Agile Transformation

Virtues of a Standard Framework

Chris Ruch

Impressions from the SAFe Partner Summit

I have just returned from the inaugural Scaled Agile Partner Summit in Denver, Colorado, a gathering of thought leaders, service partners, and tooling vendors from around the world. We shared our experiences to help guide and shape the evolution of the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe). It was inspiring to see the community of practice that has developed around the unique challenges of agile transformation in large scale enterprises and complex systems. The summit focused on learning from the successes and struggles of large SAFe implementations, as well as providing input on SAFe 4.0, which is the next generation of the framework that is currently under development.

The value of a standard, publicly available framework that is being regularly updated based on the lessons learned and feedback from a broad-based group of commercial, government, and consulting organizations, was clearly illustrated during the Summit. There were numerous working sessions, open spaces, and group discussions about the future iterations of the framework and how to improve the training materials that are available to support it. Dean Leffingwell told us that “facts are friendly,” a phrase that became a recurring theme throughout the conference.

It was a reminder that SAFe represents a collection of agile and lean best practices that have been proven to work in the real world. It is a counterpoint to homegrown implementations or single agile methodology implementations that don’t address the full range of challenges encountered in large enterprises.


“Implementing a hybrid or custom framework means sub-optimization”, said Garth Andrews, Director of the PMO/Agile Office, as he was presenting the story of Elekta’s successful agile transformation. Most companies creating a custom approach from the ground up will not only avoid addressing some of the hardest challenges and decisions, but will also repeat mistakes that have already been encountered by other organizations and are addressed in a standard framework. It is much more efficient to begin with a standard framework like SAFe and extending it and refining it to your organization’s needs.

It is collaboration across industries and sharing lessons learned from hundreds of agile implementations that drives the improvements and innovation in the framework. I’m particularly excited about some of the significant enhancements in the next version of the framework. These include adding communities of practice, recognizing both kanban and scrum as valid approaches at the team level, and addressing financial capitalization in an agile environment -- all areas that Summa has helped our past and current customers address.

Summa’s opportunity to contribute the experiences and ideas of 10 certified SAFe Program Consultants, along with those of our customers and other partners, to the development of the framework is what keeps SAFe relevant a the continually updated collection of best practices for implementing agile at enterprise scale.

Summa has been a Scaled Agile Gold Partner since the beginning of 2014.

Chris Ruch
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chris Ruch, Summa

As Summa’s Agile Practice Director, Chris develops agile transformation and organizational change management strategy, provides executive level coaching, and manages partnerships. Chris has worked with leading financial services, healthcare and manufacturing companies, as well as nonprofits and institutions of higher education.