Scaling Agile with SAFe (for Product Owners/Scrum Masters)

SAFe (the Scaled Agile Framework for the enterprise) is a widely adopted framework to scale agile from one agile team to tens or hundreds of teams, all working together on the same product. SAFe has been adopted by thousands of organizations around the world and is today the most widely adopted scaling framework for large agile teams.

Since 2011, SAFe has gone through major enhancements over the years, however its fundamental structure remains the same. In this course, I will present the key elements of the framework such as the Agile Release Train, PI Planning, and the Program Board. This course is ideal for anyone who wants to grasp the key concepts and components of SAFe, with a short, focused training course.

This course is intended to be an introduction for anyone who wants to understand what SAFe is and how it works. This is also for people that already have a SAFe certification or are already implementing SAFe in their workplace, and want to review some of the key concepts and learn how to best apply them.

SAFe is a registered trademark of Scaled Agile Inc., the company that created the SAFe framework.  This course does not replace a traditional SAFe certification. Scaled Agile Inc. provides a wealth of resources to learn more about each component of SAFe, and also provides certification courses for anyone interested in getting a SAFe certification. Please refer to their website for more information.

Throughout the course, I will share my experience in applying SAFe to large organizations, both private and public, and will provide tips to adopt SAFe properly and avoid some common pitfalls.

Most of the organizations I have worked with, when they scale agile typically have a number of agile teams using Scrum. In this course, I will assume that all teams use Scrum. However, Kanban and XP teams can also successfully apply the SAFe framework together with Scrum teams.

My goal is to provide you with an understanding of how SAFe works and how to best implement its key elements in your workplace.

We will start with a quick review of the Scrum Team. We will look at the key roles of Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Team Members or Developers on a Scrum team, and how these roles are extended when scaling with SAFe.

We will then review the Scrum workflow and the activities that happen at each Scrum event. While a baseline understanding of Agile and Scrum is a pre-requisite for the course, I find it useful to refresh our memory on how Scrum works with one team, before we can talk about scaling it to multiple teams.

Then we will learn about the SAFe framework, looking at how to scale from one team to multiple teams, and at PI Planning - which is a recurring activity that all teams do together. It's like the heartbeat of SAFe! And I'll share a few insights and tips to make it effective.

And finally, we will look at Epics and how to manage a portfolio of Epics with the Portfolio Kanban.

Throughout the course, I will offer a few quizzes as an opportunity to test your knowledge and understanding of the key concepts. And you will also find a helpful workbook that covers each session.

I hope you find it useful... let's get started!