Halfaker and Associates, founded in 2006 by a service-disabled veteran, specializes in data analytics, software engineering, IT infrastructure, and cybersecurity for federal customers. The company transformed its operations using the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) to improve consistency, quality, and risk management across projects as it scaled from a small business to a sustainable mid-tier organization. Key strategies included establishing clear strategic goals, utilizing effective collaboration tools, and fostering a culture of quality and continuous improvement.

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NAME: Michael King
TITLE: Chief Technology Officer
ORGANIZATION: Halfaker and Associates
SERVING FEDERAL
CUSTOMERS WITH
SAFE CONCEPTS

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• Company founded in 2006 with the vision
of Continuing to Serve…
• Founded by West Point graduate and
Army Military Police Officer Dawn Halfaker
(Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned,
Woman-Owned, 8(a) Small Business)
• 200+ employee company focused on
providing Data Analytics, Software
Engineering, IT Infrastructure, and Cyber
Security solutions to Federal Government
customers
• Halfaker serves VA, DoD, HHS, DHS, USDA,
and Transportation
ABOUT HALFAKER
Culture built on Military Principles
 Lead from the Front
 Never Give Up
 Plan, Plan, Plan
 Take Care of Your People
 Know the Job above you and below
you
 Demand Excellence

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AGENDA
• About Halfaker
• Business Challenge
• Approach: Build Scaled Agile System
• Many Different Scaled Frameworks
• Introduction to SAFe
• Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
• Portfolio (Enterprise) Level
• Effective Strategy
• Strategy Decomposition
• Consistent Enterprise Architecture
• Synchronized Value Streams
• Program Level
• Vision-based Enterprise Metrics
• Invest in Program Leaders
• Define Program Rhythm
• Invest Time in Planning
• Build Sufficient Runway
• Team Level
• Define Team Lifecycles
• Align Responsibilities with Lifecycle
• Build Quality in from the Beginning
• Questions?

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• Halfaker began to accelerate in growth in 2013,
approaching 100 employees spread across 20
projects
• As the Company grew, we struggled to maintain
consistency, ensure quality, and manage risk
across increasing number of projects spread
across the country
• To provide excellent service, we relied on a few
heroes who were constantly reacting to
emergencies, swarming issues like 5 year olds
playing soccer
BUSINESS CHALLENGE

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• Halfaker needed to invest in processes and tools that support them, in order to scale from a
small business to a sustainable mid-tier organization:
 Codify how we ensured every customer would receive excellent, innovative results
 Align people, systems, and processes to strategic goals
APPROACH: BUILD SCALED AGILE SYSTEM
Strategic Goals
Business Processes
Templates and Forms
Business Systems
(Applications)
Guidelines and Policies
Organization
Structure
“…Losers have goals.
Winners have
systems.” – Scott
Adams, creator
Dilbert

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MANY DIFFERENT SCALED FRAMEWORKS

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INTRODUCTION TO SAFE
• Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)® defines itself as:
The Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) is a freely revealed knowledge base of proven,
integrated patterns for enterprise-scale Lean-Agile development. It is scalable and
modular, allowing each organization to apply it in a way that provides better business
outcomes and happier, more engaged employees.
SAFe synchronizes alignment, collaboration, and delivery for large numbers of Agile
teams. It supports both software and systems development, from the modest scale of
well under 100 practitioners to the largest software solutions and complex cyber-physical
systems, systems that require thousands of people to create and maintain. SAFe was
developed in the field, based on helping customers solve their most challenging scaling
problems. It leverages three primary bodies of knowledge: Agile development, Lean
product development, and systems thinking.
• Halfaker uses SAFe as a library of best practices across the enterprise, not a one-size-fits-all
solution – we use some SAFe concepts, but not others

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SCALED AGILE FRAMEWORK® (SAFE)
3
2
1
4
5
12
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10
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6
7
8

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Portfolio (Enterprise) Level

