts."?