The 13th State of Agile Report shows that The Scaled Agile Framework – SAFe continues to be the most popular scaling method cited by respondents. This framework seems to have become the favorite of big organisations, mainly for the financial ones. After 3 years working in worldwide known financial organizations that have selected SAFe as their scaling Agile framework, I have witnessed many things that have worked and others those haven’t, practices and principles that are frequently misapplied or misunderstood as well as advantages and disadvantages of choosing SAFe as your scaling Agile framework. In this session, I will share notes of my logbook of those journeys.

1. Records from 3+ years helping
financial organisations to adopt SAFe
Leonardo Bittencourt
MY SAFE LOGBOOK
@leokbittencourt linkedin.com/in/leonardokb/

2. Context
About me
SAFe Program Consultant
Not selling SAFe
Financial: among top 3 within their domain

3. Why Should we scale?
Not about this!

4. STRATEGY
PROGRAMS
TEAM
OF
TEAMS
Why Should we scale?
ALIGNMENT
Value Stream
DEV TEAMS SALESOPS MKT CS
CROSS-DEPENDENCIES

5. WHAT IS SAFE?

6. WHAT IS SAFE?
Full SAFe

7. WHAT IS SAFE?
Essential SAFe

8. What is SAFe?
Value Stream
ALIGNMENT
DEV TEAMs SALESOPS MKT CS
STRATEGY
PROGRAMS
TEAM
OF
TEAMS
CROSS-DEPENDENCIES

9. What is SAFe?
ALIGNMENT
Value Stream
DEV SALESOPS MKT CS
PROGRAMS
TEAM
OF
TEAMS
CROSS-DEPENDENCIES

10. SOME NOTES …

11. PI PLANNING

12. PI PLANNING
Commitment x Forecast
Program Board & Cross-dependencies
Silos
Big Picture

14. PO Sync & Scrum of Scrums
Ask “WHY?”
Clear purpose
Outcome intended
Right Audience

15. Release Train Engineer
"Chief Scrum Master"
Key Role
2-Day Training
“Addictions" from previous
role

16. Long Lead Time
Regression Tests
Validation Deployments
Typically 8 to 12 weeks

17. Long Lead Time
System Demos (DoD)
Release on Demand
Automated testing
CI / CD
Blue/Green Deployment
Virtualisation
A/B Testing

18. Learning and Support
SPCs
SAFe training
Get the basics right
CoPs

19. Easy to Sell
False sense of security
But …

20. Complexity
Heavyweight
Hard to Understand
Extremely Hard to Master

21. SO WHAT?

22. Starting point but …
Use it as a framework !!!
Inspect and Adapt
Start small and evolve organically
and resiliently
FRAMEWORK METHODOLOGY
.
.
.

23. Not a single framework will
do the heavy lifting for you!

24. IF YOU HAVE ISSUES, AFTER SCALING,
YOU WILL HAVE BIGGER ISSUES!

25. LEONARDO BITTENCOURT
@leokbittencourt linkedin.com/in/leonardokb/
THANK YOU !!!
ammeonsolutions.com