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EFFECTIVE STRATEGY
 Create traceable goals and associated
sub-goals, which are flowed down to a
clear primary owner within the
organization
 Meet quarterly to review progress and
priorities related to these goals
 Publish an annual strategy plan one-
pager so people can see the ‘big
picture’
 Manage a online Kanban board
showing the high-level epics so people
can visualize who owns which goals,
which upcoming quarter they’re due,
and their status
Lessons Learned / Examples
 Create Strategic Goals that can be
clearly flowed down to relevant
departments/teams
 Monitor the progress against
strategic goals, meeting periodically
(e.g. quarterly) to review progress
and priorities
 Provide a visual way to show
strategic goals and their progress
(e.g. dashboard or epic board)
Key Concepts

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User Stories
Epics
Features
Strategic
Themes
Collaboration
among Executives
STRATEGY DECOMPOSITION
 Make it easy to trace how strategic
themes are broken down into
children items (e.g. epics, user
stories)
 Focus senior leaders on the “big
picture” of themes or features, so
they are not lost in the weeds of
long backlogs of user stories
 As your teams and your overall
organization matures, you’ll be able
to:
1. Estimate the complexity of a
strategic theme, feature, or
epic
2. Prioritize each item
3. Estimate completion dates for
each item, with increasing
accuracy

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CONSISTENT ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE
 Provide great tools for planning (e.g.
JIRA, Microsoft Project), collaboration
(e.g. Confluence), and communication
(e.g. Skype for Business, HipChat)
 Allow teams to tailor tools or use
other tools, when appropriate (but
encourage/enforce consistency)
Lessons Learned / Examples
 Identify someone or a team to
define overall technology
architecture/tools for the
organization
 Invest in great tools for your team,
so they don’t need to resort to
Shadow IT to get their jobs done
 Invest in associated processes to
your organization does things
efficiently and consistently, when
possible
Key Concepts

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SYNCHRONIZED VALUE STREAMS
 Use a battle rhythm to plan and
monitor strategic progress through
company-wide weekly, monthly, and
quarterly activities
 Publish the company battle rhythm to
all company leaders, so they can
clearly see the rhythm they are
operating within
 Organize Operations Department
(service delivery) around capabilities
instead of customers or geography, so
project teams can collaborate and
support each other with shared talent
Lessons Learned / Examples
 Organize your company around
value streams to keep value as a
clear central concept – keep the
“why” (purpose) of your
organization the clear center of
these value streams
 Synchronize the rhythm of your
organization, both within each value
stream and across them; so the
organization can prioritize and
adapt in a single ‘battle rhythm’
Key Concepts

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Program Level

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VISION-BASED ENTERPRISE METRICS
 We identified critical numbers related
to Customer Satisfaction (e.g.
Surveys, CPARS scores), Process
Efficiency, Growth (Pipeline and
Bookings) Development (Training
Plan Completion), and Financial
(Revenue and Profit)
 We review metrics in weekly, monthly,
and quarterly meetings that focus on
various aspects of Company
management to identify what to
prioritize
Lessons Learned / Examples
 Identify a short list of clearly
defined metrics to align with your
organization’s vision and strategic
goals
 Avoid ‘Vanity Metrics’ that don’t
actually drive improvement (e.g.
web traffic, number of subscribers)
 Use ‘Balanced Scorecard’
approach to avoid focusing on a
single type of metrics (e.g. Financial)
 Monitor performance of key goals in
frequent meetings – “What gets
measured gets done”
Key Concepts

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INVEST IN DIVISION/PROGRAM LEADERS
 Allocate budget for sufficient leaders
on large programs and teams
 Invest time in identifying high-
potential leaders and helping them
advance (e.g. Leadership
Development Program where junior
leaders are given increasing
responsibilities related to task,
personnel, and financial management)
 Invest in training leaders to use
hierarchy (traceability) to keep the big
picture visible – use epics and don’t
get lost in long lists of user stories
Lessons Learned / Examples
 Invest in Leaders for Divisions and
Programs to provide sufficient
capacity in execution, coordination,
personnel development, and technical
architecture
 Release Train Engineer is a Scrum
Master across a Program (multiple
Teams)
 System Architect provides cohesive
technical leadership across a Program
 Product Manager is Product Owner
across a Program
Key Concepts

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DEFINE PROGRAM RHYTHM
 Quarterly Strategy Review meeting with
company senior leaders presenting progress
across each department (release train)
and discussing priorities
 IT Department (composed of Customer
Solutions, Architecture, Internal Technology,
and Quality teams) meets quarterly to
review progress and plan upcoming
priorities (see next slide) – each team
presents approaches to the other teams for
feedback and coordination
Lessons Learned / Examples
 Synchronize teams across a Program (or
Department) to a consistent rhythm
 SAFe defines enterprise rhythm:
 Continual Portfolio-level prioritization
 3 month Program Increments (Program
level), using groups of 5-12 Scrum Teams
called Agile Release Trains (ARTs)
 2 week Iterations (Sprints) at Team level
 Insist on keeping a consistent rhythm – don’t
delay/extend sprints or releases, instead tell
people they can catch the next train
Key Concepts

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INVEST TIME IN PLANNING
 SAFe defines a Program Increment (PI) planning approach, which occurs
every 10 – 12 weeks, where programs meet to review progress and plan
upcoming priorities (see http://www.scaledagileframework.com/pi-
planning/)
Key Concepts

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BUILD SUFFICIENT RUNWAY
 Research Backlog provides sufficient user
interview and research findings to enable
teams to create backlog items
 User Story Runway provides sufficient
refined and prioritized backlog items for
teams to work on, so teams can keep
progressing
 Architectural Runway provides system
and software architectures for teams to
build on
 A useful metric is to track how much
‘backlog’ you have, measured in weeks or
sprints
Lessons Learned / Examples
 The Architectural Runway is
composed of the technology
infrastructure and architectural
decisions that enable work for
development to advance – think of
which work builds more asphalt
and which work drives on it
(consumes it)
 The metaphor of building a runway
to stay out of a crisis mode where
decisions are not well thought out
can be applied to many domains
Key Concepts

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Team Level

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DEFINE TEAM LIFECYCLES
 Define Scrum, Kanban, and Scaled
Agile lifecycles for teams to select
from, based on project type
 Provide relevant processes as
guidance for each lifecycle
 Connect project leaders monthly for a
Process Improvement Team (PIT)
meeting to identify how to improve
processes, including lifecycle guidance
 Conduct project retrospectives at the
end of each project, so lessons learned
can be captured and shared
Lessons Learned / Examples
 Provide teams guidance on how to
manage planning, execution, and
review of work by defining
Project/Team Lifecycles
 Centralize best practices for how
your teams manage work, so teams
can learn from each other, not just
themselves
Key Concepts

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ALIGN RESPONSIBILITIES WITH LIFECYCLE
 Incremental Agile transformation,
changing lifecycles by team instead of
a “big bang” approach
 Clearly identify Product Owner and
Scrum Master for Scrum-based teams
 Connect teams through recurring
strategic planning and process
improvement meetings, so they can
learn from each other quickly
Lessons Learned / Examples
 Identify and train leaders with roles
that align with the lifecycles teams
use to execute work
 Define roles and responsibilities
for team roles to align with lifecycle
expectations (e.g. Don’t put Project
Managers in the Scrum Master role
without analysis, process design,
and training)
Key Concepts

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BUILD QUALITY IN FROM THE BEGINNING
 Created enterprise quality expectations
related to peer reviews
 Enables projects to plan quality, using a
review matrix within a project’s Quality
Control Plan (QCP)
 Teams must select Quality Management
Representative to lead team quality
activities
 Conduct semi-annual customer surveys
and executive customer visits to
proactively identify customer issues (ISO
9001 practice)
 Created enterprise Quality Management
department to audit teams and programs
to ensure consistent quality and compliance
Lessons Learned / Examples
 Create culture where teams ensure
quality throughout the work
lifecycle, not just at the end
 Create culture where teams create
high-quality work themselves, and
don’t rely on external
auditors/quality assurance/testers to
ensure quality
 Defects are dramatically cheaper
earlier in the process – a software
defect may be 100x more
expensive to fix in production vs.
during requirements
development
Key Concepts

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QUESTIONS?
• Follow-up Questions? Want to Connect?
• Michael King, PMI-ACP, SAFe SA, PMP
• michael.king@halfaker.com
• @mikehking (Twitter)
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikehking